Ready to teach? Reflections on a South African mathematics teacher education programme

Abstract

Programme at University of KwaZulu-Natal prepares teachers to teach well in the regional context. In order to determine which aspects to consider in the analysis, I draw on studies of factors correlated to learner achievement in South African primary schools. First, this suggests that the consideration of context should play a strong part in our teacher education. Second, it indicates that teacher actions most strongly linked to learning – deep representations, feedback guiding learning and challenging learners on their level – only occur occasionally in KwaZulu-Natal schools, and with limited opportunity to develop mathematical proficiency. The question I raise is to what extent we prepare teachers to teach in this way, and with awareness of the context. Third, I briefly consider what other, perhaps overlooked, competencies our teachers need. In the light of Bernstein’s recognition of the centrality of evaluation in the pedagogic device, I have analysed the exam papers in the programme. My analysis utilises a pragmatically compiled bag of tools. First, I distinguish between the knowledge categories in our programme: contextual knowledge, curriculum knowledge, content knowledge, pedagogic content knowledge, and general pedagogical knowledge. Next, I explore the extent to which specialised knowledge is foregrounded in our programme, drawing on Maton’s distinction between a knowledge and a knower legitimisation code. Third, by distinguishing the semantic gravity of the course content, I aim to identify how theoretical or decontextualised knowledge is linked to the practice of mathematics teaching. This enables me to consider the extent to which the programmes favour cumulative or segmented learning. My findings indicate that the programme is strongly founded in a knowledge code, and that it covers all of the five aforementioned knowledge domains, but it needs further exploration how well these are linked within and across courses, thus providing cumulative learning. Teaching for deep representations is strongly reflected in the exam papers, both in the content knowledge and the pedagogical content knowledge components, but there is virtually no indication that providing appropriate challenges to learners is important. While students are tested on their recognition and realisation of assessing learners’ level of understanding, this is not utilised in teaching students to provide appropriate feedback, nor is it used to inform the design of activities which can cater for a classroom with learners of mixed ability or varying levels of current understanding. Furthermore, there is no assessment of the teachers’ preparedness to teach for adaptive reasoning. In that respect, the programme appears not to prepare the students adequately for quality teaching. I discuss whether this knowledge mix and what is not taught can be seen as having an implicit student in mind, thus limiting access to relevant teacher competencies for some students.