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Teachers are the largest professionally trained group in the world, yet teacher training is often spotty, inconsequential, or missing entirely. We've all had a teacher who made the difference. Teachers Without Borders' founder, Dr. Mednick, will show the connection between excellent teachers and human welfare, on a global level. The message is clear: focus on the teachers as the most viable catalysts for positive change.

Driven by centralised state processes, externally mandated and regulated, the restructuring of teacher education curriculum and institutions in South Africa has radically changed the teacher education landscape. How universities mediate, contest and resist the resulting pressures has differed, according to their historical legacy, their specific trajectories of restructuring, and their leadership dynamics. This monograph traces the micro-level responses of teacher educators at five universities experiencing the impact of the restructuring processes with varying degrees of intensity, and selected as representative of the system as a whole. The analysis reveals distinct patterns of recurriculation, ranging from bureaucratic compliance to creating academic coherence between contrasting legacies. What becomes clear is the need for teacher education academics to grasp the challenges and opportunities to assert their power over shaping curriculum processes that will produce competent, confident teachers.

The overall aim of the Teacher Development Summit is to facilitate effective system-wide teacher development that will lead to sustainable improvement in the quality of teaching and learning in classrooms and schools. The outcome of the summit will be a declaration that contains a set of recommendations regarding and commitments to a national plan for teacher education and development.

"The Low Achievement Trap is an empirical study of student mathematics learning in Grade 6 classrooms that is unique in its focus on two school systems shaped by different political histories on either side of the Botswana-South Africa border. The study provides a detailed examination of the capacity of teachers - how they teach, how much they teach, and what they teach. Because of this wealth of detail, The Low Achievement Trap gives us much greater insight than previous research into why students seem to be making larger gains in the classrooms of South Eastern Botswana than in those of North West Province, South Africa. Rather than identifying a single major factor to explain this difference, the study finds that a composite of inter-related variables revolving around teachers' mathematics knowledge and their capacity to teach mathematics are crucial to improving education in both regions. The message is a hopeful one: good teachers can make a difference in student learning."

This is a discussion group for all South African Mathematics teachers seeking support in the implementation of the new FET mathematics, mathematics literacy and advanced programme mathematics curricula. If you are a maths teacher, you can join by sending an email to the community facilitator Stephen Sproule.

I really have to smile at this article. I have been begging teachers to take note and "get with the programme", but instead they responded with a call to ban cellphones. Hallooo! It is not going to stop the cheating and as the report state it does not just include cellphones, it includes the internet as well. Shall we also just ban the internet too? I can understand that the students do not view it as cheating, they feel that they are actually being innovative (if not creative) and it is their teachers problem if they are not bringing technology into the equation. I think we should think about the way we assess.... I need to go blog about this.....;-)

I really have to smile at this article. I have been begging teachers to take note and "get with the programme", but instead they responded with a call to ban cellphones. Hallooo! It is not going to stop the cheating and as the report state it does not just include cellphones, it includes the internet as well. Shall we also just ban the internet too? I can understand that the students do not view it as cheating, they feel that they are actually being innovative (if not creative) and it is their teachers problem if they are not bringing technology into the equation. I think we should think about the way we assess.... I need to go blog about this.....or maybe I should just go and plagarise someones post- which will be more fun....????? ;-)

TeachersFirst is a rich collection of lessons, units, and web resources designed to save teachers time by delivering just what they need in a practical, user-friendly, and ad-free format. We offer our own professional and classroom-ready content along with thousands of reviewed web resources, including practical ideas for classroom use and safe classroom use of Web 2.0. Busy teachers, parents, and students can find resources using our subject/grade level search, keyword search, or extensive menus.

Several problems - including teachers with bad credit records - have left government plans to equip all 400000 teachers with a laptop computer and software hanging in the air.

It now possible for teachers in South Africa to receive a subsidy to purchase a laptop. Full details my be found in a Government Gazette published on Friday, 8 May 2009. Teachers may have many questions about owning a laptop. This page serves as a point of reference to some of these questions.

"TeachMeets are a great way for teachers to learn from other teachers about the use of ICT tools and Devices in the classroom. Sign up today or participate from far away via skype, upload a video, audio or presentation for others to learn from!"

You can't swing a stick in social media without hitting something on Facebook. Same goes for education. You can't talk about how technology is revolutionizing education without mentioning Facebook. It's a simple service to figure out but what about once you become a regular user? If you're a teacher, you would be well served by spending 3 minutes to read through this must-have guide. (We timed it out and it's a bit under 3 minutes. It's almost summertime, you can spare it for us!)

Join me and get blogging....

I have decided to run all my essential teacher toolkit tools as learning pathways /un-workshops online (We are all gatvol of workshops). This just means that I will be featuring a tool at a time in a focused and step by step way, taking everybody through the steps collaboratively and with community support (hopefully). This will all happen online using my learnwithmaggie community as our base, this school 2.0 blog, our SASchools wiki and the featured tools.

The aim of SAIDE ACEMaths project was to pilot a collaborative process for the selection, adaptation and use of OER materials for teacher education programmes in South Africa. Over a period of two years we adapted, piloted and revised a set of materials on the teaching and learning of maths for teacher education. These are now available for downloading FOR FREE in two formats - for printing (PDF), and for adaptation (Word). See the ACEMaths Module to have a look.

Double the amount of students ar studying to be teachers than last year exept for african languages in grt 1-3

The module Teaching and Learning Mathematics in Diverse Classrooms is intended as a guide to teaching mathematics for in-service teachers in primary schools. It is informed by the inclusive education policy (Education White Paper 6 Special Needs Education, 2001) and supports teachers in dealing with the diversity of learners in South African classrooms.

'Ideas to Inspire' is a collection of collaborative presentations, which offer a large number of ideas for engaging lesson activities. They are the result of the collaboration of teachers from all around the world.

This is a google group e-mail network for Southern African teachers

Resources and Conferences for Teaching Evolutionary Biology for teachers in the Western Cape

Resources and Conferences for Teaching Evolutionary Biology for teachers in the Western Cape

"Sweet Search is a search engine that searches only the sites that have been reviewed and approved by a team of librarians, teachers, and research experts. In all there are 35,000 websites that have been reviewed and approved by Sweet Search. In addition to the general search engine, Sweet Search offers five niche search engines. The niche search engines are for Social Studies, Biographies, SweetSites (organized by grade and subject area), School Librarians, and Sweet Search 4 Me (for elementary school students)."

Evolution....relevant for SA teachers as well