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The faculty in which we are based offers two initial teacher training programmes: the Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE); and the four-year BEd qualification-allowing students to pursue a specialisation in either the foundation or intermediate phase. Compared to other faculties, the Faculty of Education occupies the somewhat precarious label of being one of the "most transformed" faculty in the university. In other words, given the historical privilege of the university, the Faculty of Education is considered to have shown the most evident strides towards transformation in terms of racial representation. A cursory glance at statistics of student enrolments over a five-year period, provides interesting insights-insights, which, as we shall discuss in this article, should be interpreted with great caution. The interest and purpose of this article is to use the student enrolment statistics at a historically advantaged university as one indicator of a representative sample of teachers, who are likely to enter South African schools. The interest, on the one hand, is to gain an idea of the corpus of enrolled student teachers-by taking account of race and gender. On the other hand, we intend to use this data to further our discussions on representation, and the implications for teacher education, and hence, teaching. In the background, are inevitable concerns centring on notions of representation in relation to conceptions of transformation.

In this article we argue that ubuntu (human interdependence) is not some form of essentialist notion that unfolds in exactly the same way as some critics of ubuntu might want to suggest. Rather, we offer a philosophical position that (re)considers the situation of the self in relation to others. The article starts from the general issues at stake in the debate concerning particularity and universalist ethics. We then reconsider the general position of the ethics of care, and particularly how it has recently been revisited by Michael Slote. Following this, ubuntu is characterised as a particular kind of ethic of care. With this in mind, what we shall put forward is an extension of Seyla Benhabib's (2006) view that the self and others should iteratively and hospitably engage in deliberation. Although we agree with Benhabib that iterations (as arguing over and over again and talking back) are worthwhile in themselves, considering ubuntu (‘a person becoming a person in relation with other persons’), we find Stanley Cavell's (1979) idea of ‘living with skepticism’—particularly, acknowledging humanity in the Other and oneself—as more apposite to extend the theoretical premises of ubuntu. Although the practice of ubuntu is lived out differently amongst Africa's people, we want to add to the diverse ways in which ubuntu can both disrupt and offer ways as to how challenges of human conflict and violence can possibly be resolved. The article finally addresses a couple of educational examples and argues that this approach, by being well‐grounded in the life experience of learners, can critically assist the central role of education.

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