A Abstract bstractThe most important principles of outcomes-based education (OBE) is that planning, teaching and assessment should focus on helping learners to achieve significant outcomes to high standards. This cannot be achieved without having suitable ways to describe desired learning outcomes and the quality of students' demonstrations of learning. This article outlines a systematic approach to defining outcomes and describing the relationship between learners' responses to assessment items and their levels of understanding. The approach is based on the Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome (SOLO) taxonomy with multimodal functioning ± a means of analysing learner understanding that is based on modes of thinking, forms of knowledge and ways of structuring knowledge.
This study explored the state of desegregation and integration in South African schools 11 years after the demise of Apartheid. Three classrooms in three desegregating schools with different histories and race profiles were visited. Overall, each classroom was visited on 10 occasions over a period of 2 weeks. Direct observation was the main data gathering technique. The main findings were that desegregation as assimilation is occurring in these schools, but institutionalized racism is still pervasive. Manifestations of this at the classroom level include negative stereotyping of Black students, selective empathy, discriminatory seating arrangements, devolution of authority to students on racial basis, and aversion to African languages. The study concludes that the Constitution of South Africa is being given the most minimalist interpretation where racial desegregation is concerned. It concludes further that for system change to occur at school level, a radical shift from thinking about desegregation to contemplating substantive integration must be undertaken. Only in this way is it possible to introduce anti-racism as a transformative device into schools.
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This paper reports on a study of the expectations of preservice music teacher education students about the problems faced by beginning teachers. The findings are presented against a background of studies of the unrealistic optimism of teacher education students. In this study, there was a consistent tendency for students to express high levels of confidence in their ability to teach, and to believe that they would experience less serious problems as beginning teachers than the "average first year teacher". This optimism is suggested as one reason for teacher education students' reluctance to use theoretical constructs to guide their classroom teaching during the practicum.
One of the challenges facing teacher educators is to develop assessment practices that will minimise the uncertainty and subjectivity associated with assessing teacher competence, and that will allow them to distinguish clearly between those who are competent and those who are not (yet) competent. According to the Norms and standards for educators (Department of Education 2000), teaching practice should form an integral part of teacher education programmes and should be regarded as a way in which to assess all the different roles of educators as part of the integrated and applied assessment task. This is a major challenge since the assessor must consider several modalities such as the selection of suitable measuring instruments, the question of which competences should be assessed, the advantages and disadvantages of the direct observation of teaching performance and the relevant levels of performance. This article explores only some of the many issues related to teaching practice and the assessment thereof.
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