News from the Saide Teacher Education Space on OER Africa

The seven module Saide Teacher Education Series is now available on Saide's OER Africa website. We are due to launch a Maths teacher education theme with associated resources before the end of the year.

Saide Multimedia Teacher Education Series
Between 1998 and 2002, Saide in association with Oxford University Press published a seven module multimedia series to support the study of education at universities and colleges of education – funded by the WK Kellogg Foundation. These were used widely in teacher education programmes by a number of institutions including Unisa, Wits University, and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. But for many students, the price of conventionally published materials was too high. So a decade later, when the rights for all but two of the modules reverted to us, we decided to give this series new life – as Open Educational Resources accessible at no cost, ready for students either digitally or in conventional printed form. In addition to making the materials less expensive, their digital availability makes it much more practical to integrate the video and audio components. Much of the re-development costs were covered by royalties from the first series.

Collectively, the modules represent the basis for a coherent Education Studies curriculum. From within a framing context generated by Creating People-Centred Schools,

• Being a Teacher and Working in Classrooms cover the professional and classroom contexts within which teachers practice;
• Curriculum and Learners and Learning provide a theoretical understanding of resources or tools teachers may draw on;
• Getting Practical and Using Media draw on the above in guiding practice.

The Wits School of Education and the University of Pretoria are leading the way in the use of the new versions.

For Wits University, Saide arranged print-on-demand copies of Learners and Learning to be delivered for their second year B Ed students. The cost (including courier costs) was R50 per copy (as opposed to R200 for the conventionally published version).

Whereas Wits took the option of using one of the Saide modules as is, the University of Pretoria will be incorporating most of Being a Teacher in the first year B Ed Education Studies module entitled: Teaching within a historical context: lessons from the past for the present.

For a more detailed discussion of the context and scope of the republication of the Saide Teacher Education series as Open Educational Resources on OER Africa, please see the paper by Ken Harley presented at the 2010 NADEOSA conference What is the potential for collaborative teacher education course development using SAIDE Teacher Education modules recently released as OER? If you are interested in taking up Ken Harley’s suggestion of building a new module based on a section of the second edition of Curriculum, please email us - ken.harley@gmail.com or tessaw@saide.org.za.

Forthcoming in December 2010: A Mathematics Theme
The Mathematics theme in the Teacher Education Space on OER Africa is intended as a space where maths teacher educators can find materials and meet colleagues involved in training maths teachers for African schools. On the home page, we also hope to feature relevant research and development projects in maths teacher education.

In the space, good quality teaching materials will be made available as *Open Educational Resources (OER) to teacher educators at all levels – primary, secondary and senior secondary. Although mainly aimed at teacher educators, teachers and other users are free to access and benefit. As OER, the materials will be freely available to anyone who chooses to use them.

We have selected three focus areas:

1. Curriculum
   The resources for this focus area will include not only examples of maths curricula from a range of African countries, but also curriculum support materials for teacher educators to adapt and use, illustrative materials for ‘new’ emphases in maths curricula (such as Mathematical Literacy), as well as articles and perspectives on working with a national curriculum.
2. Content and pedagogy
   The resources selected for this focus area will support the aim of developing teachers’ understanding of maths content in relation to pedagogy. Course materials for teacher education programmes, as well as articles/papers that can serve as readings will be posted. The teacher education course materials will range from early primary to senior secondary.
3. Assessment
   In this focus area, we will provide resources that can be used to support teachers to assess learner performance in a meaningful way, develop diagnostic judgement and use the results of assessment to inform their teaching practice.

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• If you have resources that you would like to contribute to the Maths theme
  Or
• If you have a maths teacher education research and development project that you would like to inform us about
  Or
• If you would like to be included in our mailing list for future updates on the Mathematics theme, and/or for participation in our email discussions on the above focus areas

Please email us: ingrid.sapire@wits.ac.za and tessaw@saide.org.za

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*Open Educational Resources are digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and re-use for teaching, learning and research without an accompanying need to pay royalties or licence fees.