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Senior and FET phases. The DBE (2019) explains that, in South Africa, there are two routes to qualify as a teacher. First, one can take a four-year Bachelor of Education degree (BEd). Secondly, a holder of a Bachelor’s degree with a one- year Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) qualifies to be a teacher. The participants were student teachers in the BEd programme.


UNDERSTANDING EAC AS A REFLECTIVE AND TRANSFORMATIVE PROCESS


In this study, the student teachers’ description of their preparation in EAC is framed in terms of the theoretical insights of the works of John Dewey (1933), Donald Schön (1987) and Henry Giroux (1998). Dewey (1933) argues that teacher education should emphasise the teacher’s involvement in reflective action as opposed to the routine that is a characteristic of the technicist view of ITE. Dewey (1933, p. 75) explains that reflective practice is the ‘active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge’. This process results in reflective practitioners embodying three distinct characteristics, namely, open-mindedness, responsibility and wholeheartedness. Aligned to Dewey (1933), for Schön (1987), reflective teaching is a continuous process of growth that involves the teacher acting, observing, inventing and testing classroom experiences. Schön (1987) explains that there are three forms of reflection, namely, reflection-for-action, which is the planning stage before an action is taken, reflection-in-action which takes place during the action itself and reflection- on-action that takes place after the action. Simply put, reflective practice is a process


Nhlanhla Mpofu and Mncedisi C. Maphalala


that facilitates student teachers’ thinking and doing in the act of teaching and is geared to improving their professional knowledge. In line with both Dewey (1933) and Schön (1987), Giroux (1998) argues that teachers are transformative intellectuals. As transformative intellectuals, it is imperative that student teachers actively exercise judgement on pedagogical, moral and ethical practices that allow effective teaching and learning to take place.


As a blend of these different theoretical insights, the following characteristics of reflective and transformative models of ITE are applied in this study. We were interested in the student teachers’ descriptions of reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action as they develop and transform knowledge on integrating language skills and disciplinary content. As such, we explored both lower (normative and technical knowledge of EAC) and higher levels (subjectivity and contextual practices of EAC) of reflection (Schön, 1987). That is, to suggest student teachers are reflective and transformative practitioners is to acknowledge that they are involved in cognitive and philosophical discussion of ‘knowing that’ and ‘knowing how’ (Van Manen, 1995, p. 42) about EAC. By drawing from these complementary theoretical understandings in the context of this study we acknowledged the student teachers as active, engaged, intellectual, relational and cognitive EAC practitioners. By locating the study in reflective and transformative practices, we acknowledge that student teachers can process their thinking about EAC knowledge development by describing how they were prepared as EAC practitioners and offering solutions on how their preparation practices could be improved in context.


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