South African Teacher Education's Response to the Pandemic: A Critical Reflection!

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

The session aims to illuminate the injustices and inequalities that exist in the South African education system. It attempts to illuminate how teacher education might be complicit in creating and perpetuating such conditions. COVID-19 has put these injustices and inequalities in the proverbial spotlight by drawing attention to the challenges that it presents and the need to fundamentally revisit how we prepare teachers for the school education system. It also reveals how knee-jerk, technical modifications might prove to be educationally unsound and counter-productive. The session reveals how the current fraught education context has become normalised with the view to thinking anew our practices in teacher education.

Sub Unit

• Division K - Teaching and Teacher Education / Division K - Section 05: Pre-service Teacher Education Coursework: Curriculum and Pedagogy to Improve Teacher Knowledge and Instruction

Chair

• Chris Paul Reddy, Stellenbosch University

Papers

• What Knowledge Is Most Worth in Crisis Conditions? - Prevanand (Labby) Ramrathan, University of KwaZulu-Natal

• Educational Responsibility in Times of Crisis: The Beauty and Power of Disruption - Shan R. Simmonds, North-West University

• COVID-19 and the Responsibilities of Lecturers/Teachers: Toward Greater Epistemological Access - Petro Du Preez, North-West University; Lesley Lionel Leonard Le Grange, Stellenbosch University

• Taking Responsibility for Adapting Assessment Practices in the Context of COVID-19 in Economic Education - SURIAMURTHEE MOONSAMY MAISTRY, University of KwaZulu-Natal

Discussant

• Sylvan Everton Blignaut, Nelson Mandela University