Rural teachers' learning of English in a distance education programme

M.Ed.This dissertation sets out to examine the feasibility of teaching English to rural black teachers by distance education. It argues that the retraining of teachers is central to the reconstruction program of the ANC government and that English, as medium of instruction in most schools, is an area of weakness that needs to be addressed. It claims that failure to tackle this language issue creatively will contribute to the continued failure to achieve educational goals in South Africa. While it recognises the inability of formal institutions to cope with the enormous task of teacher retraining programmes, it seriously questions the effectiveness of teaching communicative competence by distance education. It claims that distance education does not achieve parity with conventional provision either in quality, quantity or status. It therefore sets out to find some of the 'missing links' to successful language learning and teaching in existing distance systems and to offer suggestions and recommendations for future consideration. A critical discussion of the literature on distance education, learning theories and adult second language learning, provides the context in which the training of black teachers is situated. The theoretical debates highlight the deficiencies in many of our existing language programmes and illustrate the need to implement the concept of mediated learning in the development of distance language study courses. The dissertation proposes the thesis that autonomous learning, which is central to the concept of both open and distance systems, conflicts with the general characteristics of black teachers who are products of the Bantu Education system. It emphasises the need to recognise these barriers to learning and advises the creation of a distance learning context in South Africa which exhibits a greater 'continuity of concern' (Sewart,1978) by providing for a two-way dialogue through both tutor-learner and learner-learner interaction. The dissertation therefore deals with two prime concerns: the need to equip underqualified black teachers with communicative competence in English, which will facilitate learning in the classroom and the difficulty of teaching a skills based course at a distance (see also fig. 1 on p.1)