Harvard doctor outlines formula for quality education

Hua defined quality education in her address at the Trinidad and Tobago Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development’s sixth annual conference on the theme "Educating for Excellence: Quality Teachers, Quality Education" at Cascadia Hotel in St Ann’s yesterday.

Hua noted that schooling is organised to deliver a safe and comfortable space, a guaranteed learning time, a caring professional adult, a relevant curriculum, an effective and efficient pedagogy encouraging children to learn, adapt and apply knowledge and skills so that they grow and mature as productive, creative and peace-loving human beings in today’s global society.

Hua emphasised that better quality education is more likely to come into effect when teachers are well-educated with subject knowledge, possess a caring attitude and professional responsibility.

The role of principals in coordinating, supporting and motivating teachers and teaching activities is also important, in addition to the supervision of children’s schoolwork by parents, according to Hua.

Hua believes that one of the most important steps towards quality will come about when the Education Ministry becomes a rule-based, informative-driven, indicator-dependent, output-guided and service-oriented organisation rather than a negotiating-based, experience-driven, construct-dependent and input manipulating and administrative control-oriented structure.

She said, "We continue to face the longstanding challenges. What and how should students learn and what and how should teachers teach in today’s context and for tomorrow’s world?

"What factors in education contribute effectively to quality learning or teaching? And what resources can we efficiently use or organise to assure that quality happens with promising effect. These are all quality related questions. "Educators, must therefore work conscientiously to find ways to answer these important questions."

Although there may be some perfect answers at the end of the conference, she hopes that all will at least move one step closer to identify their own quality in education and see in a new light its relevance in our everyday work for quality. Hua said she always tells educators that asking the right questions, obtaining the right data, acquiring the right analytical skills, and sharing the relevant analysis results in a timely and easy to understand fashion, brings about the skills we should all have as educators.

"We simply need to be more analytical, evidence driven and quality conscientious." She lamented, "There should be no excuses."