Preparing student teachers for teaching in rural schools using work integrated learning

Abstract

This paper focuses on the preparation of student teachers for teaching in rural schools using Work Integrated Learning (WIL). Generally, teachers are not prepared to teach in rural schools and those that are currently working there want to leave. Amongst other recruitment strategies for rural teaching, South Africa uses the Funza Lushaka bursary scheme for student teachers to work in rural schools after obtaining qualifications, and a rural school allowance for teachers already working there. This paper reports on the findings of 10 student teachers placed in two rural schools for WIL, two rural school teachers, the Teaching Practice (TP) officer and the Subject Advisor for rural schools. Participatory Action Research (PAR) was used as a methodology to allow participants to be co-researchers in generating data. Meeting discussions were conducted to get experience of rural teaching and data were analysed and interpreted through the use of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The findings are that many teachers are not trained for rural teaching during their study, and that there is no collaboration between the rural schools and Teacher Education Institution (TEI). The paper recommends collaboration between TEIs and rural schools and collaboration between the Department of Higher Education and the Department of Basic Education for teacher training programmes.