Toward Authentic Teaching and Learning in Post-Apartheid South Africa: In Defense of Freedom, Friendship, and Democratic Citizenship

Abstract

During the post-Apartheid period, teacher education discourses in South Africa have undergone several program reviews at the levels of the Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE), BEd, and MEd. The Council on Higher Education’s (CHE) Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC) has conducted extensive reviews of teacher education programs in the country with the aim to ascertain whether the faculties, schools, and departments of all 23 universities comply with at least the “minimum standards” for quality education. According to the HEQC, a teacher education program such as the PGCE, BEd, or MEd would comply with some of the minimum standards if it has a coherent and integrated focus, foster critical learning, and have institutional support for their implementation (HEQC 2005). As a member of the HEQC’s Accreditation Committee since 2005, I have found that by far the majority of the programs did not gain a full accreditation, which means that most of them either have been found not to comply with the minimum standards or have gained a conditional accreditation subject to certain amendments being made to universities’ program offerings. What has emerged from the Accreditation Committee’s deliberations about the teacher education programs is that they seem to lack focus on engendering critical inquiry. In the cases of the PGCE and MEd, it was found that some institutions are still intent on promoting uncritical rote learning whereby students are expected to regurgitate information without challenging and questioning.