Abstract
The Constitution of South Africa envisions a socially just society. However, realising this requires an education context that amongst other things, celebrates and promotes cultural diversity. Widely known as the rainbow nation, South Africa is home to diverse cultures, both from within and from all over Africa and the rest of the world. This fact poses particular challenges to education, which is not only required to provide a multi-cultural educational context conducive to effective teaching and learning, but also to promote social justice. However, indications are that SA education fails dismally to achieve both ends. We argue that part of the reason for this failure is the inability of (pre-service) education students to understand, acknowledge and validate the intrinsic relationship that exists between culture and education. As such, they hamper efforts to realise social justice through education. In this paper we report on the perceptions regarding the relationship between culture and education of third- and fourth-year education students at a university in South Africa. We conducted quantitative research amongst a culturally diverse group of students; 266 in total. Findings suggest that students have a limited understanding of this relationship, in spite of the efforts both this university, as well as the education authorities’ attempts. The paper concludes with recommendations for enhancing sensitivity amongst education students about the relationship between culture and education, and the possible implications for social justice as a result of ignorance of this issue.
Highlights
Education is globally regarded as significant in addressing social ills, and in promoting social justice
These responses do not per se present a negative perception about the link between culture and education, they are neither optimistically positive and could potentially threaten the advancement of social justice imperatives in educational settings
The purpose of this article was to explore teacher education students’ understanding of the relationship between culture and education and the implication thereof for social justice. To achieve this purpose we briefly explored the concept culture, social justice and the relationship between education and culture
Summary
Education is globally regarded as significant in addressing social ills, and in promoting social justice. Within the South African (SA) context this is dominant as education aims to “redress past injustices ...” and “contribute to the eradication of poverty and the economic well-being of society”, and to “advance the democratic transformation of society, combat racism and sexism and all other forms of unfair discrimination and intolerance ...” (DoE, 1996a). This aim is derived from the SA Constitution (RSA, 1996: Preamble) which proposes to “[heal] the divisions of the past and to establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights”. Teacher education students should be prepared in such a way that they will be able to teach for social justice
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