ABSTRACT
In South Africa, like many other countries in the global South, pre-service teachers come from vastly diverse communities. Teaching that is contextually responsive and inclusive of all learners depends on teachers developing the ability to engage in conceptually informed and pedagogically reasoned practice. Despite introductory coursework on the mediation of knowledge, a significant portion of participants found it difficult to distinguish between differences in teaching and learning, and differences in the school context itself. The rationale requires pre-service teachers to include a justification of how they have considered the nature of the content knowledge, the pedagogically significant aspects of learner diversity and their choice of teaching and learning strategies. Teaching had been regarded as the technical management of classroom environments that set up a series of stimulus/response/reinforcement cycles that prompted appropriate observable behavioural responses. Amid the complexity of classroom life, many decisions are made during a teaching day, and not all of them will be explicit subjects of reflection.
