David Stephens

Critical dialogues with self: developing teacher identities and roles — a case study of South African student teachers

Abstract This chapter examines the development and maintenance of teacher role and identity by means of a case study of student teachers entering the profession in Durban, South Africa. The first part of the chapter briefly explores the nature of teacher role identity with particular attention paid to contextual factors in shaping a teachers professional environment. The second part presents the South African case study, focusing on the experiences of two young entrants to the profession. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications of research into teacher role identity for the development of policy and practice in teacher education in developing countries.

Exploring the backgrounds and shaping of beginning student teachers in Ghana: toward greater contextualisation of teacher education

Teacher education programmes are often quite similar in their framework and content but often lack sufficient reflection on the personal background and the socio-political forces that shape teachers? roles and identity within the systems in which they operate. This paper explores this issue by using Ghana as a case study and discusses implications for its teacher education programmes and policies. Key characteristics of beginning student teachers found were: weak qualifying grades in two fundamental school subjects, mathematics and English, a waiting period of 2?5 years prior to entering teachers? college, and apparently sharp differentials in trainees? socio-economic background as compared to typical Ghanaian communities. They come to training with rich and varied images of teachers, teaching and the profession, but, in addition, many beginning trainees also express little desire to teach at primary school level, mainly for reasons of status and insufficient fringe benefits. These factors, we argue, should be taken into more account in the design of college programmes and the development of teacher education policies. The paper concludes with a call to teacher education systems, especially in Africa, to look more closely at, and learn from, who comes for training, what they bring with them, and how they perceive themselves in relation to teaching, training and future aspirations.

Culture in education and development: principles, practice and policy

There is increasing recognition of the important role culture plays in the framing and delivery of education and development in the South. Whether this is in the reciprocal and synergistic relationship between theory and practice, or the links between research and policy, it is clear that at the heart of successful educational development is a recognition of the importance of culture. This book critically reviews the relationships of culture, education and development both from a theoretical and methodological perspective, and also from the perspective of the teacher, researcher and policy maker on the ground. The importance of context is stressed throughout with a series of case studies on educational developments taken from a range of national settings. Issues such as education and poverty elimination, local and global knowledge transfers, and the role and discourse of development assistance to education are examined from the perspective of culture and context. Of particular value to the education researcher and policy maker, whether working in the North or South, this book provides a timely reminder of the importance of culture in the development of education.

The Quality of Primary Education in Developing Countries: who defines and who decides?

[1] This paper is based upon research undertaken by the writer and colleague, Hugh Hawes, and published in August 1990 under the title: Questions of Quality: primary education and development (London, Longman).

‘Just Because I’m from Africa, they Think I’ll want to do Narrative’

Narrative inquiry is undoubtedly a seductive methodological approach for many people, in particular because storytelling is a universal practice; the ways that stories are told and listened to—and those considered to be legitimate—differ, however, from place to place. All narratives are rooted in context and this rootedness has to be taken account of so that stories are interpreted according to the local knowledge of that context. We are troubled that many of our doctoral researchers who have rarely encountered qualitative research previously, let alone narrative, are using it in their research even though it is either totally unknown in their own context or, if it is known, is criticised for not being ‘real research’.

Narrative research on learning: comparative and international perspectives

One of the most difficult tasks that any author faces when writing a textbook intended to be suitable for undergraduate use is balancing the requirement for accuracy and depth with the need to make material comprehensible to students who may have little knowledge of the subject at hand. This challenge is all the greater when the subject is as sprawling as “contemporary strategy,” and is further sharpened by the unfortunate fact that, at least in the United States, secondary and even most undergraduate students receive an education in twentieth-century history that might generously be described as limited. (Today, there appears to be that a widespread belief in certain quarters that military history in particular is both useless and distasteful, an unwelcome reminder that the human story has been anything but a straightforward trek toward ever-greater social justice and mutual tolerance.) With Understanding Contemporary Strategy, authors Thomas M. Kane and David J. Lonsdale, both faculty members at the Universities of Hull in the United Kingdom, take on the “strategy textbook challenge” with impressive results. Understanding Contemporary Strategy is organized into three main components: discussion of the context in which strategic decisions are made, the geographical dimension of strategy, and three specific ongoing challenges for policymakers: nuclear strategy, counterterrorism, and insurgency and counterinsurgency. The book is, compared to many current textbooks, austere: it does not include color pictures and only uses a modest number of text boxes. This may make the book less visually appealing than some comparable texts, but it is doubtful that it significantly detracts from the value of the book: striking photographs and suchlike may give a text “curb appeal,” but it would seem doubtful that they make much difference in regard to the critical issue of student learning. The portion of the book devoted to context is the lengthiest, which is quite understandable, as it addresses a variety of issues relevant to the making of strategy ranging from ethics to intelligence to the “human dimension” of the art. Given the sheer number of issues which they address, the authors write with admirable brevity and clarity. The text is thick with little gems of strategic wisdom, often supported with a relevant historical example. The short discussion of strategic culture in the book, for instance, notes that: “One reason why different peoples develop different cultural strengths and weaknesses is that external factors such as geography reward them for doing so.” The sentences immediately following that statement provide a very brief sketch of how geography and German political history combined to encourage German excellence in land warfare at the operational and tactical levels.1 The book is written in a confident style that is refreshingly different from many textbooks. Understanding Contemporary Strategy stakes out its ground boldly—it presents a “strategically traditionalist” worldview; the work of classical strategic theorists such as