ARTICLE IN PRESS

Teaching and Teacher Education 22 (2006) 986–997

www.elsevier.com/locate/tate

Teacher education for a democratic society in England

and South Africa
Clive Harbera,, Jeff Serfb
a
School of Education, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK
b
School of Education, University of Wolverhampton, Walsall Campus, Gorway Road, Walsall, West Midlands WS1 3BD, UK

Abstract

This paper considers the role of teacher education in England and South Africa in relation to education for democratic
citizenship. It argues that teacher education should play a positive role in this respect but there has often been a
contradiction between the structures and practices of teacher education and democratic forms of education. The paper
analyses teacher education policy in both countries in the light of these arguments. It then goes on to discuss the practice of
teacher education in both countries in relation to existing literature and evidence and interviews with student teachers at
two universities in England and two in South Africa.
r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Teacher education; Democracy; Citizenship; England; South Africa

1. Introduction every 4 or 5 years in an election. While democracy

Both England and South Africa describe them-
selves as democracies. While this obviously entails
the existence of the formal structures and processes
of democracy at the national or macro level such as
free elections, a choice among political parties, a
free and diverse media and the right to freedom of
speech, democracy is not possible without demo-
crats. Democracy is only sustainable in a supportive
political culture where a sufficient proportion of the
population have a high commitment to democratic
values, skills and, particularly, behaviours. This is
based on an understanding of democracy that goes
beyond the minimum ritual of voting (or not voting)
Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 121 414 4841.
E-mail addresses: c.r.harber@bham.ac.uk (C. Harber),
J.M.Serf@wlv.ac.uk (J. Serf).
does require an informed citizenry capable of
making genuine political choices, it is reinforced
by a fuller and deeper notion of democracy that
forms the basis of a democratic society in which
people actually behave in a democratic manner in
their daily interactions.
Moreover, democracy is not genetic, it is learned
behaviour. There is nothing in our genes to
programme us as democrats or dictators at birth.
Therefore education must have a clear idea of the
sort of democratic person it hopes to cultivate.
What are the characteristics of such a person?
Somebody described as democratic would, for
example, celebrate social and political diversity,
work for and practice mutual respect between
individuals and groups, regard all people as having
equal social and political rights as human beings,
respect evidence in forming their own opinions and

0742-051X/$ - see front matter r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tate.2006.04.018
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
C. Harber, J. Serf / Teaching and Teacher Education 22 (2006) 986–997
respect the opinions of others based on evidence, be
open to changing one’s mind in the light of new
evidence and possess a critical and analytical stance
towards information. The democratic citizen would
possess a proclivity to reason, open-mindedness and
fairness and the practice of cooperation, bargaining,
compromise and accommodation.
If formal education is one important agency that
can help to foster and develop such characteristics,
then it can be argued that its organisation should
reflect democracy in its daily practices as democratic
values and behaviours are learned as much by
experience as by hearing or reading about them.
Education could offer opportunities for democratic
participation and for the learning of democratic
political skills and values in practice in terms of
institutional and curriculum organisation. These
opportunities, or their authoritarian opposite, affect
teachers of all subjects and at all levels as we have
argued in a book which helped stimulate the
research reported here (Carter, Harber, & Serf,
2003, Chapters 1, 4 and 5). If schools are to be
structured and operate in such a way, then do
teachers need to learn ways of working democrati-
cally in both the whole school and the classroom as
an integral part of their teacher education, given
that their previous experience in school and higher
education will not necessarily have prepared them?
Yet teacher education has been characterised by
the ‘myth of the liberal college’—that is the myth
that there is a contradiction between the liberal,
progressive and democratic college or university on
the one hand and the traditional, conservative and
authoritarian school on the other. (The nature and
origins of the predominantly authoritarian structure
of formal schooling globally is discussed in more
detail in Harber, 2004, Chapter 2). This myth
suggests that student teachers are exposed to the
more radical, democratic forms of teaching and
learning during their courses in higher education
but are rapidly re-socialised into more authoritarian
understandings and practices during their teaching
practice and their subsequent employment in
education. Rather than there being a contradiction
between the two, in terms of power over what is
taught and learned, how and when—let alone the
contradiction between ‘do as I say and do as I do’—
it is argued that teacher education is often an
authoritarian preparation for teaching in schools
(Harber, 1994, 1997, Chapter 4). Moreover, it can
also be argued that education for democratic
citizenship needs to employ a critical social and
987
political perspective examining the nature of the
social structures that shape our lives, for example,
the economy, ‘race’, gender and power structures.
This paper examines the extent to which educa-
tion for democracy is supported at the both the
policy and practice level in teacher education in
England and South Africa and then explores the
views of a sample of students in the two countries
on issues relating to democracy in general and to
teacher education in particular. South Africa was
chosen as the basis for comparison because it is a
newly democratic country with its own international
significance and because it provides an interesting
contrast with a more established democracy such as
England. English is widely spoken and there are
many historical, political, cultural and economic
links between the two countries. The interviews
were carried out as part of a project supported by
Teachers in Development Education/Birmingham
Development Education Centre.
2. Policy on teacher education in England and South
Africa
All decisions about education are political deci-
sions and a shared feature of recent years in both
England and South Africa is the increasing role
politicians have played in teacher education. The
main reasons for such interventions vary between
the two countries, but the two systems have at least
one aspect in common; the perceived need for the
education system to promote democracy and
educate its future citizens accordingly. In South
Africa the restructuring of post-apartheid education
involved introducing a system that prepares learners
for a role in the new democracy. In England
education for democratic citizenship was introduced
to respond to an apparent lack of political aware-
ness and interest, especially amongst younger
members of society.
This is not to say that it has only been in the past
10 or so years that politicians have attempted to
influence how teachers have been prepared for the
classroom. For example, the education system and
its teachers had a crucial role in supporting the
political, economic and social structures of apart-
heid in pre-1994 South Africa (Carter et al., 2003,
Chapters 1 and 2). However, it must also be noted
that some within the system played a significant role
in bringing down apartheid. What is a more recent
explicit goal in both countries is the aim of
educating for democratic citizenship.
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988 C. Harber, J. Serf / Teaching and Teacher Education 22 (2006) 986–997
This goal has generally been welcomed by
educationalists and non-educationalists from across
the political spectrum, but what is questioned
relatively infrequently is the nature of the democ-
racy that we are educating our learners for and what
their role is to be in such a society. Few would be
foolhardy enough to argue for an education system
that did not support democracy, but it is necessary
to get beyond democracy being bracketed with
‘motherhood and apple pie’.
Carr and Hartnett (2002, Chapter 2) provide a
very useful summary of what is at the heart of this
debate and offer us two conceptions of democracy.
The first is democracy as a form of popular power,
where people actually rule themselves by participat-
ing equally in the exercise of power; the second is
democracy as a representative system of political
decision making. The demands on the citizens of
each type of democracy are different. For example,
in the former citizens need to be able to participate
directly in public decision making by bringing
political, economic and social institutions under
genuine democratic control, whilst in the latter the
citizen’s role is to legitimise the decisions of those,
usually from a political elite, elected into office. One
may assume that if the demands on the citizens of
each type of democracy are different, then the
preparation such citizens receive, which includes the
education system, is also different. The former
assumes an explicit attempt by the education system
to engage in education for democratic citizenship.
One of the challenges facing South African
educators following the 1994 election was to
implement what was known as ‘People’s Educa-
tion’, an educational policy that had been debated
and refined in opposition during the apartheid
years. Fundamental to the strategy was a clear
belief that education has an essential and unique
political role to play in the transformation of South
African society. This is a role in which the aim of
education should be ‘to enable a democratic, free,
equal, just and peaceful society to take root and
prospery on the basis that all South Africans
without exception share the same inalienable rights,
equal citizenship and common destiny, and that all
forms of bias (especially racial, ethnic and gender)
are dehumanising’. (Department of Education,
1995, p. 22).
Post-1994 South African governments have ex-
amined the structures and practices of the education
system, reviewing its contribution to the aims of
preparing its people for citizenship and nationhood,
whilst celebrating the rich diversity and heritage of
the country. At least one clear-cut conclusion has
been reached—‘education does not exist simply to
serve the market, but to serve society’ (Department
of Education, 2001a, p. iv). It is essential that in an
inclusive and participatory democracy decisions are
made on the basis of transparent criteria and the
South African government has been explicit in
stating how the educational system is to be linked to
the Constitution.
For the purpose of this discussion, which focuses
on teacher education, one document in particular
that has been published by the South African
Department of Education which reflects the extent
to which such fundamental values may be manifest
in educational policies and practices. In February
2000, the Norms and Standards for Educators were
published, which detail the roles and their asso-
ciated set of applied competences (norms) and
qualifications (standards) for those who educate in
public schools, further education and teacher
training institutions. Qualification requires teachers
to demonstrate applied competence in seven role
areas and the norms and standards provide exit level
outcomes for all initial educator qualifications. The
seven roles are:
 Learning mediator
 Interpreter and designer of learning programmes
and materials
 Leader, administrator
 Scholar, researcher and lifelong learner
 Community, citizenship and pastoral role
 Assessor
 Learning area/subject/discipline/phase specialist
Outcomes for each of the roles are detailed and
one would expect some insights into the type of
citizen and the nature of South African democracy
envisaged to be found, particularly in the Commu-
nity, citizenship and pastoral role. For example, here
educators are required to demonstrate their ability
to develop ‘a critical, ethical and committed
political attitude’ in their learners, as well as display
‘an appreciation of, and respect for, people of
different values, beliefs, practices and cultures’.
Other competence statements include ‘understand-
ing various approaches to education for citizen-
ship with particular reference to South Africa as
a diverse, developing constitutional democracy’
and ‘critically analysing the degree to which the
school curriculum addresses barriers to learning,
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C. Harber, J. Serf / Teaching and Teacher Education 22 (2006) 986–997
environmental and human rights issues’ and suggest
that the fundamental values are reflected within this
role of the teacher.
It is perhaps the requirement that qualified
teachers must demonstrate their ability to develop
‘a critical, ethical and committed political attitude’
in their learners that suggests that it is the first of
Carr and Hartnett’s models of democracy the
writers of the Norms and Standards document
would wish to encourage.
While post-apartheid education in South Africa,
including teacher education, has drawn heavily on
an outcome-based approach and emphasised com-
petencies (Sayed, 2002), these have been much more
broadly defined than the rather narrow behaviour-
ism of competencies in England (Harber, 2001;
Whitty & Willmott, 1995) even being referred to as
‘transformational competencies’.
To understand the current status and practice of
teacher education in the UK some appreciation of
recent history is required. The past 20 or so years
have seen all aspects of education in England and
Wales, including initial teacher education (ITE),
subjected to similar factors that have affected other
public services; namely, the seemingly conflicting
trends of increasing central control over curriculum
whilst at the same time apparently decentralising
decision-making in other ways. This process had its
origins in the dominant political view of much of the
1980s and 1990s that there was a need to challenge
the vested interests of professionals who, it was
argued, ran such public services in their own
interests rather than those of the public and had
failed to respond to the needs of the nation. For
example, in 1984 the Council for Accreditation of
Teacher Education (CATE) was established which
resulted in the requirement that ITE courses comply
with published national criteria. The criteria were
modified throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and as
higher education institutions (HEIs) found their
autonomy increasing restricted, various government
initiatives introduced a diversity of routes by which
teachers could enter the classroom. For example,
the licensed and articled teachers schemes, the
opportunity for non-HEIs to established School-
Centred Initial Teacher Training Schemes (SCITTS)
and the introduction of the Graduate and Register
Teacher Programmes were amongst the moves
designed to create a market in ITE.
Whilst it is possible to argue that the development
of SCITTS and employment-based (school-based)
routes into teaching have had relatively little impact
989
on the nature of teacher education as practised in
HEIs, two forces of increasing central control have
significantly influenced all aspects of ITE. In 1996,
the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED)
found its powers of inspection extended from
maintained provision for 5–11 year olds to encom-
pass ITE and the price of ‘failing’ an Ofsted
inspection had draconian implications for any
HEI, including a drastic reduction in target
numbers (as providers of ITE can only recruit up
to a centrally decided figure) or closure of any
course that failed to meet the criteria (Wilkin, 1996).
Further control came through the establishment
of the Teacher Training Agency (TTA). The
Secretary of State for Education at the time made
the government’s intentions explicit.
The college-based parts of the training must be
fully relevant to classroom practice. The acid test
must be whether or not the models they offer can
actually be made to work effectively by the
average teacher in the real classroom. That is the
way to break hold of the dogmas about teaching
method and classroom organisation which are
now being challenged not only by me but by
other people. (DES, 1992, Para 2).
The establishment of the TTA, with its respon-
sibility for central funding for all ITE provision and
for publishing new accreditation criteria (thus,
replacing CATE), was another way of increasing
schools’ responsibility for controlling and organis-
ing ITE whilst reducing HEIs’ role. However, as
Blake (1994, p. 55) pointed out, ‘The government’s
proposals were damaging and wrongheaded’, and
posed a threat to the status and integrity of the
teaching profession, as
yfor the first time, the state, not a professional
accreditation body, has laid down the curriculum
of a university-based course of professional
education, (Edwards, Gilroy, & Hartley, 2002,
p. 73).
Once operational, the TTA played a significant
part, together with Ofsted, in developing a series of
government Circulars that gave clear, and some
would say dictatorial, frameworks of criteria that
HEIs and other ITE providers had to satisfy if they
wished to ‘pass their Ofsted inspection’ and main-
tain their accreditation. Hill (1994) stated that the
major effect of such specific circumscription of ITE
course content is to de-theorise, de-critique and de-
intellectualise ITE courses and new teachers.
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At present in England DfES Circular 02/02
Qualifying to teach (TTA, 2002) details the profes-
sional standards student teachers must achieve if
they are to qualify to teach in state, publicly funded
schools. As with South Africa’s Norms and
Standards, 02/02’s Standards are exit standards.
There is no English equivalent of the South African
Manifesto on Values, Education and Democracy
which provides a comprehensive and detailed
account of how democracy can be applied to all
sectors of education, (Department of Education,
2001b). While the National Curriculum for England
(1999) does make reference to ‘education as a route
toy a healthy and just democracy’ it is not
developed in any meaningful way in the documents.
02/02’s Standards are presented in three sections,
although their inter-relatedness is and must be
acknowledged. The three sections are:
1. Professional values and practice—which outline
the attitudes and commitment to be expected of a
qualified teacher.
2. Knowledge and understanding—requiring newly
qualified teachers (NQTs) to be confident and
authoritative in the subjects they teach and to
have a clear understanding of how pupils should
progress and what teachers should expect of
them.
3. Teaching—relating to the skills of planning,
monitoring and assessment, and teaching and
class management.
Within each section Standards or competences
are detailed and here it is possible to see that NQTs
are required to demonstrate behaviour that may be
supportive of democratic values. However, direct
links to democracy are generally less explicit than in
the South African Norms and Standards document.
In the section outlining Professional values and
practice, students are required to demonstrate high
expectations of all pupils, respecting their social,
cultural, linguistic, religious and ethnic back-
grounds, and be committed to raising the educa-
tional achievement of all. Further, they must treat
pupils consistently, and with respect and considera-
tion, demonstrating the positive values, attitudes
and behaviour they expect their pupils to emulate.
Student teachers must also contribute to and share
responsibility in the corporate life of the school.
Whilst such values and practice are not incompa-
tible with education for democracy, there is no
direct reference to developing a commitment to a
democratic school or society, as there is in the
Norms and Standards.
English state schools are charged with teaching
the National Curriculum and, depending on the age
of the pupils in their care, guidelines or statutory
programmes of study in citizenship education are
detailed that teachers must implement. Student
teachers are required to be familiar with such course
outlines (Knowledge and understanding—02/02).
One way that Circular 02/02 is different to its
predecessors is the greater emphasis that is placed
preparing NQTs to ensure the inclusion of all pupils
in the educational process. This is reflected in the
above details from the section on Professional
values and practice. However, other Standards refer
to planning for pupils from all ethnic groups and to
supporting pupils whose first or home language is
not English and taking account of varying interests,
experiences and achievements of boys and girls, and
pupils from different cultural and ethnic groups.
Students must recognise and respond to equal
opportunities issues as they arise in the classroom
by, for instance, challenging stereotyped views.
Unlike Norms and Standards, Circular 02/02
lacks any explicit statement as to the political
structures its future citizens are to live in—such
detail is left to the guidelines and programmes of
study, plus supporting documentation. Neither does
02/02 give us any specific statements as to the
political structures pupils are to be educated in.
Obviously teachers are to model positive attitudes
and behaviour as they treat all pupils with respect
and consideration. However, it lacks the compre-
hensive and detailed commitment to a fuller notion
of democracy of the Norms and Standards docu-
ment and tends to reflect Carr and Hartnett’s
second, more restricted notion of democracy.
3. Teacher education and education for democracy in
England and South Africa
So to what extent does teacher education actually
prepare teachers to educate in a democratic
manner? This section will discuss evidence from
England first and then South Africa. As argued
above, if teacher education is to prepare teachers for
teaching education for democratic citizenship then
its processes should provide student teachers with
congruent experience of operating democratically,
of having some say over the content and nature of
their course. This is precisely what happened on one
teacher education course for social science teachers
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C. Harber, J. Serf / Teaching and Teacher Education 22 (2006) 986–997
in England in the 1980s which began with a
discussion of a number of possible ways in which
the course could be run, all involving students in
decision-making to some extent. However, one
option which many groups chose was what was
termed a ‘democratic learning cooperative’ where
students decided completely on the curriculum of
the course, when chosen topics would be covered,
how and by whom (Harber & Meighan, 1986).
However, the advent of much greater centralised
control over teacher education in England through
the TTA and Ofsted (government inspectors) would
make such an approach much more difficult now.
Discussing the democratically organised course just
described above, for example, some writers have
commented that:
In today’s climate, such radical action would be
accepted only in certain modified ways. Never-
theless, some way forward must be found if we
are to escape the negative mechanistic manage-
rialism that characterises at least some of the
current practice in teacher education (Davies,
Gregory, & Riley, 1999, p. 114).
However, the content of teacher education is also
important as students on ITE courses need to
engage with key forms of inequality that challenge
the development of a more democratic society—
racism, sexism, homophobia, disability discrimina-
tion, etc. A short document entitled Training
Teachers for Tomorrow put out by the Development
Education Association noted the importance of
‘Being able to imagine a world in which there is
peace, justice, equity and opportunity for all to
achieve their full potential’ and added:
To create such a world will take hard work.
Initial Teacher Education providers have a
responsibility to ensure that future teachers are
equipped to understand the issues that face our
globalised society are enabled and motivated to
promote a more equitable and sustainable world
with their pupils (1999, p. 4).
The strong suggestion in this document is that
ITE is currently not doing enough to tackle such
issues with student teachers. Indeed, a survey of 187
primary and secondary ITE students in Wales found
that, while a majority supported the idea that global
citizenship issues should have a high priority in
teacher education, secondary education and pri-
mary education, only a third felt that they could
contribute to global citizenship education (Robbins,
991
Francis, & Elliott, 2003). A survey of 400 post-
graduate students broadly representative of ITE
students in England using questionnaires and inter-
views (Wilkins, 1999, 2001) generally suggested that,
while many students had generally tolerant atti-
tudes, up to one in ten had racist attitudes and
others complained of ideas such as anti-racism or
anti-sexism being ‘shoved down their throats’.
Cynicism about politics was widespread. A quarter
believed tension was inevitable when different races
lived together. A fifth thought black people did not
do enough to embrace British culture and more than
a third believed positive discrimination had gone
too far. The author of the report warned that unless
ITE courses helped students to understand concepts
like social justice, attempts to introduce education
for democratic citizenship into British schools
would fail to make an impact—‘ythe presence of
a significant minority displaying intolerant values
together with the ambivalence of a larger portion of
a larger sample to other key indicators, suggest that
this is an issue which requires careful consideration
by initial teacher training institutions’ (Wilkins,
2001, p. 18). However, among the students ‘There
was a clear feeling of teachers being under pressure
to play safe, and steer clear of controversial and
sensitive issues, a finding familiar from other
research in this area (Wilkins, 1999, p. 228).
What about existing teachers—has their teacher
education contributed to being able to educate for a
democratic society? A national survey of 679
teachers found that citizenship education for
democracy ‘barely figures as a curricular concern’.
The ability to handle the processes and content of
teaching controversial issues in the classroom is
important in education for democracy. However,
the teachers in the survey had a de-politicised or
apolitical view of citizenship and overwhelmingly
saw citizenship as about meeting our obligations to
fellow members of a community. It was perceived as
being about active concern for the welfare of others,
Time and time again the language of caring,
unselfishness, co-operation and demonstrating
respect is used to give substance to the distin-
guishing characteristics of a good citizen, be the
context school or the wider communityyit is
perhaps not surprising that the notion of
participation in the community emerged as a
key theme on how one discharged the responsi-
bilities of being a good citizen (Davies et al.,
1999, p. 50–51).
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992 C. Harber, J. Serf / Teaching and Teacher Education 22 (2006) 986–997
Yet,
Issues to do with racism, sexism, embracing one’s
democratic responsibilities, recognising the de-
mocratic rights of others, encouragement of an
awareness of national and international issues,
the importance of human rights concerns, the
significance of parliamentary democracy are
suggested as part of a school curriculum recog-
nising an obligation to prepare young people to
be citizens in their community (Davies et al.,
1999, p. 55–56).
The teachers were reluctant to get involved in
teaching about controversial views and one of the
most common ways that teachers thought schools
could promote good citizenship was by encouraging
pupils to pick up litter, though obeying school rules,
coming to class on time and taking pride in your
school were also seen as important.
In South Africa at the end of apartheid an audit
of teacher education noted that as a result of
apartheid ‘The quality of teacher education in the
sector is very uneven. There are a range of
approaches to teaching and learning but the
dominant approach is authoritarian and content-
based’ (Department of Education, 1995, p. 52).
What has happened since? Generally, there has been
a contraction in the number of institutions offering
teacher education with the closure of many second-
ary level colleges of education and the concentration
of teacher education in higher education. The extent
to which this promotes change in the direction of
greater education for democracy, however, is open
to question. One study of teacher education at the
three universities in the Western Cape talks of a
‘minimalist compliance’ with the new policy, with
the main concern being that their programmes were
at least in line with national policy but with
resistance among teacher educators to coming
together to talk about a common vision and a
hostile attitude towards being told how to train
teachers by others. Moreover,
The general picture emerged of teacher educators
who were busy, who were trying to juggle many
interests, who were keen to reap the rewards of
research and publication rather than to be
involved in curriculum development and who
were often not held accountable for their courses
(Robinson, 2003, p. 31).
There is also a view, encountered on a number of
occasions by one of the present writers that the
institution was already operating in the manner set
out by COTEP. Samuel (2002) makes the following
comment in relation to the University of Durban
Westville in KwaZulu Natal, for example,
ythe UDW staff, perhaps erroneously or
arrogantly, believed that the internal innovations
that had been introduced in their curriculum over
the number of years prior to the release of these
policy frameworks were directly in harmony with
the intentions of the teacher education policy
designers (2002, p. 404).
Even in those institutions with a stated commit-
ment to a more democratic approach to teacher
education, there are still problems about translating
policy into practice. Moletsane (1998) interviewed
staff and sought the views of students on an ITE
course in a Department of Education committed to
a more democratic approach at the University of
Natal, Durban. On the one hand there were more
positive signs of democracy than there had been in
South African teacher education in the past. A
variety of interactive and participatory teaching and
learning methods were used on the course and
students were encouraged to analyse critically so
that they would be able to teach their learners to do
the same. According to other staff and students,
racial and cultural tolerance was promoted on the
course and teaching and learning methods encour-
aged and affirmed a plurality of opinions from the
diverse group of students in the class. Classes
provided an opportunity for self-expression and
open debate by students that helped them to find
their own voice in a safe and flexible classroom
environment. Use of assessment procedures such as
projects and continuous assessment marked a move
away from formal testing and examinations into
methods more based on democratic principles. On
the other hand, there were aspects of the course that
did not help to fulfil its democratic aspirations.
Within the constraints of increased workload, it was
often necessary for staff to view students as clients
who required efficiency and good service for their
time and money. According to both staff and
students this led to too much structure in the
curriculum and less student involvement in its
development. The timetable followed a rigid struc-
ture and allowed very little flexibility in the topics
discussed. While the democratic election of class
representatives provided structural space for stu-
dents’ voices in the department, the students were
critical of the fact that they were not invited to
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C. Harber, J. Serf / Teaching and Teacher Education 22 (2006) 986–997
participate in departmental meetings or any other
forum with decision-making powers concerning
their course.
As in England, existing South African teachers do
not seem particularly well equipped to take on
education for democracy. A study of South African
teachers by Jessop and Penny (1998) found that there
was considerable nostalgia for the old order in which
children respected elders and certainty prevailed and
a suspicion of new and radical democratic values.
A study of black teachers in Gauteng in 1994
suggested that the teachers had internalised the
modes of thinking and behaviour that had been
expected of them under apartheid and therefore took
for granted the structures within which they worked
and regarded compliance as necessary for survival
and success (Modiba, 1996). Related to this is a
tendency for South African teachers to see knowledge
as composed of uncontestable and objective facts to
be transmitted for memorisation. Harely et al’s study
of teachers in KwaZulu Natal suggested that as a
result of this view of knowledge the teachers were less
likely to recognise learners’ own knowledge as
important and were less likely to use interactive
teaching methods such as classroom discussion and
debate, therefore closing off opportunities for devel-
oping critical and creative thinking (Harley, Barasa,
Bertram, Mattson, & Pillay, 2000, p. 295).
Furthermore, despite a degree of desegregation of
schools there are still serious problems in terms of
teachers’ ability and willingness to attempt to end
racial discrimination and prejudice in schools.
Sexism and sexual harassment is widespread in
South African schools and male teachers are
significant culprits (Carter et al., 2003, Chapters 6
and 9; Harber, 2001, Chapter 2; Harber, 2004,
Chapter 7). Moreover, South Africa is faced with an
HIV/AIDS epidemic and this is one crucial but
controversial area where schools need to play a
positive role through open and honest classroom
discussion of sexual practices and gender relations.
Yet there is considerable resistance among teachers
to the classroom approaches required. The Minister
of Education has, for example, said that
There are many teachers who are uncomfortable
with issues of sex, sexuality, sexual preference
and condoms. They prefer to take the easy way
out, which is to say that HIV/AIDS will be halted
when pupils ‘‘behave’’ and practice abstinence
and delayed sexual initiation (cited in Motala,
Vally, & Modiba, 1999, p. 28).
993
Four days after this speech at an in-service
training session for 200 teachers who were given a
talk on sexually transmitted diseases, half walked
out because of the explicit nature of the slides.
When the next lecturer spoke about contraception
and sexual protection the remainder of the audi-
ence, except for about eight people, got up and left
the hall. One of the few teachers that remained said,
‘I couldn’t believe it. How can we expect to teach
our children about the realities of a national crisis
when we want to ignore those realities ourselves’
(Dyanti, 1999).
4. Teacher education students and education for
democracy
In order to explore the extent to which teacher
education contributed to education for democracy
interviews were held with ITE students at two
university education departments in England and
two in South Africa. Students from one of the
English universities were all training to be history/
citizenship/geography teachers in secondary schools
while those at the second university were also
training be secondary teachers, but in the subjects
of design and technology, English, business studies,
maths and modern foreign languages. The South
African students were all training to be either
primary or secondary teachers and also covered a
wide range of school subjects. All were interviewed
in small groups ranging from 3 to 5 between May
and August 2003. Altogether 20 students were
interviewed in England (10 at each institution) and
18 in South Africa (8 at one institution and 10 at the
other). The group of 38 students contained male
and female students from a variety of English ethnic
backgrounds (White, Afro-Caribbean, Asian) while
the South African students were, to use South
African terminology and categories, from black
African, Indian and White backgrounds—there
were no coloured students. While the students
therefore came from a wide variety of backgrounds,
they were self-selecting and cannot be said to
reliably ‘represent’ ITE students in both countries.
However, the aim of the research was not to make
statistically reliable generalisations but to gain more
in-depth insight into, and understanding of, the
attitudes and experiences of the students. The semi-
structured group interviews therefore used open-
ended questions in order stimulate discussion as well
as individual answers and to allow for the inter-
viewers to probe answers further.
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994 C. Harber, J. Serf / Teaching and Teacher Education 22 (2006) 986–997
The students were initially asked ‘Has your
teacher education course prepared you to teach
education for democratic citizenship? (In both
countries all teachers are expected to teach elements
of citizenship education either in a specified subject
or through their own subject). One of the history/
citizenship students from England noted that some
good ideas had been provided that could be used for
this purpose but that she had come from a back-
ground in youth work so ‘I’ve almost had to be
taught the other angle of it—how not to be
democratic’. She felt she would be prepared to ‘give
it a go’ but had reservations of its success in terms of
‘the whole structure of the system’. It is often said
that student teachers bring with them into teacher
education their own views on teaching based on
their own experiences and this was confirmed by one
student who said,
I mean at the beginning of the course, I had the
conception I’d be spending most of my time
standing at the front lecturing, but now I feel a
lot more confident and prepared for working
with groups, small group intervention, that sort
of thing, talking to individuals yI feel more
confident with participative lessons.
A maths student referred to her A-level sociology
course (rather than her teacher education course) as
having provided her with both confidence and ideas
for teaching citizenship, whilst a student from the
other university argued that he could do it because
he had done sociology,
y but if I hadn’t done my sociologyyI mean, to
be honest, I think citizenship is a social science
and I think you need proper training on citizen-
ship, I don’t think just anybody could teach
citizenship.
A geography student supported this and said that
he did not feel particularly equipped,
I know I’d have to do quite a lot of work to
prepare it. I mean, I don’t mind doing that
because it’s something that I enjoy and really find
interesting and worthwhile to do, but I don’t feel
we’ve had much on this course beyond the
geography, beyond my subject.
However, some of the students actually training
to be citizen teachers felt more confident and
comfortable at the prospect. For example, one said,
I feel as prepared as I can be at this stage in my
life with my training. I got quite a lot of
opportunities to teach citizenship at my place-
mentyI was given quite a lot of freedom to try
and do things the way I wanted to do themy,
though another admitted that she ‘didn’t know
how to bring out the active learning part even
though I know the content.
Students who were not trained as citizenship
teachers also frequently voiced this sentiment and
voiced concerns about their courses,
I have had very little experience of it (citizenship)
in my two practices reallyy’ and ‘In the last
school as far as they were concerned citizenship
was the latest government buzzword and it will
be here today and gone tomorrow.
Further, some found it relatively easy to excuse
themselves from the responsibility of educating their
pupils to be citizens,
You’ve got so much to cover on your own
curriculum, that’s what you stick to, isn’t it?
In one of the South African institutions, the
response to this question brought out a strong
reaction in terms of the contradictions between ‘do
as I say and do as I do’. One student teacher noted
the contradiction between the way that teachers say
pupils are to behave in school and the way they
themselves behave and went on to say that,
And I’ve found the same here. I personally get
frustratedy there’s all these courses but it is
almost you are told this is how you must teach,
this is how you must do this, but they don’t do it
themselves. I came here really motivated to want
to become a teacher and I’d go as far as to say
everything that they have ever taught me is I
don’t want to be a teacher.
One of the English students also argued that ‘do
as I say, not as I do’ was true in his experience.
A lot of schools pay lip servicey there might be
a school council. At both of the schools I taught
in there was a school council, but the impact has
not been y great’. One design and technology
student contributed, ‘I think they (schools) try
and have a little tilt at it (being democratic), but
when you actually look at it, it is fed from the top
down.
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C. Harber, J. Serf / Teaching and Teacher Education 22 (2006) 986–997
Further, the student used the interview experience
to contemplate his experience in school;
I think for me it really made me question whether
or not our education system is democratic. And it
isn’t, it’s autocratic and all Head teachers have a
very autocratic style of ruling. In one school the
teachers are fed up, the pupils have absolutely no
say in what goes on in their education what so
ever.
So in the opinion of this student one school is
educating its pupils for ‘participation in a democ-
racy’ in a far from democratic manner.
This student was not the only one to express an
element of cynicism as regards the theory and reality
of citizenship education in England;
y the government doesn’t want us to know
about it, because if we have no knowledge they
can carry on and do what hey really want (whilst)
they appear to be democratic because they give
us a vote. But in realistic terms they don’t want
us to have too much knowledge of how it all
works and what’s going on in the world and in
society because it’s dangerous for them.
The South African students noted that the
lecturers told them how to present well in class
but did not do it themselves. One student said that
he had just come from a lecture where the lecturer
said that it was important to grasp the learner’s
attention but he spoke in a very flat tone. Some
lecturers were also disorganised and unpunctual yet
they come and judge students on teaching practice.
Moreover, some of the staff had not actually been
teachers themselves,
‘I’ve come here thinking I want to become a
teacher and I’m going to get lectures off people
who have taught, who have taken an interes-
tyyet it does not happen’.
All in all ‘There’s no role model’.
The students were then asked whether their
course had prepared them to teach controversial
issues in the classroom. The responses from the
English students who were training to teach history/
citizenship/geography were that some remembered
that there was a section in the general course
handbook they were given at the beginning but that
they had not had a seminar explicitly on the topic,
though they would like one, and did not really feel
sufficiently prepared and confident as they had not
experienced it. This seems to be an important gap.
995
One of the students had taught about the Iraq war
on teaching practice but noted that teaching about
such issues by teachers who did not know what they
were doing could be ‘very dangerous’. When asked
how other, non-humanities students on the course
would feel about teaching controversial issues, one
student replied ‘I think they’d run a mile’, though
clarifying that she was mainly talking about maths
and science students. This comment was echoed by
one design and technology student who stated, ‘I’d
never even thought that it’s all about how to teach
controversial issues’.
The South African students said that they had
done sessions on relevant teaching methods such as
classroom discussion but they also said that they
had not examined how to handle controversial
issues in the classroom.
When asked whether their course had made them
familiar with ant-racist and anti-sexist educational
strategies, the students at the English Universities said
that there had bee an equal opportunities section in
the ‘whole school issues’ course but that it was rather
‘idealistic’ and based on theory rather than practice
and would ‘probably be lost on some people’. These
students had also had some experience of this in their
methods courses in terms of the nature of their
subjects though one again made a comment echoed
by others that ‘how to deal with those issues in the
classroom is a different thing, isn’t it? We haven’t
really’. Masculinity as an issue did not seem to have
been discussed. The South African students had been
exposed to sessions on inclusion that involved
discussion of the politics and history of multi-racial
schools (though this was phrased in a way that
suggested academic input and not the discussion and
practice of school and classroom anti-racist strate-
gies). They did not seem to have discussed gender
issues, including those of masculinity, at all.
The final question concerned whether the teacher
education course had prepared them to teach about
sexuality e.g. in relation to HIV/AIDS and homo-
sexuality/homophobia. The English students unan-
imously said that they had encountered nothing on
their course in this regard,
That’s a big no-no. From a personal opinion I
obviously know about it because of personal
interest but I don’t think the course has prepared
anybody for homophobic comments, I don’t
think the course has prepared anybody for
dealing with issues around sex, sexual diseases
or anything.
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996 C. Harber, J. Serf / Teaching and Teacher Education 22 (2006) 986–997
One student described a the area as a ‘can of
worms’, another said that he did not want to
because of the potential embarrassment and another
that she would not know how to cope with the
intimate questions that would be asked. One student
had taught sexual health on teaching practice and
was surprised that it did not feel uncomfortable or
that different from teaching anything else. One
student commented that it sounded more like a
Personal, Social and Health Education issue,
though, while this is true, it is quite possible for
any teacher to have an involvement with PSHE.
Moreover, such issues are likely to be dealt with in
an individualised, coping, personal needs way in
such a course rather than also being set in a critique
of wider social structures that affect the lives of
individuals and which asks questions about the how
and why of social issues (Harber, 2002). Unlike the
students from England, the South African students
felt that their courses had informed them about
AIDS. However, none of the students, from either
country, said they had discussed homosexuality and
homophobia.
5. Conclusion
In both England and South Africa there are
concerns about public levels of support for democ-
racy—in England in terms of apathy and in South
Africa in terms of the problem of establishing
democracy as a permanent system of government.
In both countries formal education is seen as
potentially having a part to play in supporting and
promoting democracy. If schools are to do this then
teacher education should play a part in preparing
teachers accordingly. At the moment, based on the
interviews reported above, teacher education’s role
seems patchy at best. Serious contradictions appear
between the nature of teacher education provided
and the stated experience of student teachers in
relation to education for democratic citizenship.
In England, where education for citizenship is
now a compulsory part of the secondary curricu-
lum, only those students who specifically being
trained to teach citizenship exhibited any confidence
about teaching the subject yet for some time this will
be a small minority of the teaching profession. Most
citizenship education in schools will have to be
carried out by non-specialists. Moreover, a number
noted the contradiction between this aspect of
educational policy and the existing school organisa-
tion and educational policies that are currently
obstacles to education for democratic citizenship. In
particular, the students did not seem to be ready to
handle the teaching of controversial issues in the
classroom, a key aspect of any citizenship course
that is genuinely involved in political education as
opposed to more restricted notions of, for example,
community service. The responses from these
students suggest that their experience of teacher
education in England is at least reasonably con-
sistent with policy in that it reflects the indirect,
restricted and lukewarm approach of teacher
education policy documents to education for
democratic citizenship. In England, if teacher
education is to play a fuller part in promoting
education for democratic citizenship then policy
needs to clearer, more specific and more overt. The
content and practices of teacher education will have
to become more consistent with this increased
emphasis on education for democracy, particularly
in relation to teaching controversial issues, and a
greater proportion of students will need to be
involved. Lastly, schooling itself will need to be
perceived more strongly as a place where education
for democracy is actually possible and indeed
encouraged.
In South Africa, the gap between teacher educa-
tion policy and practice is wider. Policy documents
are overt and explicit in their support for education
for democracy. Yet the student teachers note the
contradictions between ‘do as I say and do as I
do’—lecturers do not provide a good role model for
the development of democratically professional
teachers. Moreover, in a society openly seeking to
transform its education system in a democratic
direction the gap in teacher education in relation to
teaching controversial issues is particularly serious
because all curriculum subject matter is potentially
controversial and education for democratic citizen-
ship cannot avoid the controversial. In South
Africa, the implementation of a democratic policy
framework seems hampered by inertia, inexperience
and other priorities in the teacher education system.
There is a need perhaps to ask ‘Who educates the
educators?’ ‘Who trains the trainers?’ Given the
policy context, how can a sufficient cadre of teacher
educators able to work in a democratic manner be
developed in South Africa?
Finally, the findings are particularly disturbing in
relation to social diversity. Few issues are as
controversial as race, gender and sexuality but, with
the exception of AIDS education in South Africa,
insufficient attention is being paid to these areas. On
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C. Harber, J. Serf / Teaching and Teacher Education 22 (2006) 986–997
masculinity, homosexuality and homophobia—
hardly trivial concerns in a democratic and pluralist
society—teacher education in both countries seems
to be silent.
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