Two higher education institutions (HEIs) shared their models for the B.Ed. programme in initial teacher education (ITE), with inputs on online/blended learning. The discussion then explored how providers of extended student teacher internships (ESTIs) who offer diverse forms of wrap-around support to distance education students could partner with HEIs through activities related to the work integrated learning (WIL) component of the B.Ed. or in other capacities. The focus was also on the type of evidence required to show the value of the ESTI model and the work of the non-government organisation Implementing Partners (NGO IPs) in order to motivate for these partnerships or service offerings. This report is a summary of the discussions during the TICZA Community of Practice (CoP) Series COP #15 Summary Report: 3 October.
TICZA Knowledge Products
In 2015, various stakeholders joined efforts to design a pilot project that aimed to improve the quality of newly qualified teachers who studied through distance education. Save the Children South Africa (SCSA), in partnership with key stakeholders, designed and implemented the District Based Teacher Recruitment Strategy (DBTRS) project in the Thabo Mofutsanyana Education District (TMED) of the Free State.
Sustainability and Scale in the Context of Extended-teacher Internships (ESTIs): Perspectives of Funders and Implementers.
Teacher Internship Collaboration South Africa's (TICZA) Annual Report, December 2023
TICZA (the Teacher Internship Collaboration South Africa) is a collective impact project designed to support mutually-reinforcing activities among discrete actors in the education sector related to initial teacher education. Collective impact as a concept is designed to address complex problems through the collaborative efforts of multiple stakeholders. In a collective impact project, emphasis is on alignment and partnership between government, private and third sector organisations that work towards shared goals and measure the same things. In order to ensure that shared goals are mutually understood and consistently measured, reaching consensus on terminology is an essential starting point. Given the complex and dynamic nature of teacher education, it should not be surprising that terminology may need to be adapted. Critically, though, all stakeholders in the collective impact project ought to be abreast of policy terminology. Moreover, where contestation arises amongst stakeholders in the collective impact project regarding concepts, existing policy should be deferred to and aligned with.
The Teacher Internship Collaboration South Africa (TICZA) Theory of Change (TOC)
The Teacher Internship Collaboration South Africa (TICZA) stakeholder map
The Teacher Internship Collaboration South Africa (TICZA) is a multi-stakeholder partnership with support from government departments, trade unions, non-profits, universities, and implementers that was formally launched in 2021. Its stakeholders invest in extended student teacher internships for distance ITE students, as an attractive auxiliary option for student teacher training. This was the focus of a webinar held on 29 September 2022 and facilitated by Trialogue, a responsible business consultancy. The webinar featured discussions on the importance of teacher internships, the origins of TICZA, and the deliberate process of adopting and implementing a collective impact approach.
Trialogue and TICZA are hosting a webinar on 29 September 2022 sharing insights on collective impact and how this is being adopted to bring about systemic change in the education sector.
Teacher Internship Collaboration South Africa's (TICZA) Annual Report, December 2021