TUT aims to aid the future teacher
The varsity is adapting its curricula to keep pace with changing policies and trends
The Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) has recently restructured its teacher education departments to deliver relevant, quality teacher education programmes. The move stems from the confidence the university has about the growing demand for trained teachers in the country.
The school of education comprises four departments: the department of mathematics and business education, the department of educational foundation, the department of technical and vocation education and the department of primary education. Within these departments reside the bachelor of education (BEd) further education and training (FET) specialisation, the BEd intermediate and senior phase and the BEd foundation phase programmes.
Educationists Linda DarlingHammond and John Bransford argue that if teachers are to be sufficiently equipped to help all learners achieve their fullest potential amid changing demands, then questions about what knowledge, skills and professional commitment teachers require need to be addressed. It includes the need to continue developing their own knowledge and skills, both as individuals and as members of a collective profession.
Higher education institutions have the task of ensuring that the types of teachers they train will be able to transform education according to policy needs.
This is what we strive for with our teacher education programmes. In keeping with our vision and mission, our programmes are unique in that they promote knowledge and technology, and provide professional career education of an international standard, which is relevant to the needs and aspirations of the people of Southern Africa. By implication, critical reflective practice features strongly in our teacher education curricula to ensure that graduates are sufficiently equipped to cope with changing educational policy framework needs and global trends.
All the teacher education preservice programmes at TUT have a uniquely strong practicum feature, where students to go out on teach- ing practice for six weeks in their first, second and third years of study and a further three to six months in their final year.
The teaching practice is conducted at functional schools, which are clustered in districts around the country. All students are monitored and assessed by lecturers who prepare them for teaching practice within the programme of study.
Students are provided with teaching practice journals for each of the four years of study. These journals are packed with reflective and inquiry-based activities, which allow students to interrogate the different roles and responsibilities of teaching, learning and assessment practices at schools.
Over the years, we have noticed that this model of teaching practice allows our students to enter the profession with ease once they have qualified.
In recent years, first-year applications to study teacher education at the TUT have increased significantly. This is mainly a result of the Funza Lushaka bursary initiative, which aims to attract high-performing matriculants into the teaching profession. Recipients of the bursary are required to teach at a public school for the same number of years that they receive the bursary.
Proposals for teacher education reform are typically based on two assumptions: that the best teacher is the one who is best educated, and that the real professional is the teacher who uses their expertise and knowledge autonomously in an intelligent and responsive delivery of high-level services.
At the TUT we thrive on achieving both so that the teacher is not only theoretically sound when it comes to the best practices of teaching but is also able to reflect critically on the situation and determine what knowledge and actions are best suited for the context that they find themselves in.