What three new books tell us about the state of education scholarship in South Africa

Abstract

The books we publish offer a window on the status of scholarship in the discipline, and it is with this in mind that prof Jonathan Jansen reviews three education books each published in 2006 by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) Press. These are three very different books: a doctoral-dissertation-turned-into-a-book on the attempted reform of Jewish community schools in Johannesburg (Chaya Herman, University of Pretoria; a segmental study (one part of a larger research project on racial integration and social cohesion) on a teacher education (the Post-Graduate Certificate in Education, or PGCE) programme at three universities – former white Afrikaans, former white English, and black campuses - and how each institution prepares students for diversity in schools (Crispin Hempson, University of KwaZulu Natal); an edited collection of papers on the subject of matriculation examinations presented at a national colloquium (Vijay Reddy, Human Sciences Research Council)