Beyond Benchmarks

What twenty years of TIMSS data tell us about South African education

We are living through a daunting yet fascinating period in which the global economy increasingly challenges the accepted dichotomies between home-life and work-life, between employment and unemployment, paid work and unpaid work. This calls for serious analysis of how knowledge is generated, both formally and informally, in workplaces as diverse as the factory, the field, or the street. It raises questions about what forms of learning and training are involved; how they articulate with one another and what practical and theoretical implications this has for our societies.

The post-school education and training system in South Africa has been the focus of much attention since the establishment of the Department of Higher Education and Training in 2009. In the context of deepening inequality, poverty and unemployment, the need for a humanising, liberating and critical approach to learning and pedagogy in post-school education is becoming urgent. The rural and urban voices that speak in this book tell us that the current system is out of touch with the ways in which they are making a life.

In 1994, the South African teacher education landscape was fragmented across a wide variety of institutional sites. Ten years later, initial teacher education was taking place in a very different environment, shaped by a decade of far-reaching legislative, policy and structural changes. While change was necessary and inevitable after the democratic transition of 1994, successive waves of internal restructuring, college incorporation and higher education mergers placed heavy demands on both academics and management.

Partnerships in Action explores, at multiple levels, a university–school–community partnership in action. The chapters provide rich and dynamic accounts of the activities that make up this partnership, within a context of extreme social inequality. The contributors share an enduring commitment to whole-school improvement. They describe how, through interdisciplinary collaboration, they negotiate the multiple political, social and structural complexities which arise in the coming together of the partners.