First year pre-service teachers’ images of and beliefs about teaching are formed over years of pr... more First year pre-service teachers’ images of and beliefs about teaching are formed over years of prior educational experiences and these images exert a powerful impact on their developing professional identity. These perceptions are embedded in the apprenticeship of observation that serves as a lens through which they often measure their own ability or inability regarding their knowledge and skills. Acknowledging this impact of the apprenticeship of observation might have on first year pre-service teachers not only poses a great challenge to the students themselves, but also constitutes a critical pedagogical challenge for tertiary institutions. These deeply rooted ways of thinking about teaching and what teachers do should be acknowledged, disrupted and challenged and pre-service teachers should be supported in effort to create their own local knowledge and lived experience that can constitute their dominant discourses about teaching and being a full time teacher.
Our aim in this lead article is to establish the framework of the special issue consisting of sel... more Our aim in this lead article is to establish the framework of the special issue consisting of selected papers presented at the 2018 South African Education Research Association (SAERA) Annual Conference that had as its theme “Education 01? In search of a new operating system: Making education more relevant, responsive and authentic.” We begin with an overview of the societal changes defining the early 21st century. We suggest that, in light of these changes, education praxis, education scholarship, and teacher education need to be re-designed with relevance, responsiveness, and authenticity if it is to meet the critical changes required.
International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research, 2021
This article shares the critical reflections of a teacher educator who utilised digital stories a... more This article shares the critical reflections of a teacher educator who utilised digital stories as a teaching strategy in a professional development module for final-year pre-service teachers. Action research, through a participatory narrative inquiry approach, was employed, and data were gathered from digital stories, scripts, and reflective essays. The findings suggest that a platform was created for students to collaboratively share their perceptions, beliefs, and memories regarding teaching as a profession and to reflect on the impact that this lived experience had on their developing professional identity and ideas of good practice. Suggestions are made for recognising autobiographical stories as essential to all facets of teacher education and for acknowledging the influence of the apprenticeship of observation on individual pre-service teachers and on teacher-training programme curriculums.
International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research
The Covid-19 pandemic has affected the teaching practicum component of initial teacher education ... more The Covid-19 pandemic has affected the teaching practicum component of initial teacher education programmes in significant ways. School-based placement could not take place, but teacher educators still needed to ensure that the teaching practicum component complied with policy. The aim of this study is to indicate how work-integrated learning teacher educators created professional learning communities among an entire population of 7 041 student teachers enrolled for the Baccalaureus Educationis degree, the challenges they faced and how they managed these challenges. The professional learning community model of Hord (2009) was used as a conceptual framework for this study. In this qualitative multi-site case study, document analysis was the primary data collection method. Journals and WhatsApp messages kept by the two work-integrated learning teacher educators and the minutes of virtual work-integrated learning meetings were analysed using narrative and thematic analysis. The finding...
The changes taking place in the schooling landscape because of the coronavirus are real and meani... more The changes taking place in the schooling landscape because of the coronavirus are real and meaningful and have implications for the training of preservice teachers, especially the teaching practicum component of their initial teacher education programs. The havoc caused by COVID-19 forced many faculties of education into a state of ‘panic-gogy’ to ensure that student teachers could complete their teaching practicums. In this paper we argue that consideration should be given to core teaching practices and practice-based teacher education pedagogies (i.e., representations and approximations) that can be used in alternative “placement contexts” that will supplement and harness the authenticity of school-based experiences. We provide two conceptual tools, collaboratively developed by teaching practicum educators and mentor teachers, that can be used as heuristic by other university-school partnerships when considering teaching practicum redesign efforts.
This article aims to accentuate the value of reflective practices in the lived experiences and pr... more This article aims to accentuate the value of reflective practices in the lived experiences and professional development of a teacher educator and a nursing educator at a higher education institution in South Africa. Reflective practice promotes the continuous (re)creation of local knowledge through a critical reflection on beliefs, assumptions, experiences and practices in order to identify successful strategies for teaching practice, reflect upon challenges, adapt, and evolve their practice. Reflective practice encapsulates a process of continuous learning and growth that not only resonates with pedagogical and methodological viewpoints and also ontological and epistemological situatedness and is at the same time aligned with national and institutional aims and requirements. In this self-study project based on LaBoskey’s five characteristics of self-study, educators in higher education become both the researcher and the researched and the emphasis of the research is on the self as a theorist, researcher and practitioner. The authors explore and elucidate their journey of discovery towards the various dimensions of their reflective practice through a critical evaluation of their teaching and learning theory and of their teaching and assessment strategies. Both authors have been awarded institutional teaching excellence awards. This article contributes to their joint discourse on higher education as well as their conceptualization of their respective scholarships of teaching and learning.
The concept of stewardship has evolved from merely being significant in the financial contributio... more The concept of stewardship has evolved from merely being significant in the financial contribution that people make towards their church to an all-encompassing decision that dictates people’s lives. It is not a feeling of urgency that someone is born with, but rather a decision and commitment made on a daily basis. Teachers thus find themselves in the perfect situation to be stewards in their classrooms on a daily basis. Furthermore, this tendency is noticed in teachers who work towards turning their schools into stewardship-driven institutions that aim to develop an environment driven by a calling to teach; therefore, theology is offered a leading role in the way the school is managed.
A constant challenge to researchers and academic scholars in practical theology is to stay releva... more A constant challenge to researchers and academic scholars in practical theology is to stay relevant and up to date with the constantly evolving academic concepts in which they discourse. These interactions between individuals and intellectual fields often allow for what Julian M�ller terms a �moment of praxis� within their epistemology that functions as a meeting place between different ideas, paradigms and often even different academic disciplines.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article investigated the possibility of creating an interdisciplinary epistemology between practical theology and teaching. By exploring the role that post foundationalist discourse and interdisciplinary conversations can play in identifying and addressing challenges which face teaching, new light can be shed on the relationship between teaching and practical theology which thus highlights correlations between these two relevant fields.
First year pre-service teachers’ images of and beliefs about teaching are formed over years of pr... more First year pre-service teachers’ images of and beliefs about teaching are formed over years of prior educational experiences and these images exert a powerful impact on their developing professional identity. These perceptions are embedded in the apprenticeship of observation that serves as a lens through which they often measure their own ability or inability regarding their knowledge and skills. Acknowledging this impact of the apprenticeship of observation might have on first year pre-service teachers not only poses a great challenge to the students themselves, but also constitutes a critical pedagogical challenge for tertiary institutions. These deeply rooted ways of thinking about teaching and what teachers do should be acknowledged, disrupted and challenged and pre-service teachers should be supported in effort to create their own local knowledge and lived experience that can constitute their dominant discourses about teaching and being a full time teacher.
Our aim in this lead article is to establish the framework of the special issue consisting of sel... more Our aim in this lead article is to establish the framework of the special issue consisting of selected papers presented at the 2018 South African Education Research Association (SAERA) Annual Conference that had as its theme “Education 01? In search of a new operating system: Making education more relevant, responsive and authentic.” We begin with an overview of the societal changes defining the early 21st century. We suggest that, in light of these changes, education praxis, education scholarship, and teacher education need to be re-designed with relevance, responsiveness, and authenticity if it is to meet the critical changes required.
International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research, 2021
This article shares the critical reflections of a teacher educator who utilised digital stories a... more This article shares the critical reflections of a teacher educator who utilised digital stories as a teaching strategy in a professional development module for final-year pre-service teachers. Action research, through a participatory narrative inquiry approach, was employed, and data were gathered from digital stories, scripts, and reflective essays. The findings suggest that a platform was created for students to collaboratively share their perceptions, beliefs, and memories regarding teaching as a profession and to reflect on the impact that this lived experience had on their developing professional identity and ideas of good practice. Suggestions are made for recognising autobiographical stories as essential to all facets of teacher education and for acknowledging the influence of the apprenticeship of observation on individual pre-service teachers and on teacher-training programme curriculums.
International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research
The Covid-19 pandemic has affected the teaching practicum component of initial teacher education ... more The Covid-19 pandemic has affected the teaching practicum component of initial teacher education programmes in significant ways. School-based placement could not take place, but teacher educators still needed to ensure that the teaching practicum component complied with policy. The aim of this study is to indicate how work-integrated learning teacher educators created professional learning communities among an entire population of 7 041 student teachers enrolled for the Baccalaureus Educationis degree, the challenges they faced and how they managed these challenges. The professional learning community model of Hord (2009) was used as a conceptual framework for this study. In this qualitative multi-site case study, document analysis was the primary data collection method. Journals and WhatsApp messages kept by the two work-integrated learning teacher educators and the minutes of virtual work-integrated learning meetings were analysed using narrative and thematic analysis. The finding...
The changes taking place in the schooling landscape because of the coronavirus are real and meani... more The changes taking place in the schooling landscape because of the coronavirus are real and meaningful and have implications for the training of preservice teachers, especially the teaching practicum component of their initial teacher education programs. The havoc caused by COVID-19 forced many faculties of education into a state of ‘panic-gogy’ to ensure that student teachers could complete their teaching practicums. In this paper we argue that consideration should be given to core teaching practices and practice-based teacher education pedagogies (i.e., representations and approximations) that can be used in alternative “placement contexts” that will supplement and harness the authenticity of school-based experiences. We provide two conceptual tools, collaboratively developed by teaching practicum educators and mentor teachers, that can be used as heuristic by other university-school partnerships when considering teaching practicum redesign efforts.
This article aims to accentuate the value of reflective practices in the lived experiences and pr... more This article aims to accentuate the value of reflective practices in the lived experiences and professional development of a teacher educator and a nursing educator at a higher education institution in South Africa. Reflective practice promotes the continuous (re)creation of local knowledge through a critical reflection on beliefs, assumptions, experiences and practices in order to identify successful strategies for teaching practice, reflect upon challenges, adapt, and evolve their practice. Reflective practice encapsulates a process of continuous learning and growth that not only resonates with pedagogical and methodological viewpoints and also ontological and epistemological situatedness and is at the same time aligned with national and institutional aims and requirements. In this self-study project based on LaBoskey’s five characteristics of self-study, educators in higher education become both the researcher and the researched and the emphasis of the research is on the self as a theorist, researcher and practitioner. The authors explore and elucidate their journey of discovery towards the various dimensions of their reflective practice through a critical evaluation of their teaching and learning theory and of their teaching and assessment strategies. Both authors have been awarded institutional teaching excellence awards. This article contributes to their joint discourse on higher education as well as their conceptualization of their respective scholarships of teaching and learning.
The concept of stewardship has evolved from merely being significant in the financial contributio... more The concept of stewardship has evolved from merely being significant in the financial contribution that people make towards their church to an all-encompassing decision that dictates people’s lives. It is not a feeling of urgency that someone is born with, but rather a decision and commitment made on a daily basis. Teachers thus find themselves in the perfect situation to be stewards in their classrooms on a daily basis. Furthermore, this tendency is noticed in teachers who work towards turning their schools into stewardship-driven institutions that aim to develop an environment driven by a calling to teach; therefore, theology is offered a leading role in the way the school is managed.
A constant challenge to researchers and academic scholars in practical theology is to stay releva... more A constant challenge to researchers and academic scholars in practical theology is to stay relevant and up to date with the constantly evolving academic concepts in which they discourse. These interactions between individuals and intellectual fields often allow for what Julian M�ller terms a �moment of praxis� within their epistemology that functions as a meeting place between different ideas, paradigms and often even different academic disciplines.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article investigated the possibility of creating an interdisciplinary epistemology between practical theology and teaching. By exploring the role that post foundationalist discourse and interdisciplinary conversations can play in identifying and addressing challenges which face teaching, new light can be shed on the relationship between teaching and practical theology which thus highlights correlations between these two relevant fields.
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Papers by CAROLINA BOTHA