Tracking five years of teacher education enrolment at a South African university: Implications for teacher education

Abstract

The faculty in which we are based offers two initial teacher training programmes: the Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE); and the four-year BEd qualification-allowing students to pursue a specialisation in either the foundation or intermediate phase. Compared to other faculties, the Faculty of Education occupies the somewhat precarious label of being one of the "most transformed" faculty in the university. In other words, given the historical privilege of the university, the Faculty of Education is considered to have shown the most evident strides towards transformation in terms of racial representation. A cursory glance at statistics of student enrolments over a five-year period, provides interesting insights-insights, which, as we shall discuss in this article, should be interpreted with great caution. The interest and purpose of this article is to use the student enrolment statistics at a historically advantaged university as one indicator of a representative sample of teachers, who are likely to enter South African schools. The interest, on the one hand, is to gain an idea of the corpus of enrolled student teachers-by taking account of race and gender. On the other hand, we intend to use this data to further our discussions on representation, and the implications for teacher education, and hence, teaching. In the background, are inevitable concerns centring on notions of representation in relation to conceptions of transformation.

First-Year Accounting Student Teachers’ Constructivist Learning Experiences, The Lecturer’s Role and Implications for Curriculum Implementation

“…Regrettably, Gilakjani, Leong and Ismail (2013) lament that a critical analysis of the nature and type of teaching to which students are exposed reveals that very little has changed from the highly lecturercentred learning environments where the lecturer merely passes information to students and gives orders. Davids and Waghid (2020) caution that while academic performance remains at the core of success, access and retention in higher education, students experience the most severe sense of exclusion, alienation and displacement in the learning environment. The reasons advanced by Davids and Waghid (2020) for this are that the students are not able to navigate through the demands and expectations of the learning environment and that they are never heard or seen.…”

“…Davids and Waghid (2020) caution that while academic performance remains at the core of success, access and retention in higher education, students experience the most severe sense of exclusion, alienation and displacement in the learning environment. The reasons advanced by Davids and Waghid (2020) for this are that the students are not able to navigate through the demands and expectations of the learning environment and that they are never heard or seen. Although the dominant discourses of teaching and learning and the students' learning experiences in higher education tend to differ significantly among institutions, socially, geographically, economically and politically they are defined by specific discourses which form part of the pedagogical ethos and teaching culture in the learning environment.…”

“…Although the dominant discourses of teaching and learning and the students' learning experiences in higher education tend to differ significantly among institutions, socially, geographically, economically and politically they are defined by specific discourses which form part of the pedagogical ethos and teaching culture in the learning environment. Makola (2016) and Mapuya (2018) share the interest and concern of Davids and Waghid (2020) about the poor completion rates of students in higher education. While Davids and Waghid (2020) attribute this to lack of transformation in the higher education landscape and the learning environment, Yadav (2016) and Mapuya (2018) share the commonly held view that this is a result of a lack of a radical paradigm shift in curriculum implementation approaches.…”

Preservice Teachers’ Mentorship Experiences during Teaching Practice in a South African Teacher Preparation Program

“…Most of the participants (n = 40; 88.9%) were aged between 21 and 32 and the majority of participants were African (n = 22; 48.9%). These findings were not surprising as Davids and Waghid (2020) indicated that the majority of those enrolled for PGCE qualifications in South Africa are females, those of a younger age and black individuals.…”

Enhancing academic success through the involvement of students in quality assurance and promotion in higher education: A synopsis

“…Higher education has traditionally been considered as a "public good" (Davids and Waghid 2020;Marshall 2016). However, the contemporary world is also witnessing an increasing trend towards privatisation of higher education.…”