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SOUTH AFRICAN CONTEXT: Is there a need for a Teacher-researcher in this current context?

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A teacher researcher is one that aims to understand teaching and learning in context and from the perspective of individuals who live and interact daily in the classroom (Meier & Henderson, 2007). They also aim to gain an understanding of teaching and learning in order to impact change in the classroom and school, and to improve the lives of the learners. Teacher-researchers are said to be reflective practitioners who can identify a problem and try to conceptualize a solution for that problem, and for that, they should be seen as a huge asset for the country. It is just unfortunate that teachers are just seen as consumers and not as the producers of knowledge, meaning that teachers only apply the knowledge produced by researchers in the classroom (Robinson, 2003). The socio-economic status in South Africa influences the effectiveness of teaching and learning, there are learners from poor and wealthy backgrounds and the level of education they receive is not the same. Don't you
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CRITICAL analysis regarding youth unemployment within the current South African educational context.

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  The South African context is faced with a lot crises, including unsustainable development, social, economic and political context of high youth unemployment, energy crisis and Covid-19 crisis, and the shortage of 21st century and 4IR skills. Unsustainable development is about the exploitation of resources, present progress may be at the expense of the future generation, one may be on climate change. One may ask how does climate change affect the learners at school? A huge number South African school learners depend on food provided to them at school, long change in weather patterns my affect the production of food leading to learners not having enough food. The same group of learners were affected by the Covid-19 pandemic due to the lack of technology devices which would have given them access to online learning, but instead, they were required to stay at home. The energy crises in South Africa just makes everything else worse, this makes the usage of technology in the classrooms mor
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A necessary shift for teacher agency?

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  Taking the South African educational context into careful consideration, changes needs to be made in terms of developing new and effective teaching and learning strategies that aims to achieve the necessary 21st century and 4IR skills that are needed in the country in order to tackle the big crises of unemployment. With teacher-researchers in our corner, better and effective decisions can be made to benefit both the teaching and the learning process and to support the growth of the learners. In terms of skills shortage, why not deal with the gap between high school and higher institutions first? This gap is one of the factors that contributes to youth unemployment, the gap is unrealistic, most lower quantile schools focus on content knowledge and not how to apply that specific knowledge and other skills like technology skills that learners are not even taught. A lot of learners from those schools only learn how to use a computer only when they get to university, saying this from expe
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