OUTCOMES BASED AND PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS

On this date, 2008-11-25, the South Africa ministry of education is considering whether the Outcomes Based Education(OBE) system should be reviewed or customised to suit local requirements. It seems from the negative media reports on this issue that OBE has failed. Meanwhile the whole Sector Education Training Authorities (SETAS) wereestablished on the priciples of OBE within the National Qualifications Framework (NQF). Learner facilitators, assessors and moderation polcies of the South Africa Qualification Authority (SAQA) have been established at great cost and seems to be working for accredited short courses and training needs. The problem is that the formal educational system in schools, further education and universities cannot adapt to the industrial model of the private sectors. Private providers say that the OBE system is an excellent way for skills training while educationists say that they cannot educate the masses with the same methodology. There is no time and capacity to compile portfolios of evidence for each candidate as weel as to adapt it for certain courses in language or accounting and technical subjects. Of course the debate is against or in favour of OBE. In other words, those trainers and teachers and lecturers who really understand how the SAQA system works and those who do not know how to implement it successfully.

In order to participate in this debate, I try to compare the diferentiated life skills of the OBE system to those of the philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd, and other Dutch philosophers (Kuiper?) which we had to study in philosophy for Political Science at the former University of the Orange free State (UOFS) now the University of the Free State (UFS) during the sixties and early seventies. Hind sight, an understanding how all the known life spheres differentiate within the holistic views of other philosophers, such as General Jan Christiaan Smuts (Holism) or cosmological studies of Einstein (Relativism), Galileo, Copernicus and historical philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle and Grecian thinkers. I do not pose as a philosopher and can only touch very slightly on the surface. -- If one did not want to study Phisophy itself, the basic knowledge, however, was but enough to open up the mind of the young students from school to university. And all of us who took up our studies seriously, passed our formative tests with asignments and summative assessments. More or less in the same way as our current learners who are also not aquanted with the OBE system and who rely on route learning instead with problem solving skills. Untill this very modern times we, the old generation, still refer to the total framework of real life situations, i.e. from religion to maths and history to pshycolgy. We will discuss this later on. To put it bluntly; life does not consists out of one individual aspect. Subsequently it should be viewed according to a whole range of areas and ideas in which the pupil, learner and student have to study and how to develop skills to analyze and to integrate all the respective individual aspects. Past knowledge of grade one (sub standard A) as well as the very first words of the baby child are all eventually needed for rocket science! Or the other way round, how a grand father could become (with creative immagination) a little child to play with his grand children ...

Subsequently we will now proceed with the core ideas for further discussion.

A PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS OF THE IDENTIFIED LIFE SPHERES IN OUTCOMES BASED EDUCATION IN RELATION TO THE 15 NODAL ASPECTS OF HERMAN DOOYEWEERD

One of the skills that Outcomes Based Education promotes is the ability to evaluate one life sphere in relation with a frame work of other relevant spheres. (Spady, 1998)
According to the philosopher DFM Strauss's work (1978) on an Introduction to the Cosmology. (Afrikaans title), the various dimensions of Creation differentiate into the following fifteen aspects:
- DESTINATION FUNCTIONS
- the numerical aspect ( e.g. accounting)
- the spatial aspect (e.g. technical drawing)
- the cinematic aspect (e.g. electrical engineering)
- the physical aspect (e.g. mechanical engineering)
- the biotical aspect (e.g. environmental sciences)
- the sensitive - psychological aspect (e.g. health sciences)
- the logical aspect (e.g.. mathematics)
-
- the historical aspect (e.g. archives, library and information data)
- FOUNDATION FUNCTION
-
- DESTINATION FUNCTIONS
-
- the lingual aspect (e.g. communication sciences, information technology)
- the social aspect (e.g. alma mater and alumni)
- the economical aspect (e.g. socialism, capitalism )
- the aesthetical aspect (e.g. art and design)
- the juridical aspect (e.g. law, judiciary)
- the ethical aspect (e.g. code of conducts)
- the faith aspect (belief, religion, ideologies)
For the purpose of this publication, I will be mainly concentrate on the relation between the historical foundational aspects- and their respective destination functions.
As such the cultural - historical and the technological forming aspects of our Central University of Technology, Free State, CUT) are also built from the correlate of every day human facets with the rest of the other nodal aspects. Without necessarily quoting it in detail or labor the point, but rather in the pragmatic sense of the word where the reader can derive intended speaker or writer meaning…
According to the following Critical Cross field Outcomes in the modern Outcomes Based Education model, learners must be able to:


1. Identify and solve problems and make decisions using critical and creative thinking;

2. Work effectively with others as members of a team, group, organisation and community;

3. Organize and manage themselves and their activities responsibly and effectively;

4. Collect, analyze, organize and critically evaluate information;

5. Communicate effectively using visual, symbolic, and/or language skills in various modes;

6. Use science and technology effectively and critically showing responsibility towards the environments and the health of others; and

7. Demonstrate an understanding of the word as a set of related systems by recognizing that problem solving contexts do not exist in isolation...

8. Reflecting on and exploring a variety of strategies to learn more effectively;

9. Participating as a responsible citizen in the life of local, national and global communities;

10. Being culturally and aesthetically sensitive across a range of social contexts;

11. Exploring education and career opportunities, and

12. Developing entrepreneurial opportunities.

I tested my ideas with a former colleague, Prof Sechaba Mahlomohlo (currently doing research at the University of North West). He responded:

“To: De Beer KallieSubject: RE: 15 life spheres
Dear Dr Kallie

This is interesting. I will also want to come from a perspective where Dooyeweerd addresses the mode of being-in-the-world for the Central University of Technology, i.e. the extent to which we address all the 15 modalities in the total education of our learners. I also suggest that the topic should be simple because we have to write for an uninformed audience which might also be hostile. We have to make the topic and our story accessible and easy to follow, something like this: Our presentation should show how CUT in its educational, research and community service endeavours addresses all the modes/ways of being-in-the-world of our learners resulting in the education of a well rounded CUT graduate who easily becomes a citizen of the world. How is that?”

Regards

Prof Sechaba Mahlomaholo MEd(Harvard); DEd (UWC)”


Point taken. The philosophical nomenclature should be understandable for the layman in the street so to speak. Prof LOK Lategan, Dean: Research Development at our university is also concerned that the nomenclature of the two different analytical models will be too outdated for implementation and everyday use.

I am also in agreement with the two colleagues but have to take the stance that there is no easy way out for informed academe to merge the knowledge of the past with modern knowledge to create a hybrid of new knowledge…I do not want to recreate the wheel but only to merge concepts.

According to my view, the OBE skills development for cross field outcomes, concentrate only on one aspect, namely skills development: “How to…” instead of practically integrating it with all the 15 known life spheres, namely “How to analyze the foundation principles and how to find and formulate the destination functions (outcomes)”.

It represents a holistic approach of knowing the universal, cosmological aspects in a holistic way and then to develop the skills to differentiate and contextualize the problem with possible answers. In the logic sense it would mean that if there is no problem it cannot have an answer because it only poses a situation! Problems must have answers. Situations are not always logic. Consequently thinking skills are developed such as divergent reasoning to come up with possible convergent outcomes or results. In this sense there are no real correct or incorrect answers. The same as for OBE…

Reasoning is the only tool that humans have to use in understanding her- or himself and the world within and the world without in the cosmological or spiritual sense of the word. Humans need faith to belief the past which they did not experience themselves. From that unseen sphere of life with or without historical evidence people must now find the destination of that knowledge in the modern world. In reaching the final destination of individual modalities, learners, students and researchers test and compare all the other modalities such as the logic and numerical as well as the economic aspects to reach reasonable answers.

Subsequently students at a university of technology can also use faith, logics, aesthetics, ethics, economy, history, language, physics, and biology, science and energy fields of movement to reason out solutions in problem solving. The same goes for OBE. That is to develop the learner as a whole, namely, to identify and solve problems; work effectively; organize themselves; collect, analyze, organize and critically evaluate information; communicate effectively; use science and technology; demonstrate an understanding real life situations.

In order to contribute to the full personal development of each learner, at large, it must be the intention and underlying aims of any programme of learning to make an individual aware of the importance of reflecting; participation; being culturally and aesthetically sensitive; exploring and developing life opportunities.

I kindly invite my colleagues to participate in this debate about the immediate future of OBE and the learners who completed this specific school system the last twelve years since the new political dispensation and who is about to enter our university system in the next academic semester. The question is; “Are we ready for them?” Do we only think in terms of the negative media reports of the failures of OBE or are we going to start customizing and africanising it according to higher learning standards.

Do we have any other choices within the Higher Education Quality Frame work (HEQF), the NQF and SAQA policy and procedures? If so, what are they?

According to private providers Spady is misunderstood. We must re-visit his original system…