Teaching in and beyond pandemic times (2021)

Book review:  edited by Jonathan D Jansen and Theola Farmer-Phillip

Angels in the wind: future directions for educational research

Opening address at the 2014 SAERA conference Michael Samuel(Chair of the Local Organizing Committee

Sustaining evolving teaching practicum models in higher education: A conversational ethnodrama between South African teacher educators

This article explores the evolving trajectory of the Teaching Practicum (TP) models within a selected South African teacher education institution (TEI) to accommodate the localised challenges of shifting from face-to-face support of professional learning towards online modes of delivery during Covid-19 times. Over time, even before the onset of Covid-19, the specific institution was characterised by increasing diversification of its student body and increased enrolment of student teachers resonating with similar patterns across other TEIs nationally. The study draws on the ethnographic tradition of celebrating participants’ lived experiences within the field of teacher education by capturing how a teaching practicum coordinator attempted to deal with complex and multiple challenges to enact and sustain a re-imagined TP programme. The pattern of responsiveness continues even as the pandemic (potentially) wanes. A reconstructed dialogue represents the responses of the internal coordinator within the institution (foregrounding changing operational concerns) and a senior teacher educator external to the institution (foregrounding shifting theoretical and policy considerations). Drawing from ethnodrama traditions, this dialogical conversation acknowledges the lived experiences of everyday designing, delivering and using TP models. It includes the hesitance of school mentors, student teachers and teacher educator supervisors to adopt alternative practices to conventionalised rituals of TP. The conversation questions the academic rationale of the various models of TP in their bolstering of student teachers’ professional learning. The study’s findings indicate that the successful implementation of a meaningful and contextualised revised TP curriculum necessitates re-imagining the roles of the various partners involved in the TP endeavour: who are co-responsible for conceptualising and ensuring transformative professional growth and development

Examining pre-service teachers’ subject matter knowledge of school mathematics concepts

This article explores the nature of the subject matter knowledge that pre-service mathematics teachers’ possess by analysing its components, namely, common content knowledge and specialised content knowledge of the high school mathematics curriculum. The data was generated from 59 final year pre-service mathematics teachers’ written responses, which tested three sets of competencies: solving problems on Functions and Inequalities; analysing and interpreting learners’ errors; and their expertise in allocating marks to questions. Analysis of the written responses identified five categories of response patterns and thereafter individual interviews were conducted with four participants to discuss the responses. The results revealed that while the participants were competent solvers of school mathematics problems, they were unable to analyse and interpret learners’ errors for diagnostic purposes. This suggests that teacher preparation should develop pre-service mathematics teachers’ specialised content knowledge. The findings also confirmed the value of learner error analysis as an alternative strategy to cultivate the specialised content knowledge of future mathematics teachers

Cosmic Shear Results from the Deep Lens Survey - II: Full Cosmological Parameter Constraints from Tomography

We present a tomographic cosmic shear study from the Deep Lens Survey (DLS), which, providing a limiting magnitude r_{lim}~27 (5 sigma), is designed as a pre-cursor Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) survey with an emphasis on depth. Using five tomographic redshift bins, we study their auto- and cross-correlations to constrain cosmological parameters. We use a luminosity-dependent nonlinear model to account for the astrophysical systematics originating from intrinsic alignments of galaxy shapes. We find that the cosmological leverage of the DLS is among the highest among existing >10 sq. deg cosmic shear surveys. Combining the DLS tomography with the 9-year results of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP9) gives Omega_m=0.293_{-0.014}^{+0.012}, sigma_8=0.833_{-0.018}^{+0.011}, H_0=68.6_{-1.2}^{+1.4} km/s/Mpc, and Omega_b=0.0475+-0.0012 for LCDM, reducing the uncertainties of the WMAP9-only constraints by ~50%. When we do not assume flatness for LCDM, we obtain the curvature constraint Omega_k=-0.010_{-0.015}^{+0.013} from the DLS+WMAP9 combination, which however is not well constrained when WMAP9 is used alone. The dark energy equation of state parameter w is tightly constrained when Baryonic Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) data are added, yielding w=-1.02_{-0.09}^{+0.10} with the DLS+WMAP9+BAO joint probe. The addition of supernova constraints further tightens the parameter to w=-1.03+-0.03. Our joint constraints are fully consistent with the final Planck results and also the predictions of a LCDM universe.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap

Beyond Narcissism and Hero-worshipping: life history research and narrative inquiry.

Available in pdf article

Accountability to whom? For what? : teacher identity and the Force Field Model of teacher development.

The rise of fundamentalism in the sphere of teacher education points to a swing back towards teachers as service workers for State agendas. Increasingly, teachers are expected to account for the outcomes of their practices. This article traces the trajectory of trends in teacher education over the past five decades arguing that this "new conservative trend" is but one of the many forces that characterise present interpretations of the goals of teacher education and development. A de-professionalisation of teaching as a career looms on the horizon. Each era has progressively provided new insights into what the goals for teacher education could and should be. These have become increasingly layered into expanding roles and responsibilities being foisted on teachers. The article argues that this could threaten teaching as a career and fewer individuals now willingly choose the teaching profession. If they do, their accountability is seldom to quality teaching and learning as professional teachers find themselves threatened on a number of fronts by contradictory and often competing forces. The article presents a model for understanding the complexity of forces influencing teachers' identities, and shows why there is a need for creative discursive spaces for the coexistence of these many forces. Rather than capitulate to the forces of conservatism, the article argues that teacher professional growth can flourish when it is able to understand deeply the biographical, contextual, institutional and programmatic forces that impinge on teacher identity. The Force Field Model of Teacher Development thus provides stimulus for creative dialogue and renewal

Values and Purposes of a PhD : Comparative responses from South Africa and Mauritius

This paper compares the motivations of two developing countries, South Africa and Mauritius, in promoting doctoral education. Both are concerned about addressing their underproduction of PhDs, but is this focus a luxury in the face of prevalent societal issues, e.g., the HIV/AIDS pandemic, crime and unemployment in South Africa? Are PhDs resolving post-apartheid societal problems? Is their pursuit primarily about developing a competitive advantage? In Mauritius, alignment of the state agenda and the higher education system provides pragmatic interventions to establish itself as the knowledge hub of the Indian Ocean islands. However, the philosophically-driven PhD infuses potentially a critical disruption of “comfortable collaborations” with the state agenda. So what is the worth of a PhD, especially in the field of education? This paper suggests that the value of an educational PhD in developing world contexts has both enabling and constraining potential: to personal, institutional, social and nationalistic agendas

Novice rural principals’ successful leadership practices in financial management: Multiple accountabilities

Research studies on financial management in South African public schools expands recurrent literature, most of which have largely pathologised school leadership and management, and rural schools in particular. This article instead draws from a qualitative case study of success, which examined how five novice principals in a rural setting went beyond the prescriptive administrative requirements to generate context-responsive and creative ways of managing school finances, working with the parent community, with educational peers and the departmental policies to activate situated relevant governance relations. The data is drawn from interviews and documents produced within the setting. Our findings reveal a new set of accountability relations, which counter the hierarchical relations between schools and the community, or between the department and the rural context. These principals began a trajectory of overt training in financial management to ensure their own and collaborating participants’ clarity and involvement in a participative management approach. Whilst the school-formulated policies serve as a backdrop to the terms of operations, these principals generate multiple accountabilities in their role as chief financial officers. The study recognises vertical, horizontal and downward accountabilities, which are underpinned by self-driven motivation, moral integrity and social developmental responsibilities. Rather than being a pathological problem, school financial management offers policy and practice potential to develop co-responsible governance.Keywords: financial management; financially accountability; multiple accountabilities; novice principals; school finances; successful school