Hopeful teacher education in South Africa: Towards a politics of humanity

CITATION: Waghid, Y. 2012. Hopeful teacher education in South Africa: Towards a politics of humanity, in B. Leibowitz (ed.). Higher Education for the Public Good: Views from the South. Stellenbosch: AFRICAN SUN MeDIA. 101-112. doi: 10.18820/9781928357056/08.The original publication is available from AFRICAN SUNMeDIA - www.sun-e-shop.co.zaINTRODUCTION: In this chapter I offer an account of Nussbaum’s politics of humanity to show how teacher education programmes can be remedied as the country’s universities endeavour to address the poor quality of teacher education programmes. Since the demise of apartheid education, the development of policy in relation to teacher education in South Africa has undergone major adjustments, and yet credible change in teacher education remains elusive. By far the most prominent conceptual and pragmatic change to which teacher education has been subjected points towards the cultivation of teachers who can enact their professions as democratic citizens. This implies that teachers ought to engender in learners a spirit of democratic citizenry that can imbue in them the virtues of dialogical engagement, connecting caringly with the other, and performing their tasks in a responsible manner. So it happens that current policy on teacher education accentuates the ‘roles’ of teachers in a post-apartheid dispensation along the lines of such democratic virtues.Publishers' versio