Learning to Teach in post-apartheid South Africa - 'Student Teachers' Encounters with Initial Teacher Education

Sayed, Yusuf; Carrim, Nazir; Badroodien, Azeem; McDonald, Zahraa; Singh, Marcina

doi:10.18820/9781928357971

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…Like all education policies in pre-1994 apartheid South Africa, previous teacher education opportunities were segregated in terms of "race" and were unequal in terms of quality (Sayed et al 2018). Policymakers in democratic South Africa needed to create a more uniform teacher education system that would prepare quality teachers who could "address the critical challenges facing education in South Africa today-especially the poor content and conceptual knowledge found amongst teachers, as well as the legacies of apartheid" (Department of Higher Education and Training [DHET] 2015, 8).…”

Section: Curricular Coherence and School-based Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Navigating Tensions in Designing a Curriculum That Prepares Preservice Teachers for School-Based Learning

Bertram,

Rusznyak

2024

EaC

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A long-standing concern in teacher education is the variability in the quality of practicum experiences afforded to preservice teachers. Although some variability is due to their personal attributes, preservice teachers often find it difficult to connect theoretical insights to teachers’ classroom practices. These challenges can be exacerbated when teachers do not explain the reasoning for what they do and why. School closures during the pandemic provided South African teacher educators with an opportunity to address this concern. We participated in developing a national online module that prepares preservice teachers for school-based learning through guided lesson study. This article adopts a self-study approach to account for the curriculum choices in developing this module. Three tensions needed consideration: portraying teaching as an individualised pursuit and/or a social practice, focusing on generic and/or specialised pedagogies, and focusing on the tacit and/or explicit reasoning that teachers do. We account for how we worked within and between these tensions. A module of this nature potentially enhances school-based learning by making the reasoning of teachers explicit to preservice teachers. To achieve this potential and to advance work-integrated learning as a scholarship, the conceptual underpinnings of the module and its curriculum design must be open to reflection and scrutiny.

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Section: Curricular Coherence and School-based Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Navigating Tensions in Designing a Curriculum That Prepares Preservice Teachers for School-Based Learning

Bertram,

Rusznyak

2024

EaC

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“…Carrim (2019) posits that education systems are not politically and ideologically neutral structures outside society's struggles for SJ. Considering this, ITE programs must deepen student teachers' consciousness of the reality of society (Christie, 2018). Context and contextual factors such as culture, race, gender, and socio-economic status will determine the degree to which education is liberating or oppressive.…”

Section: Mrteq (2015) and The Promotion Of Contextual Awarenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Initial Teacher Education for Social Justice in South Africa: A Higher Education Policy Perspective

Barnett,

Teise

2024

REPAM

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The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa envisions a socially just society where all citizens enjoy fundamental human rights. Education is regarded as significant in realizing social justice (SJ). Hence, South African education policy is underpinned by the conviction that teachers are drivers of societal change and instrumental in creating a socially just society. It is therefore expected that initial teacher education (ITE) programs to train prospective teachers will be infused with knowledge, competencies, values and attitudes to develop the dispositions that would facilitate social justice in a democratic and open South African society. In this desk-top study, we investigate the attributes and competencies promoted and advanced through the Minimum Requirements for Teacher Education Qualifications Policy (MRTEQ) (2015) concerning the training of prospective South African teachers for the realization of social justice. We gathered our data through a literature review and a policy analysis, and we drew from critical social theory (CST), which argues for social transformation, human emancipation, and capacitation to make sense of our findings. We found that the MRTEQ (2015) promotes and advances knowledge, contextual awareness, and critical pedagogy as significant attributes and competencies for realizing social justice through education and, more specifically, ITE. The implication is that all initial teacher programmes must be designed to equip prospective teachers with these attributes to contribute to realizing social justice and transforming society. Against this backdrop, specific recommendations are made to develop these attributes in prospective teachers.

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“…Teaching and learning is an exchange of knowledge, thus research on lecturers has been driven by the assumption that knowledge is at the heart of their professional competence and development (Shulman, 1986). Sayed et al (2018) suggested that, while the idea of knowledge sets helps to understand the conceptual framing of initial teacher education programmes, in the end, it is how this translates into programme design that determines their usefulness. Nonetheless, online teaching and learning imply a certain pedagogical content knowledge, and an ability to navigate online technologies (Rapanta et al, 2020) and hybrid modalities for teaching and learning (UNESCO, 2020).…”

Section: Theoretical Framework: Humanising Pedagogymentioning

confidence: 99%

Humanising Online Teaching and Learning in the BEd. Foundation Phase Programme: Moving Beyond Covid-19

Geduld,

Nthimbane,

Kagola

2023

Educ. res. soc. change.

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Covid-19 brought unforeseen and unpredicted challenges to higher education institutions (HEIs). In this paper, we recount the authors' experiences of exploring a humanising pedagogy as a way of practising social justice during online learning. Our Bachelor of Education, Foundation Phase (FP) classes consist of students from predominantly rural and urban low socioeconomic environments. The primary focus of this study was to explore the experiences of lecturers who teach a humanising pedagogy-embedded programme in the FP at an HEI through online learning in a highly under-resourced context. The study further focuses on technological strategies and pedagogies used in HEIs, issues related to lecturers' inclination and adaptation to technology, the digital divide, and barriers to online learning. This study resides within a critical transformative paradigm, and uses humanising pedagogy principles as a lens. We draw on our lived experiences and engage in dialogue to make sense of the process of online learning. In this qualitative research, we engage in narrative freewriting to gather data. Thematic analysis was used to reduce the data and to identify common themes. The two themes that emerged, and are discussed in this paper, are mutual vulnerability and lecturer resilience and collaboration. The findings of the study encouraged lecturers to critically reflect on the challenges and opportunities that Covid-19 presented, and to incorporate some of the practices that enabled better delivery of teaching in a humanising way.

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Learning to Teach in post-apartheid South Africa - 'Student Teachers' Encounters with Initial Teacher Education

Cited by 10 publications

References 0 publications

Navigating Tensions in Designing a Curriculum That Prepares Preservice Teachers for School-Based Learning

Navigating Tensions in Designing a Curriculum That Prepares Preservice Teachers for School-Based Learning

Initial Teacher Education for Social Justice in South Africa: A Higher Education Policy Perspective

Humanising Online Teaching and Learning in the BEd. Foundation Phase Programme: Moving Beyond Covid-19

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