This paper reports on a qualitative enquiry into the affordances of case-based teaching for the professional learning of student-teachers. The context is a first-year foundational course in a four-year undergraduate teacher education programme, offered by an urban university in Johannesburg, South Africa, with a student enrolment of close to 700 students (divided into two groups of 350 students). Data sources used for this study were focus group interviews with student-teachers, individual interviews with teacher educators, video footage of classroom interaction, first-person reports by student-teachers in the form of reflective essays, student-teachers’ discussions on blackboard and examination scripts. The research showed that case-based teaching elicits engaged learning; assists with developing understanding of the complexities of teaching and enables student-teachers to relate theory-based ideas to predicaments of practice. Furthermore, the research revealed how case-based teaching can provide insights into student-teachers’ preconceptions of teaching. In this study, case-based teaching was used with large class groups. The findings suggest that case-based teaching, as used in the course reported on, could serve as an antidote for some of the issues that plague large course teaching.

The article reports on an action research project, informed by transformative learning theory. Transformative learning involves individuals gaining an awareness of their current habits of mind, and resulting points of views accompanied by a critique of their assumptions and premises, an assessment of alternative views, a decision to negate an old perspective or view in favour of a new one, or to make a synthesis of old and new, resulting in more justified beliefs to guide action. The action research was designed to change the perspectives and practices of higher education teachers from a teacher-centred to a learning-centred dialogic approach. The research demonstrated that a transformation in teaching perspective could be achieved through action research that involved inquiring and interactive teaching. However, implementing the new perspective required additional sustained support. The research also confirmed that action research is a viable means of exploring transformative learning in educational settings.

A common view of theory and practice as domains is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to traverse the epistemological chasm between them. After all, theories are ways of organising our world abstractly in ideas and concepts. Practice is the world that we inhabit empirically. It is a tangible world that we can see, feel, act on, act in, and so on. So, how can one even begin to argue that these apparently disparate worlds can be unified or that they are in the first instance not separate at all? My stance on this is that we, the educators of teachers, are party to the separation. In fact, we teach students that they should ‘apply’ theory to practice. Working with our own struggle at the university where I am based, I will argue that there may be ways of opening the borders between what is, on the one hand a philosophical question, and on the other, a purely empirical question. How do we teach and how do we teach the doing of teaching? My argument explores one way we might begin to restore; to whatever extent this is possible, the unity of theory and practice in teacher education.

The article reports on the University of Johannesburg's (UJ) efforts at offering a practice-based teacher education program in partnership with a university-affiliated school (a “teaching school”) with a view to developing inquiry-oriented novice teachers. The research aimed at exploring what it takes to develop a “learningplace” (Conway et al., 2014) conducive to student teachers' development of professional practice knowledge and the role of mentoring in this regard. A two-phase process of generating data was used. In the first phase, the published research on the university-affiliated school was analyzed, using qualitative content analysis to look for patterns across the historical unfolding of the findings of these papers. In phase two a questionnaire was administered involving final year student teachers in the teacher education program. The research shows that a teaching school, if integrated into the program design and delivery, provides a rich practice learning site for student teachers. In addition, mentoring in cognitive apprenticeship mode could indeed be a powerful contributor to student teachers' professional development. However, the overall programme design is decisive. The preparation of teachers with strong professional practice knowledge requires attention to four interrelated aspects of program design, namely program identity, organizational structures, curriculum, and teacher education pedagogy. Addressing these aspects in an integrated manner would be difficult without working closely with one or more partnership schools.

This book disseminates original research on learning in and from practice in pre-service teacher education. Authors such as Lederman and Lederman describe the student teaching practicum (or work-integrated learning [WIL]), which is an essential component of pre-service teacher education, as the ‘elephant in the room’. These authors note that 'the capstone experience in any teacher education programme is the student teaching practicum… [a]fter all, this is where the rubber hits the road'. However, many teacher educators will agree that this WIL component is sometimes very insufficient in assisting the student teacher to develop their own footing and voice as a teacher. This is the ‘gap’ that this research book addresses. Most of the chapters in the book report empirical data, with the exception of two chapters that can be categorized as systematic reviews. WIL is addressed from various angles in the chapters. Chapter 6 focuses on research related to what makes Finnish teacher education so effective, and in Chapter 4 researchers of the University of Johannesburg disseminate their findings on establishing a teaching school (based on Finnish insights) in Johannesburg. Chapter 3 highlights the challenges faced in open-and distance learning teacher education contexts. Several of the chapters disseminate research findings on alternative interventions to classic WIL, namely, where “safe spaces” or laboratories are created for student teachers to learn and grow professionally. These could either be simulations, such as software programmes and avatars in the intervention described in Chapter 2; student excursions, as the findings in chapters 5, 7 and 10 portray; or alternative approaches to WIL (e.g. Chapters 11 and 12). The book is devoted to scholarship in the field of pre-service teacher education. The target audience is scholars working in the fields of pre-service teacher education, work-integrated learning, and self-directed learning. The book makes a unique contribution in terms of firstly its extensive use of Cultural-Historical Activity Theory as a research lens, and secondly in drawing on various theoretical frameworks. Both quantitative and qualitative research informed the findings of the book.

Starting from current views on pre-service teacher education, this article presents the findings of an inquiry into new teachers’ perceptions of their university education. The authors argue for a specific view of pre-service teacher education, in which students are given the opportunity to seriously study the content of the subjects they will be teaching, while learning some skills to deliver the school curriculum and to begin to understand, and deal with, learners’ sociological and psychological dispositions. They also argue that the expectation that universities should prepare teachers fully for practice is not feasible, as the school itself as a place of work is the optimal setting for getting to know – in an authentic and non-trivialising way – the hardships and challenges of what constitutes teaching in a country like South Africa. The findings of the study show that teachers are confident about their preparation in content knowledge. They are also comfortable with some aspects of pedagogy, but they do not think they are prepared for the tough social world of teaching or for its logistics. It was also found that teachers who do not teach learners in the age groups for which their programmes had prepared them, struggle far more than others.