TEACHER EDUCATION DEADWOOD NOT CONSIDERED A HINDRANCE: REALITIES, A CASE OF ‘HALF BAKED’ PRIMARY TEACHERS

Development initiatives affirm the critical importance of teacher education and the role played by well-trained reflective teachers. However certain aspects of effective teacher education are not closely aligned to the subjects offered in the primary curriculum. Today teacher education should adequately prepare trainee teachers for the exact subject content they will teach in schools. Currently there are challenges in preparing teachers toward subjects’ specialisation. In making such observations qualitative research approaches were applied, mainly analysis of textual documentary sources of literature through constant comparison, note taking and coding data into themes, headings and subheadings. Research findings indicated that, all primary trainee school teachers in the 2.5. 2. programme specialise on a single major throughout their training, yet during teaching practice and after training they will be required to teach four-twelve subjects. This study concluded that, the current Zimbabwe teacher training programme is not adequately training primary teachers to be competent skilful teachers on all subjects offered in the primary school curriculum. Therefore there is a need to revisit the above concern. In alignment to the conclusion, this study recommends all primary teacher trainees to specialise in four major subject areas instead of specialising on a single major as currently prevailing. Article visualizations