Pedagogical discourse, teacher education programmes and social transformation in South Africa

Abstract

This paper focuses on pedagogical discourse, specifically that which is current in primary education in South Africa. It represents critical reflection on (rather than findings about) two research projects in primary schools in Cape Town in which the author was engaged. It shows how psychometry and the production of development as pedagogy inform the common sense understandings of how teachers go about their work. With a new political dispensation being negotiated in South Africa, it is argued that if the democratic education movement in South Africa wishes to give definition to the democratic ethos of People's Education for People's Power, current pedagogical discourse will hinder this process. A different form of pedagogy will require a different discourse, one which reflects a critical attitude to prevailing (oppressive) discursive practices about pedagogy. This requirement has direct implications for teacher education programmes.