Post‐conflict teacher development: facing the past in South Africa

Abstract

One of the priorities of societies emerging from identity‐based conflict is to signal a new society, with new values that stand in stark contrast with the old. Education policy becomes a critical arena for highlighting these political values when schools, particularly teachers, are identified as key agents of social change. However, the legacy of the conflict, especially with regard to teacher identities shaped during conflict, is seldom taken into account. This paper argues that unless appropriate programmes of teacher professional development are put in place to open the space for teachers to engage with painful personal legacies of the past, the aim of transforming society through the education system has little chance of succeeding. Using South Africa as the case study, this article analyses the post‐Apartheid history curriculum and discusses a teacher development programme, Facing the Past, which, it is argued, provides the necessary conditions for teachers to engage with the past in a way that enables them to integrate issues of moral and ethical decision‐making into their teaching.

Acknowledgements

The financial assistance of the South African National Research Foundation (NRF) towards this research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the author and are not necessarily to be attributed to the NRF.

Notes

1. Originally a partnership between Facing History and Ourselves (FHAO), Boston, the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) and the Cape Town Holocaust Centre, it is currently a partnership between the WCED, FHAO and Shikaya, a non‐profit organisation based in Cape Town, South Africa.

2. For the purposes of understanding the composition of the group of teachers, the classifications in force under Apartheid have been used (RSA, 1950a). These are still used in many official surveys and documents for the purpose of ensuring employment equity. South Africa is also still a deeply racialised society and struggles to find ways of identification that are not race‐based.