Professional Development through Teacher Roles: Conceptions of Professionally Unqualified Teachers in Rural South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Abstract

Citation: Mukeredzi, T. G. (2013). Professional development through teacher roles: Conceptions of professionally unqualified teachers in rural South Africa and Zimbabwe. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 28(11),1-16. Retrieved from http://jrre.psu.edu/articles/28-11.pdfTeachers' conceptions of what they learn and how they professionally develop through their teaching roles are key to classroom practice and learner achievement because they influence teachers' pedagogic approaches and choice of materials, content, and learner activities. This article reports on some of the findings from a doctoral research project that explored what 12 professionally unqualified practicing teachers (PUPTs) learned and how they professionally developed through their teaching roles in rural South Africa and Zimbabwe. Drawing on concepts around teacher knowledge and professional development, qualitative data from interviews suggest that these teachers conceived their learning and professional development as revolving around general pedagogic knowledge, pedagogic content knowledge, and knowledge of context emerging out of classroom practice and in-school and out-of-school structures. The article illustrates that policy initiatives to enhance education quality through professional development of PUPTs, particularly in rural schools, may not achieve the intended results if due regard is not given to their conceptions of learning and development through their roles.Teaching is a major focus for educational research activity globally. That it is the point of implementation and delivery in the education system justifies the tremendous effort going into studying effective teaching methods. However, little is known about how those carrying out this huge responsibility understand their professional development. In particular, very little is known about how rural school teachers understand what they learn from their teaching roles and how this understanding contributes to their professional development.The doctoral study from which this article draws explored professional development experiences of professionally unqualified practicing teachers (PUPTs) in rural schools of Zimbabwe and South Africa. The teachers were studying in two institutions of higher education: the Zimbabwe Open University (ZOU) in Zimbabwe and the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) in South Africa. These teachers had undergraduate degrees and were enrolled in part-time initial teacher education (ITE) programs to become qualified teachers: a Post Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) at ZOU and a Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) at UKZN. Both programs were offered through mixed-mode delivery, which combined distance or school-based learning and face-to-face contact. This article focuses on the teachers' school-based learning-i.e., their learning outside their formal ITE programs.As the PUPTs had been exposed to the language of teaching/learning through core educational and professional studies modules, this language was the lens through which their school-based learning was viewed. The study investigated the participating PUPTs' conceptions of their professional development within rural school contexts in South Africa and Zimbabwe through two questions: 1) What do you learn from performing your teaching roles? 2) How do these roles contribute to your professional development? The assumption was that as the PUPTs were studying and practicing, they were experiencing learning and professional growth through their various day-to-day teaching activities in their rural schools. This interplay of teaching activities, professional learning, and professional studies is likely to have shaped their understandings of their roles and how these roles contributed to their professional development.Rural education and rural schools have been associated with deficiencies and challenges (Arnold, Newman, Gaddy, & Dean, 2005; Pennefather, 2011; Wedekind, 2005), yet identifying interventions and strategies that enhance student success in these contexts is difficult because relatively few scholars study rural education (Arnold et al. …

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