This book traces the history of teacher preparation in South Africa in the context of broader social, political, and economic contexts and schooling policy; international and transnational processes; race, class, and gender; and issues related to the nature, status, and control of the teaching profession by governments and other agencies, requirements, supply and demand, funding, and different expectations for teachers in different sectors. It argues that history plays a part in the inequalities in South African schools that also appear in the teaching profession. It describes the roots of teacher education in church and mission-run systems and colonial systems; the impact of rapid industrialization at the turn of the 20th century; changes introduced after Union in 1910; the consolidation of segregation through the regulation of access through provision, certification, and curriculum; the repositioning of teacher preparation under apartheid; the policies and processes to relocate teacher training for black teachers to the bantusans and the continued cooperation between colleges and universities in the preparation of white teachers; how under-provision of teachers for African secondary schools resulted in a crisis that caused both efforts to reform the system by the government and to upgrade teachers; and how post-apartheid South African governments have attempted to address the apartheid legacy of inequality and under-provision in and through teacher education.

Linda Chisholm is a Professor in the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation of the Education Faculty at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. She has published widely on the historical, contemporary and comparative aspects of education policy and curriculum in South Africa and the region. Her most recent book is Between Worlds: German Missionaries and the Transition from Mission to Bantu Education (Wits Press, 2017).

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