Abstract:

In an attempt to bring about a society in which individuals will develop their full capacity, South African education has undergone fundamental reforms: a unified national department of education was established; unprecedented investment in policymaking lead to controversial curriculum reform; non-personnel expenditure to poor schools has been dramatically increased and there is a steadily rise in the enrolment rate. However, despite these reforms the South African education system is still reinforcing the apartheid socio-economic structure of poverty and privilege. Whilst education seems to remain hampered by the social construction of unequal hierarchies, our schools fail on two accounts: we fail in the pursuit for excellence in academics for all, thus we fail in our pursuit for social justice.

Given the national requirement for all teachers to be socially just educators, this paper uses the concept Whiteness as property as a lens to explore why white pre-service teachers prefer to work with black learners. Teaching for social justice it not about the feel-good of teachers; it is not about teachers who prefer to work in circumstances in which they feel respected by grateful learners. Rather, to teach for social justice pre-service teachers need to development an unbiased, inclusive perspective that affirms multicultural education. Drawing on the interplay between the racial identity construction of four white pre-service teachers and whiteness as property, implications for teacher education are identified. The aim of teacher education is to find a balance between pre-service teachers achieving in the assumed priorities to teach subjects, and pre-service teachers being prepared to help all learners to succeed in whatever contexts they find themselves, including contexts that privilege. It is concluded that if whiteness remains unexamined within the context of teacher education, the perpetuation of the habits of whiteness and teaching premised on a deficit model can contribute to maintaining and enacting differential access to power and privilege in post-apartheid South Africa.

Keywords:

Pre-service teachers, social justice education, whiteness, whiteness as property, racial identity.