Building a scholarship of teacher education: insights from South Africa

Abstract

Teacher education is a relatively young field of scholarly inquiry that tends to react to policy changes rather than inform them. This paper uses the South African context to explore how a scholarship of teacher education can evolve in response to political and educational contestation. Drawing on Freire and Morrow, it shows how South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy created both the imperative and opportunity to rethink educational goals, institutional structures, and pedagogical practices. Key developments include the relocation of teacher education into universities, the establishment of research networks, and the creation of conceptual frameworks that are responsive to both local and global challenges. The paper argues that sustaining and advancing a scholarship of teacher education requires a strong collective voice, ongoing and critical engagement with policy, and empirical research that bridges conceptual rigour with the realities of classroom practice.