The article tracks key moments in teacher education policy and curriculum in South Africa from the 1970s to the present day. Political and social features of education in each decade are outlined, from a racialised and fragmented system of teacher education, to the imagining of alternatives, and the imperative for educational transformation. The…

While the meaning of democracy remains multi-faceted centuries after the concept was first conceived of and subsequently formulated, democratic principles have spread to the extent of bringing about democratisation in all fields of education. Thus, with this study we sought to examine the popular conception of democracy in mathematics-education…

This paper analyses the current state of postcolonial and decolonial science teaching, based on a systematic review of the literature, with a special focus on the European context. It shows that currently, a very narrow view on postcolonial science teaching prevails, limiting its scope to former colonies. A total of 227 articles published…

Early post-apartheid policies envisaged a South African teacher who had autonomy to make professional judgements based on their school context and learners' needs. However, over the last decade, the state has increasingly monitored learner achievement and teachers' work. In this paper, we show how the professional development activities provided…

There is no how-to recipe for implementing pedagogical approaches, as each school, learner and teacher has a unique perception of the nature of critical mathematics education. It is therefore the duty of educators and school administrators to cultivate critical teaching and learning experiences that can connect the standardised school curriculum…

This study aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis of the articles about values education in the Web of Science database. To this end, analyzes were provided of 254 articles deemed suitable for the analysis from the articles collected from the database. Bibliometric analysis was performed for the most used keywords, the most used words in the…

School leadership is fundamental to the educational functioning of schools and their improvements of results. The study employed a qualitative approach to explore school principals' leadership styles and the educational performance of learners in high- and low-performing schools in Vhembe District, Limpopo, South Africa. The participants were…

Curricular reform in South African schools, as initially encountered through outcomes based education (OBE), and most recently in CAPS, has been criticised and interrogated, if not for its epistemology, then for its political desirability. While justifiable questions were and continue to be asked about the pedagogical adaptability of teachers to…

This study addressed the knowledge gap regarding South African parents' view of their role in the education of young children as democratic citizens. The study was conducted with parents of children younger than 8 years in 2 multicultural primary schools in Gauteng, South Africa. The explanatory sequential mixed methods research design was used to…

This article is a response to a qualitative study that examined how the indigenous African notion of "ubuntu" informs how some school teachers in a Black township in South Africa conceptualize Western-oriented narratives of democracy. While the study acknowledges important differences in how ubuntu is understood and defined, the author…

Higher education transformation in South Africa, as correctly argued by Petro du Preez,Shan Simmonds and Anné Verhoef, should become more 'fluid ["and"] open-ended'. However, even more fluidity and open-endedness might not necessarily be sufficient in enacting transformation in the higher education realm. Consequently, in this article I…

My decade-long research on democracy and schooling in a Xhosa township has led to an examination of epistemological influences on democratic citizenship from Western and non-Western (i.e. African) perspectives. While Max Weber advanced the notion of an autonomous citizen within Western democratic states, different philosophical and cultural…

In view of the serious moral decay in South African society, this article reports on our research regarding the role of the school in the inculcation of citizenship values (as part of the brief of South African education). We regard a set of citizenship values consonant with a democratic dispensation to be a core component of a moral order…

Playing host to many leaders of South Africa's transition to democracy, the historic schools continue to contribute to the education of learners in disadvantaged rural communities. Within the leadership narratives of these schools are the lived daily experiences of female educational leaders whose voice has been largely absent from main stream…

Discourses and relations of child/adult and early education are super-permeated with ideas and practices of authority and boundary-making. In early years' practices, deeply important beliefs and assumptions about who or what has authority and who or what should create the boundaries of everyday activity often go unquestioned. This produces…