Transforming Teacher Education in South Africa: a space‐time perspective

Abstract

> South Africa's most urgent and difficult project is to reconstruct all spheres of public life so as to establish enabling conditions for a flourishing and peaceful democracy. A viable education system with committed, competent and confident teachers is a primary condition for accomplishing these ends. This article offers a critical account of current attempts to transform teacher education and development. Against a sketch of inherited ways of using time and space in teacher education in South Africa, the article assesses change in three ‘spaces‘‐‐public space, evaluative space and pedagogical space‐‐and related changes in time. A fourth space of change‐‐institutional space‐‐is mentioned in so far as it affects the other three. I argue that the main direction of change is from insulated space and interrupted time to porous space and continuous time. While this direction has promising possibilities, it is not without pitfalls.