Conflicts in schools over race, fees or language frequently make headlines in South Africa. Such conflicts reflect the multifaceted issue of learner diversity, encompassing racial, class, gender, religious, linguistic, physical and other differences. The need to handle such differences in equitable ways poses new challenges for teachers and teacher education. How are teacher education institutions preparing students for teaching in schools that are different from the ones they experienced as learners? What kinds of skills are they providing to enable teachers to deal with diversity and difference amongst learners.
The similarities between the United States and South Africa with respect to race, power, oppression and economic inequities are striking, and a better understanding of these parallels can provide educational gains for students and educators in both countries. Through shared experiences and perspectives, this volume presents scholarly work from U.S. and South African scholars that advance educational practice in support of social justice and transformative learning. It provides a comprehensive framework for developing transformational learning experiences that facilitates leadership for social justice, and a deeper understanding of the factors influencing personal, national and global identity.
How we understand education quality is inextricably linked with perspectives on social justice. Questions of inclusion, relevance and democracy in education are increasingly contested, most especially in the global South, and improving the quality of education, particularly for the most disadvantaged, has become a topic of fundamental concern for education policy makers, practitioners and the international development community. The reality experienced by many learners continues to be of inadequately prepared and poorly motivated teachers, struggling to deliver a rapidly changing curriculum without sufficient support, and often using outmoded teaching methods in over-crowded or dilapidated classrooms. Education Quality and Social Justice in the South includes contributions from leading scholars in the field of education and development. The text draws upon state of the art evidence from the five year EdQual research programme, which focuses upon raising achievement in low income countries, and demonstrates how systems of high quality universal education can be sustained. By exploring recent research initiatives to improve education quality, the importance of supporting local policy makers, educators and parents as agents of change, and students as active inquirers is highlighted, and the challenge of taking successful initiatives to scale is explained. The book is divided into three main parts: -Framing Education Quality -Planning and Policies for Quality -Implementing Quality in Schools Education Quality and Social Justice in the South argues that implementing a high quality of education using theories of social justice can inform the understanding of inclusion, relevance and democracy in education. The book should be essential reading for both students and researchers within the fields of international and comparative education, along with educational policy, poverty and development studies.
This book describes a different approach to teacher education designed to create "carriers of the torch"--teachers who have a sense of efficacy and the attitudes, dispositions, and skills necessary to teach students from diverse racial, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds. Through her examination of teacher change and teacher education in two countries--the United States and South Africa--the author proposes new ways to prepare teachers for a rapidly changing global society.
By addressing intercultural and multicultural education in a global context, this volume brings together the dynamic discussions and lively debate of intercultural and multicultural education taking place across the world. Not content with discussion of theory or practice at the expense of the other, this collection of essays embodies dialogical praxis by weaving together a variety of epistemologies, ideologies, historical circumstances, pedagogies, policy approaches, curricula, and personal narratives. Contributors take readers to the countries, schools, and nongovernmental agencies where intercultural education and multicultural education, either collectively or singularly, are active (often central) concepts or practices in the daily educational undertaking and discourse of society. Readers are also informed about how intercultural education and/or multicultural education within a country came to be and will learn about the debates over intercultural education and/or multicultural education at both the government and local level.
"Readers will find this volume a treasure trove of perspectives, answers, and provocations that should stimulate further the essential discussions we must have to create schools that can someday provide all children---and teachers---with the right to learn what they need and deserve."---Linda Darling-Hammond, from the Foreword --
This volume is dedicated to the career of Jill Adler and the role she has played in growing mathematics education research in South Africa, Africa and beyond. Her work epitomises what is referred to as the ‘engaged scholar’: i.e. doing rigorous and theoretically rich research at the cutting edge of international work in the field which at the same time contributes to critical areas of local and regional need in education. Jill is one of the world’s leading experts in mathematics education research and her exemplary career is a continuous source of inspiration for generations of researchers and students. The chapters in this volume are authored by Jill’s former PhD students, a few select colleagues from different parts of the world that she collaborated with as well as leading scholars who she worked with in PME, ICMI and in her many international assignments. In essence, this volume celebrates Jill’s contribution not only to mathematics education but also to our contributions as her friends and colleagues. Topics covered include language and mathematics, teacher education, and the dilemma of an activist researcher engaging in issues that matter hugely to the participants in the research, students and teachers in post-apartheid schooling, whilst also setting up the separation that is needed for good research.
In the new arena for anti-racist work in which we find ourselves, the neo-liberal, ‘post-race’ university, this interdisciplinary collection demonstrates common global political concerns about racism in Higher Education. It highlights a range of issues regarding students, academic staff and knowledge systems, and all of the contributions seek to challenge the complacency of the ‘post-race’ present that is dominant in North-West Europe and North America, Brazil’s mythical ‘racial democracy’ and South Africa’s post-apartheid ‘rainbow nation’. The collection makes clear that we are not yet past the need for anti-racist institutional action because of the continuing impact of coloniality on and in these nations. From within the colonial psyche which still exists in the 21st century these nations actively deracinate politics, subjectivities, political economy and affective relationalities when they re-imagine themselves to be ‘post-race’ states where all citizens can have a share in the good life because now only class matters. Universities have also taken on the mantle of upholding societal ‘post-race’ status through ineffective equality and diversity policies and strategies. The collection makes the case for the urgent need to decolonize the university in ‘post-race’, neoliberal times through a focus on institutional racism in HEIs in Canada, Brazil, South Africa, the UK and the USA. As such it addresses institutional whiteness; the transformation of organizational cultures; the presence and experiences of Black people, People of Colour and Indigenous people in HEIs; the development of curriculum interventions; widening participation and organizational change; and future directions for racial equality and diversity in a ‘post-race’ era. This book was originally published as a special issue of Race Ethnicity and Education.
The book will focus on the emergence of a racially-divided system of teacher preparation and its dismantling post-apartheid. It will explore the policies and politics of discrepant pathways to teacher preparation within the context of international and comparative trends.
