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Introduction
When we put this issue together, it struck me, as it always does when we assemble an issue, that the tone of the articles have a common thread: The authors write about their research not only as social scientists, but also as advocates for children’s right to a sound education. From a wide spectrum of research domains, the authors present ‘usable knowledge’, derived from their findings. ‘Usable knowledge’ is a term we adopted from the Harvard Graduate School of Education when we started research projects in the Childhood Education programme at our university. We asked ourselves at the outset of the programme in 2010, and when we were planning this journal at the same time, how our search for knowledge could ultimately be used somewhere, by someone, in the vast system. At the end of the fifth year of this journal’s existence, I believe we have achieved some of our goals of usability.
Few researchers who encounter the conditions in education like we do in South Africa can afford the privilege of researching a phenomenon because it is an interesting phenomenon. Most of the research I have encountered as editor of two journals has, rather, been conducted in the interest of children and youth. The knowledge pursued in the articles that I read through the years, starting in 1997 with the journal Education as Change, have had a strong utility grounding. In this issue of the South African Journal of Child Education (SAJCE) usability of knowledge in different domains of Childhood Education is also evident.
Pre-service teacher education
In the first article author Deidre Geduld reports on her study of collegial relationships of teachers and student teachers. She found that collegial teams of teachers and Education students can promote a sensibility for inclusive education in the early grades. Her argument speaks to teacher educators, who may sometimes neglect to nurture mentoring relationships between teachers and the students who practice the craft of teaching in their classes.
Another article with a focus on pre-service teacher education highlights the difficulties of most foundation phase teacher education programmes: students enter university with an almost hostile attitude to mathematics and a low self-concept of their own knowledge....