Certain tasks are more likely to be solved by groups than by individuals, even when the individuals are highly skilled at aspects of the task. These are tasks such as filling out income tax forms or performing surgical operations, for which inputs from several individuals who have complementary domains of knowledge and skill are needed. I refer to…

How the child develops and learns should be an integral part of pre-service teacher education programmes. This article argues that for foundation phase teachers to teach young children effectively, course content in initial teacher education (TE) should cultivate a thorough understanding of the developing child by infusing theories of childhood…

The initiative of the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) in South Africa to strengthen foundation phase teaching has resulted in the development of new foundation phase (Grades R--3) programmes at institutions that did not previously offer them. In this article we reflect on the conceptualisation and development of a pre-service…

We start our paper with a critical exploration of the current 'back to basics' approach in South African foundation phase teacher education with its emphasis on strengthening the teaching of subject knowledge. We claim that such a proposal first demands an answer to the question 'what is foundational in foundation phase teaching?' We propose an…

The article reports on the process of producing a film for students in a university course. The purpose of the production was to make local film material that could assist students in their learning of developmental cognitive psychology theory in general, but specifically also the mathematical cognition of children. Although the students in the…

This paper argues for teaching pre-service teachers about remediation strategies for learners who encounter problems in mathematics in the early grades. The premise is that all teachers should be equipped with theory-based practical knowledge to support learning. A few teaching sessions to develop the concepts that underlie the mathematical…

A common view of theory and practice as domains is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to traverse the epistemological chasm between them. After all, theories are ways of organising our world abstractly in ideas and concepts. Practice is the world that we inhabit empirically. It is a tangible world that we can see, feel, act on, act in, and…