Rethinking Education Today and Tomorrow from the African Context

Abstract

Contemporary African education systems and teachers have received diverse criticisms. Dialogues continue in both developed and developing worlds regarding how to rethink and restructure priorities for quality education and the effectiveness of teachers. General public discourses are negative and express dissatisfaction with the current education system given unfulfilled expected functional literacy to prepare broad-minded, inventive, active citizens who possess both personal and interpersonal skills, not only literate in reading and writing. Society expects teachers and schooling to be a solution for sustainable growth. However, contemporary African education systems' capabilities and capacities to offer application-based-pedagogy for today and future utility given current African instabilities are questionable. Given such discourse predicaments the key research question to ask is: How can Africa create a successful education system of quality and substance? Through thematic inquiry of literature complimented by teaching practice supervision observations, this treatise discussed functional educational philosophy supporting multiple discourses as key to achieving quality education. Multiple discourses, underpinned by an African philosophy theoretical framework, are treated as the ability to see quality education and philosophies of education through kaleidoscopic lenses, as complementary and capable of being applied in a holistic, eclectic fashion. However, quality education and its components are inextricably linked and broad. This study focused on teacher education and pedagogy as key components of quality education, based on the argument that effective teaching is consequential, however, not a panacea in providing quality education particularly in an environment of scarce resources. Findings suggested that most African education systems should rethink priorities by shifting from theoretical-pedagogy orientation to practical-pedagogy focus. African education systems should focus on preparing learners to be inventors versus being consumers, allow learners to spend more time in the field of work than in the classroom within the context of both universal unchanging epistemologies and emerging technological trends.