This topic explores the nature of teachers' professional working lives in secondary schools and the various contexts which shape those lives. The topic provides students with theoretical and practical appraisals of structures of daily life in schools and of the issues and changes that secondary teachers have experienced in recent decades. The content focuses on effects of globalisation and its impact on schools, national and State policy agendas; organisational cultures; teacher professionalism; teacher relations; school community; students' lives and learning and the governance of schools.
Students are expected to investigate issues within three frameworks of: (1) academic research; (2) past and present theories and (3) current practices. Students are expected to critique and to integrate knowledge, experiences and expertise of various secondary school practitioners and also their stakeholders. Students are provided with opportunities to synthesise detailed ethnographic observations of daily life in schools which were observed and interpreted in situ during professional experience placements in SA schools.
The topic aims to build understanding about the nature of teachers' professional lives in secondary school contexts and to prepare students to work effectively in a diversity of secondary education contexts
Timetable details for 2021 are no longer published.