Three North-West University (NWU) academics, Dr Sifiso Sibanda, Prof Gideon van Tonder and Prof Washington Dudu are the proud editors of the book Recalibrating teacher training in African higher education institutions: A Focus on 21st-century pedagogical challenges.
The book, which critically examines the role of governments in promoting parity during and in post-pandemic education, is published in open-access format by AOSIS Scholarly Books.
According to Prof Dudu, this comes from the realisation that the pandemic has deepened the crisis.
“By depleting the meagre resources that African countries might have devoted to ‘normative educational practices’, those on the margins have been pushed further behind, while the privileged have been further initiated into the cultural and capital flows of private schools and historically research-intensive institutions of higher learning,” he says.
“This has far-reaching implications for the education of underprivileged citizens, and education – particularly modes and modalities of delivery – has to be reimagined to subvert the challenges wrought by the pandemic.”
Prof Dudu says the book significantly bridges the gap between the pre-and post-Covid-19 pandemic pedagogical practices and the erstwhile modalities that have been resilient over time. “It focuses on ways to stave off pedagogical challenges that face countries as the global pandemic makes its mark.”
Each chapter in this book offers insights into how a pandemic can dictate a change in pedagogy. After reflecting on the destruction that a pandemic can cause to an educational system, the authors inspire hope in the reader by demonstrating, through research, how life in the classroom can continue, but under a new normal.
The authors show through research-based evidence the resilience of the human soul in the face of calamities by adopting forward-looking educational pedagogy.
The book offers practical research-based pedagogy that demonstrates humanity’s spirit of survival against the onslaught of hostile and ever-changing situations and environments.
Prof Washington Dudu
Dr Sifiso Sibanda
Prof Gideon van Tonder
