SOMEONE recently reminded me we don’t need great resources for teaching. A good teacher can teach under a tree. While this may have been true in another time, contemporary demands of technological integration in learning necessitate the development of infrastructure and a set of skills for the 21st century. The sad fact is, in most schools and higher education institutions, we clearly do not have the foundations laid for the transformation we are witnessing in the world.
Getting on to the AI bandwagon requires 21st-century skills, including creativity and critical thinking, problem-solving and decision-making. AI will generate no results without the right questions, nor will it make decisions that drive success. This is just the tip of the iceberg — there’s a varied range of ways to upgrade teaching and learning experiences in the classroom and beyond.
The value of gamification in teaching, the need for virtual reality learning experiences, synthesising print and digital resources, and providing an inclusive and personalised learning experience is no mean feat for mainstream school teachers. Many have just begun to understand how a Google classroom works, and the way forward is a long and difficult one for those who don’t have access to opportunities for reskilling themselves.
In a country where change is hard, where school curricula remain the same for an average of 10 years, proactive, structured, ongoing transformation is key to mitigating a learning gap crisis. At the heart of the transformation are teachers’ skills, addressing their learning gaps and their need for rapid upskilling.
Today, students are faster than their teachers and more adept at seeking answers from AI. As long as they have the digital literacy and the fundamental skills to frame prompts with precision, they can learn a lot more than their teachers can ever teach them. So traditional ‘lecturing’ is not only redundant, it is a waste of our students’ time — time that can be used more efficiently in hands-on work, exploration and discussion.
What AI can perhaps not replace is the personalised teaching, monitoring and feedback that teachers can provide for individual learning and growth. And it is this area in which teachers require the greatest support.
Teachers now need to make the human experience of teaching more memorable by connecting learning to real-life experiences, teaching students to share ideas, to build on what they know, to develop study skills such as planning work, self-monitoring and commitment to goals. The truth is most students know what to study — they have the syllabus, the marking schemes and the learning goals. They have many sources to learn content from but they still need guidance to learn how to study, and here’s where AI might not be able to eradicate the teacher’s role.
Teachers need support to be able to help their students with personalised learning plans. Most teachers have access to professional development workshops that do not necessarily teach them to craft ways to help individual students. Teachers need to collaborate with each other to focus efforts across subjects, maintain consistency and reliability in providing active help to individual students throughout the term. Often, students who face learning obstacles manifest the same pattern in most subjects. These obstacles can be jointly identified by teachers working together.
To improve strategies for feedback and monitoring, it would help to do joint research, establish communities of best practice and evaluate outcomes over a given term or two. Constructive feedback from colleagues helps greatly as it fills the gap that teachers feel in the absence of recognition for effort. Teachers can also celebrate small and big achievements as a collaborative group without always looking up to the school leadership.
Regular meetings need to be streamlined as a structure built into the mechanism of teaching and learning practices, where colleagues reflect together on what’s working and which areas need improvement. Cross-curricular teams work best, while external advisers and mentors can add value to the transformation process.
Once the teachers’ learning needs are identified and reflection is built into the process, reskilling becomes easier to address. Much teaching support comes from peer groups or self-help.
‘What do we need to learn, why and how’ are questions teachers can answer for themselves and propose initiatives for upgrading teaching and learning in the schools they serve. Teachers can keep a reflective journal, seek feedback from students and colleagues, and set personal goals for improvement. This ongoing self-assessment helps in identifying areas for growth and implementing necessary changes.
(Opinion) Published in Dawn, March 10th, 2025
