Contexts and concepts: analysing learning tasks in a foundation phase teacher education programme in South Africa

Abstract

Within teacher education, there is ongoing debate about the nature and extent of the propositional and conceptual knowledge that teachers need. In this paper we interrogate the learning tasks detailed in six learning modules offered in a formal qualification for South African Foundation Phase (grade R-3) teachers. Our purpose is to analyse to what extent the in-text informal learning tasks foreground the conceptual object of study or the practicebased context, and thus the extent to which these tasks require teachers to develop systematic conceptual knowledge which is clearly related to practice. Tasks which make visible both the conceptual object of study and the practice-based context are most likely to enable teachers to systematise ideas, and thus build professional judgement. Our findings show that there are differences between the six modules, but that generally the conceptual object of study is not made strongly visible in the learning tasks, except in the mathematics education modules. We argue that this will have implications for the development of the student teachers' systematised knowledge and professional judgement. ARTICLE HISTORY

Television Series as a Didactic Tool in the Initial Training of Secondary School Teachers

“…They conducted their analysis with the support of the different theoretical models of conflict analysis that they had studied, and the rules and intervention protocols explained during the course. In this way, they were able to link educational theory and teaching practice, a fundamental requirement in PSTE (Christiansen et al, 2018).…”

The Initial Training of Science Teachers in African Countries: A Systematic Literature Review

“…In article A11, the position is that teachers need to be socialized both in the concepts within educational theory and in the contexts of teaching and learning from the perspective of a practitioner. Some argue that attempts to define a professional knowledge base of concepts for teaching undermine the importance of artisanal knowledge and the art of teaching and potentially ignore the ethical scales of teaching (e.g., Hargreaves & Goodson, 1996; Sockett, 2008) (as cited in Christiansen, 2018). The argument from this perspective is that teaching is essentially a practice that is learned through experience and through reflection within and about practice and that learning to be a teacher is to develop practical wisdom in the classroom.…”

“…On the other hand, the argument is that good teachers are based on a reservoir of academic knowledge and diagnosis and not only on intuition and everyday experience. Ball and Forzani (2009) argue that the nature of teaching practice is an intricate and unnatural work and therefore requires deliberate training to make choices using professional judgment (as cited in Christiansen, 2018).…”

How a professional development programme changes early grades teachers’ literacy pedagogy

“…The current South African school curriculum, CAPS, explicitly adopts the notion of teaching four main content areas of literacy at the FP (Department of Basic Education 2011), namely: listening and speaking, reading and phonics; writing and handwriting in accordance with the emergent literacy. The conceptual knowledge about these core learning areas is privileged in the ACT-intended curriculum although the modules seem to engage more on the practical aspects of teaching (Christiansen, Bertram & Mukeredzi 2018;Kimathi 2017). Thus, the ACT programme seems to promote diverse strategies of teaching the research-based components that are reinforced by the emergent literacy paradigm.…”