Entangled Discourses: Pre-service Teachers Engage with Notions of Justice and Parity

Abstract

South African universities are currently tasked to consider how best to prepare students for working not only in a context of diversity but also in one of continuing segregation and inequality. We need to take into account people’s understandings, and the need to involve dialogue as they manoeuvre through entangled discourses. However, engaging with discourses of justice in South Africa necessitates engaging with the past, specifically apartheid, which many find discomforting. Based on Nancy Fraser’s work on participatory parity, the aim of this article is to present thoughts on how English Language Education pre-service teachers at a university in Johannesburg, in their final year of study, engage with notions of justice through the lens of parity, and how this is later enacted in moments of their teaching during their seven-week work practice teaching experience. Themes of resistance, pain, and discomfort emerge from interviews, as the teachers negotiate silences and visibility. These ideologies, however, are not always present in their teaching.