Integrating foundation phase teacher education with a 'teaching school' at the University of Johannesburg

Successful teacher education programmes underscore the integration of knowledge for teaching with knowledge of teaching, the 'how' of teaching. Such programmes necessitate an integrative programme design to counteract the schism between the 'world of theory' and the 'world of practice' and draw optimally on collaboration between teacher educators and teachers who supervise students in schools to achieve this. This paper reflects on participants' experiences of a teacher education programme designed to integrate the university coursework curriculum with student-teachers' involvement in a school established to serve as a practice learning site - a teaching school. Data comprised the views of faculty managers, university and teaching school staff and student-teachers involved in the foundation phase teacher education programme and the teaching school. The main findings are that the teaching school has the potential to strengthen teacher education programmes. However, as the programme designers and university staff under-estimated the complexity of bringing together the world of the university and the world of the school classroom, there were many missed opportunities for using the teaching school experience optimally to help student-teachers develop the disposition and outlook of competent novice teachers. Teaching school staff were also not enabled to develop optimally as teacher educators.