Journal of Advances in Education and Philosophy (JAEP)
Volume-2 | Issue-02 | 66-79
Original Research Article
Teacher Education in South Sudan: Mapping the Ideological and Theoretical Vacuum
Joseph Ladu Eluzai Mogga
Published : March 30, 2018
Abstract
This article seeks to render problematic the ideological underpinnings and
theoretical conceptions, or lack thereof, of teacher education in the education system
of the Republic of South Sudan. It uses the emergent perspective to question the
construction of the country‟s Teacher Persona as envisioned in the legal and policy
frameworks such as the General Education Act 2012 and the National General
Education Policy (2017-2027). The Government sees these instruments as an
essential catalyst to professionalize teaching and attract candidates of high calibre to
the teaching profession using the political model as an offshoot of its paternalist and
utilitarian national ideology to control and guarantee the quality of the teacher
education enterprise. The political model, however, needs the generative practice of
the institutional model and the replicative feature of the professional model to
provide structure, stability and continuity to teacher education in South Sudan. This
is particularly so given the fact that the current theoretical approach to teacher
education at the curriculum level is informed by technical rationalist inclinations that
essentially favour a strong behaviourist payload, a split of theory and practice, and a
disconnect between training institutes and universities. In the same vein, the study
points out that the greatest disservice to teacher education in South Sudan in terms of
school outcomes has been the structural disconnect between the existing school
curriculum and teacher education curriculum, critically failing to capture and engage
the official standpoint of valid knowledge drawn upon to teach students in schools. A
proper way of developing a national framework for teacher education is to state what
good teachers effectively know, do and value. There is a need, therefore, for a new
transformative model of teacher education that offers an idealistic, ethical thrust
(character) and a specialist, exclusive power (competence) to future South Sudan‟s
Teacher Persona, equipped with enquiry as its signature feature and as an antidote to
a reductionist view. In that lies the promise to place premium in the country‟s
education system.