Inquiry-based practical work (IBPW) is one of the innovative instructional strategies in science education. Science teacher preparation programmes play a role in preparing preservice teachers to facilitate IBPW in classrooms located in different school settings, including multiple-deprived classrooms. The adverse conditions against the successful…

Mentor teachers are instrumental in teacher preparation programs during the teaching practice of preservice teachers that involves mentor-mentee relationships. This qualitative paper reports on the mentoring experiences of preservice teachers during eight weeks of teaching practice in 2020 using Gibbs? experimental learning as a conceptual…

The Primary Teacher Education (PrimTEd) project was established in response to concerns about the pre-service preparation of primary teachers in South Africa. In order to inform the development of appropriate pre-service mathematics courses, an initial need in the PrimTEd project was to establish the nature of the mathematical knowledge of…

Literature on gendered violence in education suggests that the perspectives of those most affected must inform knowledge generation and interventions. However, research with these populations is fraught with methodological and ethical challenges. This article reflects on photovoice as a method which privileges participants' perspectives. Drawing…

Active learning strategies are purported to be effective in enhancing students' understanding of concepts that would otherwise be difficult to master through other strategies of mediating learning. This study forms part of a bigger study where pre-service teachers' errors and misconceptions in transformation geometry were identified, analyzed and…

The community engagement project described in this article took the form of the re-invention and re-interpretation of a historic symbol (Diana the elephant) on the Potchefstroom Campus of North-West University (NWU), South Africa. In 2015, the Faculty of Education Sciences invited staff and students to reinterpret the elephant (a symbol of…

This paper reports on the process of understanding myself and my pre-service teacher education students better through my lecture reflections and deliberations with critical friends as I taught a South African film entitled Tsotsi. Conversations with colleagues deepened my analysis as I was challenged to revisit my musings on lecture reflections,…

Instructional practice plays a significant role in revealing how well teachers understand the subjects they teach. Many studies have been conducted in South Africa on the relationship between teachers' knowledge of well-established subjects like Science and Mathematics and how well teachers apply their knowledge in the classroom. However,…

This article argues that despite students facing obstacles when studying remotely and online through the COVID-19 pandemic, some are able to overcome barriers to achieve their academic goals. While formal methods are used to evaluate teaching and learning, the five teacher educator researchers in this study sought to understand pre-service…

Information and communication technology (ICT) competences are among the most important requirements to effectively teach mathematics and science in today's classrooms. Teacher educators in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region have prioritised ICT competences for pre-service teachers (PSTs) to effectively select suitable…

The concept of the limit is often experienced as a very abstract concept. In this study we explore the understanding of the concept of the limit with 74 students who are prospective high school mathematics teachers. The study is located within the first of three calculus courses which they study as part of their bachelor's degree in education at a…

Pre-service teachers should be taught how to use technology so that they are equipped to use the knowledge and skills acquired in their professional practice. However, studies have shown that pre-service teachers are not adequately prepared to teach with technology. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore pre-service teachers'…

The purpose of this study was to explore how preservice teachers (PST) became aware of literacies in global and local contexts and to understand how PST conceive of literacy after experiencing an international service learning (ISL) study abroad program in rural South Africa. For this qualitative grounded theory study, we used critical literacy…

Many pre-service mathematics teachers in South Africa are apprehensive about the content of Euclidean geometry, because they did not study Euclidean geometry in high school but will be expected to teach the content when they start their teaching career. This article reports on a study that explored the role of semiotic representations in…

The article tracks key moments in teacher education policy and curriculum in South Africa from the 1970s to the present day. Political and social features of education in each decade are outlined, from a racialised and fragmented system of teacher education, to the imagining of alternatives, and the imperative for educational transformation. The…