Abstract
In “many schools in South Africa, out-of-field teaching is common. When qualified teachers teach in a field different from what they have studied, this is referred to as out-of-field teaching. Therefore, out-of-field teachers require to be professionally developed and HODs need to mentor them and ensure that they are adequately professionally developed. Using Kram’s (1983:610)’s temporal theory of mentoring as the theoretical framework, this research sought to examine the role of the HOD in the professional development of grade 12 out-of-field teachers. The study was located in a constructivist paradigm and employed a qualitative approach executed through a generic qualitative design. To collect data, semi-structured interviews were used with six participants, comprising three out-of-field teachers and their respective HODs. Data were analysed through qualitative content analysis. The themes that emerged were ‘causes of out-of-field teaching’, ‘challenges faced by out-of-field teaching’, ‘professional development’ and ‘the role of the head of department in developing out-of-field teachers’. It was found that the major cause of out-of-field teaching resulted from lack of teachers in specific subjects at the school sites. A challenge experienced by out-of-field teachers was inadequate pedagogy content knowledge. In addition, it was revealed that classroom management is negatively affected when teachers lack pedagogical content knowledge. The role of the head of department is to give hands-on guidance to out-of-field teachers, use class visits to develop pedagogical content knowledge, monitor the curriculum, and create professional development opportunities for these teachers. It is recommended that post provisioning at schools ought to be relevant to the needs of school learners. A database of information that contains statistics pertaining to specialist teachers can assist the Department of Basic Education to reduce the out-of-field phenomenon, particularly at grade 12 level. The Department of Basic Education must offer out-offield teachers support programmes or district-based training courses to enhance their pedagogical content knowledge.
M.Ed. (Educational Leadership and Management)