A collaborative approach to developing social justice praxis through service-learning for teacher education in South Africa

Abstract

In this thesis, I present my learning from working collaboratively with an action learning group to develop guidelines for critical service-learning to foster social justice praxis in teacher education. Pre-service teachers currently lack skills and knowledge about social justice issues, diversity, and social education. This is problematic as the profile of learners in South African schools represent a very diverse population and without knowledge and skills about teaching in diverse circumstances our pre-service teachers cannot develop a social justice praxis. Service-learning can be one way of helping pre-service and in-service teachers to develop social justice praxis to become teachers that advocate and realise social transformation in schools. The purpose of this study was to explore how social justice praxis in teacher education can be developed through service-learning for the South African context. The participants and I collaborated to identify the knowledge gaps between theoretical coursework and the social realities that teachers face daily. A further purpose was to develop guidelines for critical service-learning in teacher education to, a) infuse teacher education with socially relevant and contextualised local knowledge, and b) create communities of practices for in-service teachers to learn, share and reflect on their current practices and how it can be transformed to be more socially just. Through this study, I aimed to answer the following research question: How can critical service-learning help to develop social justice praxis in the context of South African teacher education? I drew from action learning theory and contrapuntal reading analysis to conceptualise the theoretical lens that underpinned this study. This study was grounded in a participatory action learning action research (PALAR) design. The research process consisted of three main components: collaborative identification of needs and ways of working to attain mutual goals, deciding on the best course of action, and implementing and evaluating the action, to decide what further actions should be taken based on the participant reflections. The arts-based and reflective data we generated in our action learning group was analysed through a critical transformative lens. The findings of this study indicated that collaborative methods such as critical service-learning in teacher education can be one tool through which academics, pre- and in-service teachers can reflect and transform their understanding of social justice in education. Through the reflections, they can develop their social justice praxis. This study can help teachers and higher education institutions to use critical service-learning to improve their learning and teaching to make it more socially just and contextually relevant.