Education students engage with South African classrooms
Monash South Africa
Monash University Faculty of Education is working with South African schools and communities through a unique professional placement program. In the program, Monash pre-service education students travel to Johannesburg to teach, mentor and engage with young people in a variety of settings.
Each year the Faculty organises approximately 5,000 professional placements for students in a wide range of Australian settings including local Victorian primary and secondary schools, and indigenous schools in the Northern Territory. They also have partnerships with schools in overseas settings where cohorts of pre-service students regularly travel with a Monash academic mentor.
The professional placement program in South Africa provides Monash students with an opportunity to enrich their university studies and education careers through experiences gained teaching in South African schools. An important part of the experience is volunteering at community education programs for disadvantaged young people and children.
Dr Graham Parr from the Faculty of Education at Monash University devised the international professional placement in 2009. He co-ordinates the program, open to students enrolled in undergraduate and graduate education courses , and he mentors the students while in South Africa.
The most recent cohort of students undertook placements at state and private schools in Johannesburg during September 2010. In these schools, Monash students experience the excitement and the challenges of teaching a different curriculum in a different culture.
“On their weekends, students teach at Monash South Africa’s ‘Saturday school’,” Dr Parr said.
“This school, run largely by student volunteers from Monash South Africa, provides an ongoing program for 120 to 150 disadvantaged students every Saturday morning. The children are ‘bus-ed’ to the Johannesburg campus from nearby ‘informal settlements’, they’re given breakfast and lunch, and they participate in a range of classes that address their needs and interests in academic work, life skills and sport.”
During last year's placement, the whole of South Africa was in the midst of extended industrial action, causing many public schools to shut down. The response of the general public to this situation was sometimes inspiring, Dr Parr said.
“Monash University students volunteered to be educational mentors in one of the many study centres set up around Johannesburg during the industrial action for students completing their year 12. It was a difficult situation for educational communities in South Africa at the time, and yet it turned out to be a meaningful dimension of the experience for our students,” Dr Parr said.
Faculty of Education student, Ms Allison Lehmann, said the practicum was a once in a lifetime experience and would highly recommend it to others.
“The South Africa placement was so much more than a three week teaching experience. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity – to become immersed in another country's culture, to explore its history and be involved in the lives of so many people living there. It has shaped me as a whole person and not just a teacher,” Ms Lehmann said.
The 2010 visit to South Africa also included a professional mentoring workshop, organised by Dr Parr, with teachers from local schools and non-government organisations. It aimed to facilitate a mutually respectful conversation between teachers and academics from South Africa and Australia. Participants shared their own mentoring practices and explored the latest research about mentoring in schools and how it can improve the quality of students’ learning and wellbeing.
“The workshop was the first of a series of transnational conversations planned for the coming years. It, promoted reflection on how we might use mentoring as a way to improve the quality of education for our children in our own local and national settings,” Dr Parr said.
Monash University has a strong presence in South Africa as part of its commitment to international engagement. The campus offers a range of courses for students in South Africa and also is a key destination for Monash University students in Australia to study abroad.
In September 2011, Monash South Africa will host a new cohort of Monash student teachers from Australia for a third transnational professional placement.
For further information about the Faculty of Education’s professional placements, including those in South Africa, visit http://www.education.monash.edu.au/placements/