Developing a Pedagogy of Mutuality in a Capability Approach: Teachers’ experiences of using the Open Educational Resources (OER) of the teacher education in sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) programme

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Developing a Pedagogy of Mutuality in a Capability Approach: Teachers’ experiences of using the Open Educational Resources (OER) of the teacher education in sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) programme

Patricia Murphy
Freda Wolfenden

Abstract

The TESSA (teacher education in sub Saharan Africa) programme aims to improve teacher education at scale by developing open educational resources (OER) that allow sustainable and locally managed pedagogical change in higher education institutions and schools. The article offers a sociocultural theoretical rationale for the pedagogy of mutuality represented in the TESSA OER, and for the research approach to understanding pedagogical change that recognizes the dialectical relationships between national policies and institutional structures and practices, and the consequent impact of these on teachers’ practice and pupils’ learning. It reports from an interview-based enquiry, from the project1 ‘Extending and embedding TESSA OER’, looking at how teacher educators at a Kenyan University served to broker changes in pedagogy within the institution and its partner schools. Two school-based cases are discussed that highlight the role teachers, who take up these pedagogical challenges play in further brokering change in their local institutions, some of the influences that support the process of institutional change are identified and how these are understood and reported to increase access and enhance learning for all pupils.

Keywords

Pedagogical change, Africa, Teacher educators: open educational resources, Learning, Primary schools, Sustainability

Annotation

The Tessa (teacher education in sub Saharan Africa) program aims to improve teacher education at scale by developing open educational resources (OER) that allow sustainable and locally managed pedagogical change in higher education institution and schools. The article offers research approach to understanding pedagogical change that recognizes the dialectical relationship between national policies and institutional structures and practices, and the consequent impact of these on teachers’ practice and pupil’s learning.

It is extending an experience of quality education to all pupils is the central aim of the global free primary education policy adopted across countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The realization of this policy is, dependent on the quality of teachers and recent reports have highlighted the key role of teach education in shifting modes of interaction in African schools to those which more fully support pupils learning.

In summary, it makes clear that curriculum and assessment reform is a necessary condition for change but not an effective mechanism for it. Teachers education programs can drive pedagogical change in schools and sustain it and at the same time begin to influence policy response to pedagogical change.

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