Critical Reflections on Teacher Education in South Africa

This edited volume focuses on Curriculum scholars' critical reflections on teacher education (TE) within South Africa to offer insights into critical considerations for the socio-economic, transformational, social and environmental justice and decolonization challenges that the country faces. Much of the literature on teacher education takes on a policy and practice focus to the exclusion of deep and fundamental curriculum questions on what is teacher education for, for whom, where and who decides. Within South Africa, the Minimum Requirements for Teacher Education Qualification (MRTEQ) forms the official policy that informs teacher education curriculum and certification to become a teacher. This volume raises critical and complicated questions for teacher educators and curriculum scholars to inspire a deeper understanding of teacher education beyond a set of parochial policy prescribed modules/courses that one needs to take to become a professional teacher. Labby Ramrathan is Professor in the School of Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He is an NRF rated researcher and the editor of the Journal of Education, co-editor of the Springer series on Key Thinkers in Education and general editor of the Alternation African Scholarship Book series. His areas of scholarship include curriculum studies, teacher development and higher education. Suriamurthee Maistry is Professor in the School of Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He is a Curriculum Scholar and currently leads a project titled “Higher Education Curriculum and Pedagogic Responsiveness in the context of Innovative Artificial Intelligence (AI).” Sylvan Blignaut is Professor in the Department of Postgraduate Studies in the Faculty of Education at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa. His research interests centre on curriculum policy and theory, educational change, teacher epistemologies and decolonisation of higher education.