Teacher Choices in Action (TCiA)

About

The Department of Higher Education and Training(“DHET”) developed and implemented a teaching practice module, ‘Teacher Choices in Action’ (TCiA) to support universities who needed to adopt supplementary teaching practice modalities in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the national lockdown.

The project arose from the need to provide quality teaching practice experiences for students in initial teacher education during the national lockdown. The online modality allows students from all universities to participate, and thus also creates opportunities for research to be undertaken to strengthen students’ understanding of their pedagogical choices in practice.

The TCiA Project was conceptualised as a mechanism for preparing students for work-based learning in innovative and theoretically informed ways, for developing high quality research and for building research capacity in the teacher education sector. A key part of the strategy was to provide opportunities for postgraduate students to undertake studies in teacher education and work under the supervision of experienced researchers.

The TCiA Module prepares student teachers to make the most of their time in work-based learning. It guides students through recognising and understanding sets of choices that teachers need to make in every lesson they design and teach. Students see how teachers take cognisance of subject knowledge, insights from learning theories, priorities from inclusive education and work within resourcing possibilities. The module empowers students to bring different parts of their teacher education curriculum together, thereby reducing a so-called ‘theory practice gap’. The empirical research shows that after completing this module, students are better able to notice and understand the choices teachers made and they are better positioned to make these choices intentionally in their own planning. Initial findings show a five-fold increase in the capacity of students to explain and account for the pedagogic decisions teachers make.

The TCiA project enables systematic, cross-sectional research that investigates how preservice teachers notice and interpret teachers’ practices during their professional preparation programmes. The findings reveal what students perceive as relevant for learning, what aspects of teachers’ work they focus on and what they regard as exemplary teaching practices.

Research Outputs

• Bertram, C. & Rusznyak, L. (in press) Preparing student teachers for work-based learning: Choices for curriculum design. In I. Christiansen, L. Rusznyak & L. Osterling (eds). Transforming teaching and learning in teacher education. Springer: IAP Book Series.
• Rusznyak, L. 2022. Teacher choices in action: an emergent pedagogical response and intervention. In E. Walton & R. Osman (eds). Pedagogical responsiveness in complex contexts. Stockholm: Springer. Read it here
• Rusznyak, L. & Bertram, C. 2021. Conceptualising work-integrated learning to support pre-service teachers’ pedagogic reasoning. Journal of Education. Issue 83, 34-52. http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2520-9868/i83a02. Read it here
• Robinson, M., & Rusznyak, L. 2020. Learning to teach without school-based experience: conundrums and possibilities in a South African context. Journal of Education for Teaching, 4(64), 517-527. Read it here

Resources