Abstract:

The advent of democratic dispensation in 1994 in South Africa did not mean an overnight embracement of democratic principles. The democratic dispensation in South Africa meant that the South African citizens had to adapt to new democratic values and respect for human rights as embedded in the Constitution (Republic of South Africa). In the context of teacher training it is expected that student teachers should in their practice inculcate democratic values in their learners. According to the New Revised Curriculum Statement human rights values as encapsulated in the Constitution should be taught across the curricular. This research will explore the democratic literacy among fourth year and Post Graduate Certificate Education (PGCE) student teachers at one University of Technology in South Africa. Participants will be a convenient sample of 15 students teachers 7 were Bachelor of Education and 8 were PGCE(7 were females and 8 were males). They will respond to an open-ended focus group interview on their experiences of employing democratic practices in their teaching expeditions. The research will employ an Ubuntu framework to frame the experiences of student teachers. Ubuntu as a research framework is based on the ontological premise of unity, justice and fairness. On the one hand, its episteme is embedded on the view that knowledge is a process of cooperation and sharing. The data will be textually analysed using Fairclough’s textual discourse analysis. It is expected that student teachers will be able to reflect deeply on their experiences and their democratic practices in order to create free open-ended learning spaces in the schools in which they will teach.

Keywords:

Democratic pedagogy, literacy, student teachers, University of Technology, Ubuntu framework, ontology, episteme, textual discourse analysis.