Democratization and Cultural Resistance in South African Teacher Education

Abstract

The transformation of South African higher education has significantly altered the teacher education system resulting in an unintended decreased in the number of recruits into and graduates from teacher education programmes, as well as acute teacher shortages in subject areas like mathematics, African Languages, and the foundation phase. Shortages are also worse in geographic locations like rural areas. Universities have been working hard to adapt to be responsive to the demands and the needs of the democratic state and to increase their throughputs. Using quantitative and qualitative data collected from secondary sources, this paper examines how certain characteristics of apartheid teacher education have endured the democratic policy changes and continued to negatively impact the present. It is argued that distance teacher education has emerged as a viable option at producing more and relevant teachers.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n23p1317