Knowledge selection in initial teacher education programmes and its implications for curricular coherence

There are a multitude of concepts and techniques that could be important for teachers to learn during their initial teacher education (ITE), but indiscriminately including all of them would result in an overcrowded and fragmented curriculum. Given the limited time for ITE, rational knowledge selection choices must be made if coherent programmes are to be offered to prospective teachers. This paper explores the approaches taken to addressing the critical challenges facing education in South Africa and the principles from knowledge selection that arise from these approaches. Different conceptions about how best to address these challenges offer directed priorities to guide knowledge selection decisions for ITE curricula. Examples of knowledge selection principles that variously promote conceptual or contextual coherence are presented and analysed, and tradeoffs associated with each one are considered. Although some recontextualising principles are mutually incompatiable, others have the potential to coexist. In a four-year qualification, where sequencing choices can be made, there exists the possibility of introducing different principles at different times without unduly compromising internal coherence. A challenge for those who design ITE curricula is to design conceptually coherent and/or contextually responsive curricula fully aware of the affordances and limitations offered by different recontextualising principles.