The Department of Educational Foundations is organising an online seminar to reflect on the role of education studies in the professional development of teachers.
Date: 20 and 21 September 2023
Format: A (Two) 2-day online seminar comprising of invited speakers and selected papers. Adequate time will be allocated to discussions and debate.
The theoretical study of education has been in decline in the South African context and elsewhere. Lawn and Furlong (2009), for example, write about the crisis of the ‘disciplines of education in the UK’. This is the case in both the Anglo - and the Continental academic traditions related to this field.
The decline could be attributed to a variety of factors that prevent us from thinking (Heidegger, 1968). The difficulty when addressing these external factors is compounded by the absence of a debate about what the study of education is about and how it relates to educational practices.
Education remains one of the spaces where the ideals of an equal democratic society could be articulated and fostered. Teacher education programmes aim to enable teachers to provide relevant and quality education in a society characterised by poverty, violence, coloniality and neoliberalism. It becomes therefore increasingly important to foster the abilities of educators to work critically and innovatively in complex situations. Such innovative work is dependent on the ability of educators to think critically and creatively in their practices.
Although such critical theorising has been neglected, it has an important role in educational practices and in all educational research fields, particularly in the study of education (‘Education Studies’, Pädagogik) where normative theorising is explicitly present.
We invite interested academics to send an abstract for a presentation that addresses the focus of the seminar. Your abstract could be related to, but is not restricted to any of the following topics:
Send an abstract of no more than 300 words by 20 August 2023 to postmdj@unisa.ac.za.
The presentations would typically be 20 minutes long with another 20 minutes allowed for discussion.
Click here to join the seminar on 20 and 21 September
Click here to download the programme
Last modified: 2023/09/19