Building a vision for social justice praxis for teacher education through service-learning

Abstract

The thesis of this volume is that the fields of scholarly enquiry of education -internationally as well as in South Africa in particular -despite being fields of virile scholarly activity and output, are in need of a major overhaul. In this collected work, this want in research is encapsulated in three words: relevance, rigour and restructuring. Research in the scholarly field(s) of education is predominantly of small scale, non-accumulative, widely condemned as not of a comparable standard to research conducted in other social sciences, much less at par with research in the natural sciences, and lacking structure in the sense of being anchored in a firm theory. To make matters worse, scholars in education internationally have till very recently and in South Africa still eschew discussion as to the packaging or structuring of knowledge produced by education research. The book consists of chapters all containing original research unpacking these desiderata from a variety of angles. The authors had them served by a variety of methods, from deductively argued position papers to empirical research, the latter both quantitative (survey research) and qualitative. In the concluding parts of the book, three main objectives are tabled as to how to proceed to produce rigorous, relevant and structured research. The first is that a unified theory of education should take education as it appears in the world, as its prime object of research, rather than attempt to construct a theory of education deduced from theories extant in cognate social sciences or humanities, such as sociology, psychology or philosophy. Secondly, a theory of education should have a normative superstructure, and in this regard, the creed of human rights is suggested as a place to look for such a normative superstructure. Even in the miniscule amount of research abroad recently devoted to the structuring of education knowledge, scholars have contended with an analysis of existing practices in packaging education knowledge in different national settings, and have refrained from assessing these, much less made suggestions as to how to proceed to the construction of a theoretical edifice superseding national boundaries. Thirdly, in construction of a comprehensive theory of education, scholarship should carefully negotiate the field of tension between striving towards the scientific ideal of universally valid statements and reflecting the specificities of different contexts. In this regard, the tools and expertise of scholars in the field of comparative and international education are highlighted as a valuable resource. In bringing into the spotlight of scholarly investigation the need to bring rigour, relevance and above all structure in the production of knowledge of education, the book offers original research. The similarity report of an iThenticate analysis confirms that the work contains no plagiarism. The book is a scholarly book, aimed at scholars of education, with a message as to how they can raise the state of scholarship in education.