Challenges in teacher education in South Africa: do teacher educators and teachers effectively prepare student teachers to perform their roles as educators?

Abstract

The Minimum Requirements for Teacher Education Qualifications provides criteria for designing curricula for initial teacher education. This policy emphasizes that the roles that teachers have to fulfill should be interpreted as functions carried out by the collective of teachers in a specific school.The purpose of this research was to explore how effective student teachers are prepared to fulfil their multiple roles as teachers. A qualitative research design was employed by making use of focus group interviews. The findings indicate that teacher educators and teachers do not model the required roles of teachers and therefore fail to prepare student teachers adequately to fulfill these roles. The findings from the data will be discussed in this paper.