Elizabeth Henning

New teachers look back on their university education: Prepared for teaching, but not for life in the classroom

Abstract Starting from current views on pre-service teacher education, this article presents the findings of an inquiry into new teachers’ perceptions of their university education. The authors argue for a specific view of pre-service teacher education, in which students are given the opportunity to seriously study the content of the subjects they will be teaching, while learning some skills to deliver the school curriculum and to begin to understand, and deal with, learners’ sociological and psychological dispositions. They also argue that the expectation that universities should prepare teachers fully for practice is not feasible, as the school itself as a place of work is the optimal setting for getting to know – in an authentic and non-trivialising way – the hardships and challenges of what constitutes teaching in a country like South Africa. The findings of the study show that teachers are confident about their preparation in content knowledge. They are also comfortable with some aspects of pedagogy,...

Pedagogical craft and its science: Janus-faced in pre-service teacher education

Abstract The authors of this article propose that theory and practice, as the science and the craft of teaching, are reciprocal and interfacing. To manifest this construct in teacher preparation courses, they suggest the analogy of ‘bootstrapping’ as a way of thinking about the epistemologies of theory and practice in tandem. With this analogy in mind, they explore the use of a specific curriculum tool to bring theory and practice closer together. Survey and interview data in a study they conducted indicate that new teachers’ experience of their first year or two in the workplace is largely positive with regard to what they think they know and can do pedagogically, while revealing that they nevertheless perceive themselves as unprepared to cross the boundary into the workplace. The authors conclude that more can be done in teacher education programmes to amalgamate the epistemologies and the discourses of the science and the craft of pedagogy in non-clinical work.

(Re-)positioning educational psychology in high-risk school communities

This article asks questions about the discourse in community psychology, specifically as it manifests in educational psychology research, in South Africa. With the articles in this special issue of Education as Change in mind, we examine the role of the ecology metaphor in this field and trace aspects of its articulation in a section of literature. We argue for a shared discursive practice of community psychology in a school context, with a language of description for the field that steers clear of cliches and rhetoric, and that uses the ecology metaphor aptly. We further make a case for educational psychologists – especially those working in the national and provincial departments of education – to be trained to do some of the large-scale preventative and interventionist research work. While endorsing what James Kelly refers to as the ‘constraints of pathology discourse’, we argue for a frame of reference that realistically elicits the strengths of a community and the agency of its members. We conclude b...

A teacher trying to live within and without bias : making sense in a 'desegregating' place of work

This paper examines the identity discourse of a Black teacher who searches for her sense of professional self in a previously White, Afrikaans school in a working class area of an industrial town in South Africa. The researchers see her struggling to find her role in the school, amidst remnants of a past regime in a setting that shows the underside of desegregation. We interpret the findings from a cultural historical perspective, by way of discourse analysis, which shows how the teacher continually positions herself in terms of her perception of a racial divide in which she does not feel empowered, despite her capabilities. This discourse is dominant in her representations of herself in talk and text and her identification as a teacher. It shows how this speech-acting positions her professional sense of self.

University-affiliated schools as sites for research learning in pre-service teacher education

This article proposes that the ‘teaching/practice schools’ formally affiliated to initial teacher education programmes at universities, can be utilised more optimally as research sites by student teachers. The argument is put forward with reference to the role that such schools have played historically in teacher education in the United States (US), and more recently, in the successful Finnish teacher education system, in which research is highly valued as a requisite part of a teaching qualification. The authors propose that the single component of these schools, which has historically distinguished them from schools for work integrated learning (WIL), is that they are also research spaces and have retained some of the ‘lab’ character of earlier schools, such as the one established by John Dewey. In such schools, the authors argue, students learn to be reflective practitioners by positioning themselves as researchers, who reflect on practice in a research-rich environment. In a pilot study, the authors found that university and school personnel hold different views about research in the schools. The article recommends that careful consideration be given to the research function in these public schools as part of teacher training. Keywords : activity systems; Dewey; experimental schools; Finland; lab schools; practice schools; practitioner research;reflective practice; teacher education; teaching schools

When all the school became a stage: young children enacting a community’s fear and sense of loss

This article gives an ethnographic glimpse of how an urban South African school mirrored a community’s sense‐making during times of rapid social change. The glimpse is extracted largely from an ethnography that was composed in 2000. In this study of school life, the biennial play was central to the year’s activities. In the play the tone, content and style reflected a performance of the discourse of the school community – a discourse of fear and despondency, while searching for hope in spiritual song. Today this previously all White, Afrikaner school is still predominantly White, as Black children’s parents prefer English‐medium schools. On the surface the school appears to be a safe haven for those who were fearful of losing their social position, their language and their way of living, but the initial breakdown of the fabric of the school does not seem to have healed during the time after the study had been completed.

Pre-school children’s bridge to symbolic knowledge: first literature framework for a learning and cognition lab at a South African university

The authors present the theoretical groundwork for a research project on learning and cognitive development of number concepts in the early years of childhood. Giving a background sketch of the genesis of a learning and cognition lab at a university in the metropolitan heartland of South Africa, they present their initial literature framework for inquiries into children’s symbolic learning of number in the pre-school years. They argue that conceptual development of young children is a neglected area in childhood cognition research in South Africa. The study of some of the literature for the first project of the new lab is then introduced with a view of identifying a few of the main components of a conceptual framework for what will become a multiple-year study. The authors propose that this literature can serve as foundation for examining a linguistically diverse group of children’s responses on experimental tasks and in clinical interviews in four or more languages. The designs of these inquiries are imminent. They suggest that the views of leading authors such as Elizabeth Spelke, Susan Carey, and Stanislas Dehaene can shed much light on their understanding of early number concept development of South African children.

Service learning and the practice of social justice and care

ABSTRACT The values of a social justice pedagogy in teacher education are assumed to be firmly established in South African higher education. This article discusses how serviced learning (SL) can provide practical experience of caring and serve the promotion of the ideals of social justice in two initial teacher education programmes. However, an analysis of data in this case study shows that, although SL practice has served as a platform for social justice and for care as two basic educational values, participants were not yet able to verbalize and theorize these values. They were also not able to embed these values in their reflection about service as an inherent component of education. With data from different role players in a number of SL projects, we show that the students’ discourse of what it means to be a caring teacher in a just society has not yet been developed despite the successful practical experience. It was found that, although the students had been building a practice ‘platform’ for service, they had not yet been able to articulate the conceptual intersect of care and social justice clearly. With this epistemological notion in mind, two main themes from the data analysis are discussed: 1) How SL shifted student learning from ideas ‘about’ service to implemented service, and 2) how the practical experience promoted reciprocity in inter-institutional and inter-generational communities of practice.

South African teachers’ initiation into Values Education: Following the script

Abstract This article reports on a study of teachers’ first encounter with an in-service development programme on Values Education. The authors describe how a two year professional development programme in Values and Human Rights education was designed and implemented with 144 teachers. The research conducted on these two aspects of the programme yielded findings that show how the teachers in two South Africa provinces (Mpumalanga and the Northern Cape) fashioned their practice to reflect their commitment to the programme and its curriculum. One finding was that they highlighted values for civic life more than values related to their profession. Interpreted from sociocultural theory, and specifically the notion of “internalization,” the authors argue that the teachers performed for the benefits of the programme and its assessment, more than for critically inquiring into the role of values in their pedagogy.