Promoting teacher professionalism is regarded as a strategy to address the disparate quality of learning in South African classrooms. Through a qualitative analysis of initial teacher education (ITE) programmes offered by five universities, this paper analyses the messages of teacher professionalism transmitted to pre-service teachers. Findings…

The nature of teacher education in South Africa and institutions of higher learning, like the University of the Western Cape (UWC), is reflected by the country's history. The history of the Faculty of Education is intimately tied up with the anti-apartheid and social reconstructionist history of UWC and the apartheid policies of educational…

Despite agreement among teacher educators, scholars, and policymakers on the importance of teachers' subject matter knowledge (SMK), existing models provide limited information about the nature of this foundational component of teacher knowledge. The common assumption is that teachers need to know more about the science subject matter than their…

This study records findings of a study carried out in a group of 100 students at a South African university. This study examines the group's assignments as a way of gathering evidence about pre-service teachers' achievements in the process of education and training. The empirical study was based on comparative analysis of scores obtained by…

Student teachers in South Africa need to realise that although their classrooms are multilingual and multicultural, English remains the dominant language. Preparing student teachers for diverse classrooms require a pedagogical approach that will enable them to be agents of social change. This view supports transformative ideals in teacher…

In problem-based learning (PBL), collaboration and productive interactions among group members are not spontaneous processes. One way to support students in PBL is to integrate self- and peer assessment to assess group members' contribution to solving the problem. The purpose of this case study was to determine the perceptions of Bachelor of…

In view of the serious moral decay in South African society, this article reports on our research regarding the role of the school in the inculcation of citizenship values (as part of the brief of South African education). We regard a set of citizenship values consonant with a democratic dispensation to be a core component of a moral order…

Student tutoring in innovative teaching and learning practices promotes personal and professional learning. Experiential learning theory underpins this research. An interpretive, qualitative approach and narrative strategy with purposive sampling was used. The tutor narrative accounts of tutoring the Research and Service-Learning module in…

It is expected that that pre-service teachers are adequately equipped to meet the needs of diverse students. This article discusses the choices that teacher educators must make in designing inclusive education courses. The first choice is whether inclusive education will be infused into the curriculum or presented as a stand-alone course. If the…

Background: There is a growing focus in South Africa on teachers developing appropriate knowledge, skills and dispositions for teaching to support young learners' development and learning. One such teacher development programme is the Advanced Certificate in Teaching for Foundation Phase teachers, offered by the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN).…

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has highlighted a 'vicious cycle of decline' in rural, regional and remote (RRR) regions, with significant inequalities in educational outcomes between rural and urban areas. However, interventions have not resulted in transformative or lasting improvements to education in rural…

Since 1994, numerous policies promoted social justice and the transformation of the South African society. The recurriculated Bachelor of Education (BEd) programme at the Sol Plaatje University aims to equip students with knowledge and skills to realise the aim of social justice. The aim of this study was to explore Sol Plaatje University…

The research findings describe a model of experiential learning that promotes the development of foundation phase student teachers' metacognitive abilities for mathematics through classroom reflective discourse using an open approach. A case study was carried out on two foundation phase mathematics classes in South Africa's universities; data were…

Benchmarking is one way of ensuring academic depth and rigour in teacher education. After making a case for setting benchmarks in teacher education based on the widely recognised intra-education system contextual factors, the importance of also taking into account the external (e.g. the national-social) context in which teacher education occurs is…

Over 21 years into democracy and the commitment for radical transformation in education, South Africa continues to adopt and adapt international imperatives and standardisations in pursuit of first world rankings. Ironically, notions of indigenisation, decolonisation and Africanisation of the curriculum have become catch words of the day. In the…