Section archive - Theories & Approaches

This article reviews the impact of an educational reform in Namibia in the early 1990s called the Integrated Teacher Training Programme (ITTP), which was an outcome of collaboration between the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO), the liberation movement and teacher educators from Sweden and other Western countries. Research questions posed concerned: (1) the ITTP’s perceived impact on the participants’ private and professional lives; and (2) the ITTP’s impact on the participants’ views on knowledge and education in relation to democracy. This follow-up study indicates that the ITTP was crucial for the participants’ professional careers and private lives. The majority saw education as a key to democracy and social transformation, and considered themselves as important actors at local, regional and national levels in forwarding these aims.

In this paper, the authors describe a capstone project that meets these needs and prepares pre-service special educators for their role in the development of practice-based evidence. These aims align well with the Council for Exceptional Children’s Professional Standards. To describe this project and how it meets these aims, the authors used the Implementation Stages framework. Outcomes reflect an increase in pre-service special educators’ ability to research and design usable interventions based on evidence-based practices.

The participants were given an exit survey, which measured their estimated attainment of knowledge and experience in the 10 domains of professional activity considered critical for new teachers in the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) standards. The results indicated that the profile of the graduates was uneven, showing low levels of satisfaction in the fields of special education and cooperation but high levels of satisfaction in the fields of reflective practice and planning.

This article reports on a programme which applied the conceptual framework of critical transformative dialogue, developed as a part of the health profession to the context of teacher education. The programme applied the processes of critical transformative dialogue in the development of a series of core skills of teaching with first-year pre-service teachers. Participant feedback following professional placement indicated their acknowledgement of the value of engaging in critical transformative dialogues as a tool for professional learning. The participants responses indicated an appreciation of the opportunities provided to rehearse and engage in dialogue and reflection to support the development of core practices. These rehearsed skills were described as making the participants feel more able to contribute to the overall educational experience of the children in the pre-service teachers’ placement classes.