Here in Brazil we have an area that deals specifically with education for the countryside, which addresses specific issues of rural life. Is there a specific methodology in South Africa for teaching in the field?

Hello Morapa - I hope that the attached diagram gives you some ideas. The sweetspot of PCK is where pedagogic, curriculum and content knowledge intersects. In his seminal paper on PCK Shulman talked about the importance of teachers finding authentic ways of representing information and ideas to children - which would connect to the idea of finding ways of linking to your 'place' in rural South Africa. Another thing to think about is making sure that there are opportunities for purposeful student talk in your lessons. One thing that can sometimes happen with teachers moving to the classroom after their training is to fall into bad habits of being too transmissive. It really is hard for children to listen and concentrate for long periods of time without doing. Engagement and a strong sense of purpose is key. Your children are lucky to have someone teaching them who cares about doing a great job with them. I hope that some of this helps!

Best wishes.

Peter

Do you have empirical evidence for this your worry? There is the need to be sure of this as a problem in South African rural schools

I think there is a need for empirical evidence regarding this claim. How deep was the research done on this matter. Such findings can help us to contribute to your question with a full view of the issues on the ground.

Hello,

Not too sure my answer is relevant as I am not a teacher in addition to not living in Southern Africa but let me try.

I have worked with Psychologist Jean Piaget years ago and have spent a great deal of time in Namibia over the last 25 years. But my view is that of a researcher in cognitive psychology from M.I.T and then in Switzerland.

I would first distinguish between a basic difficulty to implement PCK in general from the specific difficulty you may encounter in rural settings in Southern Africa.

As for the first, my experience led me to believe that the concept of "implementation" of knowledge should be reconsidered and seen more as a CONSTRUCTION of knowledge pieces imbedded in a context relevant for the child rather than a pure implementation of curriculum items.

I guess that when this idea is applied to rural settings, the idea of designing contextual scenario based upon relevant issues of kids in their day-to-day life might help. Then the idea would be to transfer these learnings into items more directly related to the curriculum.

Best

André

Teachers' pedagogical knowledge plays an important role in the teaching and learning process. And a teachers competence is involved here. What learning could he/she give when he/she has none. However, teachers must develop the skills of empathy in teaching so he/she could fully understand his/her learners' needs, and then learning would take place. It needs adaptability to both the teachers and the learners. We the teachers need to have a worldview in implementing our research studies.

Pedagogy is the science that studies the methodology and techniques that are applied to teaching and education, one for having knowledge and having studied pedagogy, does not become a pedagogue, I am particularly an engineer, I studied a little pedagogy and I convert with those who have dedicated themselves to it, and my conclusion is that all this constitutes a set of premises for the educator (teacher), in the end the experience allows you to reconcile your specialized knowledge, your pedagogical abilities, and your social skills, these three things are like a tripod, if you remove one of them, what you put on it will fall, my opinion and advice is, if you have to teach in an environment that is unknown to you, first inquire about the nature, opinions, uses and customs of those who Your students will be, depending on it, prepare your material and your speech, use your pedagogical capacities, and progressively transmit the knowledge you want to transmit, focus on the practical things and easy to check in the middle with the resources that students have available, if you do not have experience in teaching, trust your instinct, try what seems best for each topic to be discussed, but be very severe with self-criticism and reflect on what you did and build your personal model of good practice.

Good luck.

Pedagogical content knowledge ought to be an inert thing in graduate teacher after certain practical experience completed otherwise teachers will just be incompetent and find it difficult to deliver to their students. The curriculum in schools in South Africa was written with sufficient farsightedness to be able to capture attention and interest of all students schema. One of the common weakness of classroom teachers is poor pre-preparation work or planning. My advice is for you to try and do preparation or planning thoroughly and that includes contextualizing content knowledge to generate meaningful learning for students in rural schools. For instance in an elementary school Social Studies lesson at year 3, concepts of Shopping in the "Shopping Mall" is unrealistic for students in rural schools compared to shopping from the canteen or village store. The role of the teacher in pre-preparatory stage is to ensure that concepts in the textbooks or the syllabus is first of all made meaningful (contextualized) to rural students. Only then can concepts taught be grasped well by rural students and learning be meanigful.

We may consider their context in order for us to determine some ways on how to deal with them; then, relate the content of our teaching.

Victor what you have stated here is :

my opinion and advice is, if you have to teach in an environment that is unknown to you, first inquire about the nature, opinions, uses and customs of those who Your students will be, depending on it, prepare your material and your speech, what we educators call "contextualizing the content".......that's it Thanks

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/222967743.pdf