Recent Projects and Current Professional Interests
Notes:
Links on this page displayed in bold
will take you to reports and presentations that I have
delivered recently.
Some documents available here are in PDF format. These
files require Adobe Acrobat Reader Software to view. This
free software, which is easy to download
and install, enables you to view and print these
publications from any computer.
Designing effective learning systems
Much of my training and experience is in the area of
instructional systems design, which might be called
"educational engineering" in less technical
terms. Now I am applying this approach to the challenges
of redesigning education and training to promote
high-quality learning for all South Africans (and, more
broadly, people all over Africa).
One of the
more interesting projects I have carried out recently in
this arena involves the SCANS/2000 Program
at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
SCANS (the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary
Skills) assists educators and employers to prepare
students, workers and firms for the challenges of the
21st century. It serves as a catalyst for three types of
activities: achieving basic academic and job outcomes at
all levels of education; assessing such outcomes at
school and in the workplace; and using them to hire,
train and promote employees. The programme's chairperson,
Dr Arnold Packer, recently worked with me in South Africa
to explore the potential of a new instructional
methodology, using electronic case studies on CD-ROMs, to
combine the teaching of academic and job-related skills.
We co-authored an article
in Business Day (a national daily newspaper)
comparing related challenges and experience in South
Africa and the United States.
Support to NGOs
I have recently been working with both international and
South African non-governmental organizations.
Internationally, I have carried out a survey of the
current state of play in South African curriculum reform
and teacher training for an international education NGO
exploring its potential of making a contribution to
educational transformation in this country. I am
currently working with them to locate possible partners
in South Africa with whom they could collaborate. I also
have provided support over the past months to the United Negro College Fund,
the largest education charity in the United States, as it
investigates its potential contribution to South African
higher education, particularly in the areas of student
financial aid and donor-funded development projects.
In February, 1998, I gave a guest presentation to alumni
of the Community Leader Development Programme of USSALEP
(the United States - South Africa Leadership Development
Programme) on the subject "Educating Souht Africans
for 21st Century Communities." Although I did not
prepare a written speech for this session, you can download a PowerPoint
presentation of my notes. Please note that
this is a very large file - 2.6 MB.
Technology and education
The power of computers in general, and the Internet in
particular, to link learners to the world is just
beginning to be felt in North America. I am exploring
opportunities to bring this power to South Africa, both
through governmental sponsorship and the private sector.
My page about computers and
education explores this interest in more detail.
That said, infrastructural limitations mean that for now,
at least, computer technology is far beyond the reach of
most schools in this country. A presentation
that I gave at the Future World Conference in Cape Town
in December, 1997, explores this challenge and suggests
strategies for addressing it. The South African
Broadcasting Corporation aired a television program in
it's One Step
Beyond series on 15 March 1998 that included
parts of an interview
with me during that conference on the topic of
educational technology and educational reform.
One of the powerful, cost-effective technology that I
cited in both the presentation and the television
interview at Future World is instructional radio,
particularly a form of radio education known as
"interactive radio instruction." My first
assignment in Africa was to lead a USAID-funded project
to develop daily, half-hour radio lessons to teach
English to children in rural primary schools. Those
lessons achieved results comparable to improvements seen
with computer-assisted learning at that time (the early
1980's), but at a cost of only one dollar per pupil per
year. Two Southern African countries currently broadcast
radio lessons based on the Kenya model: Lesotho, on a
national basis, and South Africa, to approximately
100,000 children. The South African lessons have been
developed and broadcast through an NGO: the Open Learning
Systems Education Trust, OLSET. OLSET's web site
provides more information on this affordable educational
technology.
Impact of foreign aid on African educational
development
I began work with the Africa
Bureau of USAID in November, 1996, helping to
document the impact of foreign assistance on educational
development in Africa. We prepared a written document
that tells this story in non-technical language and in
the voices of African professionals themselves. I wrote
the sections on Swaziland and South Africa, two countries
where I have worked, and supervised planning for a
videotape presentation of the complete package of six
country studies.
You will find my two drafts on basic education reform in
Swaziland and South Africa below. These preliminary
versions contain more direct quotations from African
participants than the versions incorporated into the
final report. Note that these are not formal evaluations
or research studies. The intent simply was to focus on
positive achievements from the perspective of those
responsible for the accomplishments.
Swaziland: Step-by-Step Development
View this paper on-line.
(This version does not include endnotes.) Download a copy of this
paper (143K) in MS Word 7 (Office 95) format (with
endnotes).
South Africa: Free at Last
View this paper
on-line. (This version does not include endnotes.) Download a copy of this
paper (153K) in MS Word 7 (Office 95) format (with
endnotes).
The published version of the basic education book is
available in PDF format from the Africa
Bureau Information Center (ABIC). Note: this is a
very large file (3929K). Please send e-mail to [email protected] to have a
copy mailed to you if your Internet connection is slow or
unreliable.
In June, 1997, I began a three-month follow-up project
sponsored directly by USAID/South Africa, examining the
effect of U.S. assistance on further and higher education
in South Africa. The result was eleven case histories of
individual programmes plus a separate paper analysing
overall impact and lessons learned. The final version of
this overview is available here. Again, it is not a
formal evaluation or research study, but the story of how
USAID has assisted the transformation of post-secondary
education as told in the words of those South Africans
responsible for such achievements.
USAID's Support for South African Further and
Higher Education: A Retrospective Study
View this paper on-line.
(This version does not include endnotes.) Download a copy of this
paper (145K) in MS Word 7 (Office 95) format (with endnotes).
Effective development projects
My 1997 consultancy in Washington required me to manage a
variety of projects, including a development of a
strategic framework for USAID's support to basic
education in Africa, education sector assessments in
Zimbabwe and Senegal, studies of challenges facing girls'
education in Ghana and Morocco, the potential of using
qualitative research methodology to help classroom
teachers, using database and Internet technology to
improve access to data on African educational
development, strategies for effective collaboration among
development partners, and support to a network of
educational researchers in West Africa.
Strategic planning workshops
I am very interested in techniques such as future
search and open
space conference to help groups develop a united
vision of where they wish to go (their goals or mission
statement) and how they can get there (their action
plan). I have been using these approaches in a variety of
setting, from government agencies to non-governmental
organizations, with sometimes remarkable results.