South African teachers' views of collaboration within an inclusive education system

The development of sustainable collaborative partnerships between different role players within an inclusive education system seems to be a continuous challenge in South Africa. The focus of this research study was to understand how teachers view collaboration within an inclusive education system. Open-ended questionnaires were completed by 85 participating teachers and focus group interviews were employed with 24 educators. The findings indicate that educators still believe that they are not adequately trained and skilled to play an equal role in a collaborative partnership and prefer to rather refer learners experiencing barriers to learning to other support structures and professionals for support.     

Educational leaders as caring teachers

Good leadership varies with the sort of enterprise to be led. We would not put the CEO of a large clothing manufacturer, inexperienced in warfare, in charge of a military expedition. Now and then highly successful people from one field are recruited to lead an entirely different enterprise, but their duties are usually limited, and often they are mere figureheads. At the level where field-related decisions must be made we need leaders who know the field. Leadership in education requires both breadth and depth of knowledge about education. At the very least, an educational leader should have a defensible position on the aims of education, on a theory of motivation and on what constitutes ethical practice.     

Stories and Affect in Teacher Education

This article argues that affect has been neglected in education and that this neglect reduces the engagement of both students and teachers in their studies. One remedy, it is argued, is to increase the use of stories in teacher education. Stories, judiciously chosen, can increase interest, add to cultural literacy, enhance human relations, and help to connect studies to the great existential questions.