Changing Lives in Changing Times: Preservice Teacher Education in Postapartheid South Africa

Abstract

* This conceptual analysis addresses some of the challenges of preparing English language teachers during the reconstruction and development of the South African education system in the postapartheid society (after 1994). The legacy of the apartheid education system and its impact on language teaching and learning are the backdrop to the policy initiatives promulgated in 1997. The article describes what it means to educate teachers in a transforming society. The response to the problems of apartheid school education is to develop teachers who can view themselves critically as products of separatist ideologies within the school and the society and as agents for the achievement of new, liberating ideologies of teaching and learning languages within their (future) classrooms. In this way, teacher education can contribute to the renewal of the education system and the society in general.