Preservice history teachers in divided South Africa: Navigating controversial Issues in the borderlands of university and schools

• In Event: Social justice, compassion and inclusion in teacher education and professional development

Proposal

Introduction
This paper addresses the following question: How did a group of South African preservice history teachers (PSTs) navigate controversial issues in the borderlands of a prestigious university and Teaching Practice (TP) placements? The research was conducted during a cross-national project in which I taught, in partnership with local colleagues, a 15-hour module preparing PSTs for handling controversial issues. The purpose was to recontextualize research-based pedagogical tools developed in the U.S., Northern Ireland, and England in particularly challenging national contexts and learn about PSTs’ experiences with controversy.
In South Africa, apartheid is gone but the divisions and scars remain: Although the nation celebrates its rich diversity, it suffers from division, corruption, and economic inequality tied to the old racial hierarchy. Teachers must deal with apartheid’s legacy especially in under-resourced schools. Dealing with controversial issues in the curriculum and classroom life is an additional challenge (Wassermann & Bentrovato, 2018).

Conceptual Framework
I use border theory (Anzaldúa, 1987) to examine PSTs’ negotiation of controversial issues situated in two types of borderlands—the university and school placements (Delgado Bernal et al., 2009; Chan, 2019; Fellner, 2023). Anzaldúa’s conceptualization of borderlands, based on her Chicana lived experience around the U.S.-Mexico border, reveals many different physical, metaphorical, geopolitical, and discursive boundaries that produce structural inequality for historically oppressed groups. People negotiating these boundaries often experience painful conflict, yet they can ultimately break through to create hybrid identities that embrace divergence, inclusivity, and cultural straddling.
Constructively engaging students in controversial issues also requires border-crossing and can open people up to new understandings, empathy, and action (Kim, 2020).

Research Methods
The main source of data is a series of audiotaped and transcribed individual interviews I conducted with volunteer PSTs from the controversial issues module I taught at “Queensbridge University” in South Africa. They are supplemented by documentation of module sessions through collection of materials, notes, student work, and audiotaped discussions. The interviews trace PSTs’ experiences from the module through two teaching practice placements. PSTs spoke about their backgrounds, relationship to conflict in South Africa, aspirations as history teachers, responses to the module, and experiences during TP at two different schools. They told me about planned and unplanned controversies that arose, pedagogical tools from the module they used, and contextual factors that facilitated and challenged their TP experience. I coded data under these categories, checked my findings with previous research (Chan, 2019; Author, 2021), analyzed patterns, and arrived at conclusions.

Findings
Out of eight interviewees, the four Black students spoke about significant borders they confronted as Queensbridge students. These included language, race, educational background, and academic demands. They grew up in rural areas in distant provinces. They were not used to classes conducted exclusively in English, attending classes with affluent White students educated at elite high schools, and highly demanding academic workloads. At the same time, they felt enormously privileged to have the opportunity to study at Queensbridge.
The teacher education program was a borderland space in which students with diverse racial, regional, and cultural identities came together. The module’s focus on discussing controversial issues elevated student voice on a wide range of subjects including Xhosa initiation school, teaching about apartheid, hate speech, controversial school murals, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. A few students said they struggled with expressing themselves but became more confident through activities that provided multiple entry points for developing classroom community and exchanging ideas.
Another borderland space was the teaching practicum. PSTs were placed at schools that ranged from the most elite to severely under-resourced. At private elite schools dominated by White staff and students, Black PSTs reported crossing racial, linguistic, cultural, and socio-economic borders. These were on top of the universal challenges of being welcomed as a student teacher, developing relationships with mentors, and applying pedagogical tools from the university (Chan, 2019). They felt pressure to prove themselves as knowledgeable and competent teachers who could lecture in English, fit into an unfamiliar and intimidating environment, and earn respect from staff and students. At the same time, they appreciated and learned from these privileged, resource-rich schools that supported teachers and offered students amazing opportunities. They felt all South African students deserved to be educated at schools like these.
At the second TP in severely under-resourced schools, preservice teachers of all races experienced a very different kind of borderland space (Fellner, 2023). They encountered apathetic staff and disengaged, struggling students. Societal problems such as inter-racial friction, xenophobia, poverty, and/or violence produced hostile spaces within these schools. Dysfunctional leadership, lack of resources, and school politics contributed to the challenges.
Yet the PSTs developed rewarding relationships and learned valuable lessons amid difficult conditions and told me about their efforts to constructively engage in controversial issues. One PST engaged students in discussion of how the legacy of apartheid showed up in their local setting. Another PST tried to disrupt students’ belief that European colonization was necessary for the development of civilization in Africa. A third PST engaged students in discussion about South African identity and the Rainbow Nation narrative. Given researchers’ arguments that history teachers need to cultivate historical consciousness (Robinson, 2021; Teeger, 2024), these efforts were noteworthy.

Conclusions
PSTs’ experiences reflect persistent inequalities in post-conflict South Africa and are more challenging than those in other countries. They also reflect PSTs’ unique strengths, resilience, and efforts to teach a more meaningful, African-centered, and critical history and engage constructively with controversy. The border-crossing experiences of PSTs, both at the university and in school placements, underscores the need to support their navigation of these borderlands through coursework, mentorship, and stronger partnerships between schools and universities. With its very high rate of teacher attrition, rising enrollments in schools, and shortage of qualified teachers, South Africa stands to benefit from investing resources in teacher education to make this possible.

Author

• Judith Pace