Abstract
M.Ed.
The aim of this research was to investigate the value of an educational excursion to the professional development of first year BEd students. When the education excursion was first conceptualized for implementation in 2007 as part of the first year education module entitled Introduction to the South African School Curriculum, its focus was largely on environmental education. The focus on environmental education was in response to the newly promulgated policy framework in South African teacher education, which required cross-curricular teaching within the national curriculum. Later, when the Faculty adopted a conceptual framework for teaching and learning, the emphasis of the excursion organically evolved to focus on the professional development of the student teachers - which includes preparing them to deal with diversity in the school population (De Beer, Petersen & Dunbar-Krige, 2012). The conceptual framework expresses a commitment to the education and training of caring, accountable, critically-reflective educational practitioners who are able to nurture and support learning in diverse educational contexts (Petersen, Dunbar-Krige & Fritz, 2008). Each of the components of the excursion curriculum was then tailored to serve these two foci, namely that of the conceptual framework and the professional development of students.
The study follows a generic qualitative research design. The generic qualitative study means that a systematic inquiry is conducted into a real life excursion in which participants are bounded by time and activity (Creswell, 2003: 15), within the excursion setting.
Data was collected focusing on the student evaluation forms and photographs. Data was also collected using my own observations and the assignment completed by the masters students of their views and experience at the Golden Gate excursion, as well as a set of incomplete sentences developed by the masters students and completed by the first year students. This methodology is appropriate in this study because the researcher was a participant in the excursion.
After analysing the data and conducting a literature review, it became apparent that students perceived the excursion as valuable to their professional development as teachers. They identified the characteristics of a good teacher, they came to understand the important role of a
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teacher, they discovered that there are different ways of teaching, and they acquired strategies to become good teachers – all of which contributed to their professional development.
The incomplete sentences and the observations made by the researcher during the Golden Gate Excursion also supported the views of the students that the excursion aided their professional development as teachers. This is in turn strengthened by a literature review that highlighted the value of field trips or educational excursions as part of the curriculum of university courses.