governing teacher education colleges in south africa

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Students and faculty argue that administrators should make the policy of affirmative action
a publicly stated personal and institutional priority and commitment. Second, they
suggested that administrators should make recruitment of disadvantaged groups a job
requirement for subordinates and successful accomplishment of this goal an important part
of performance evaluation and salary review. Third, they also suggested that administrators
should make themselves aware of current research on affirmative action and its potential
impact on the policies and practices of their institution. Fourth, administrators should
support the mentoring of promising disadvantaged members and be prepared to
demonstrate willingness to sponsor and advance someone “quite different from
themselves.” Fifth, there were also suggestions about the need to transform and educate
the members of college councils about the importance of affirmative action and
employment equity in the institutions that they govern.
The term “dead wood” was frequently used to refer to the old administrators and faculty
members who seem to be unable to adjust to the new educational context. The
Employment Equity Act was referred to as providing an effective policy basis for replacing
these individuals with young and more dynamic scholars. For this purpose, institutions need
“to grow their own timber” or develop new faculty through staff development programmes.
13. Conclusions and emerging trends
In essence, teacher education colleges, as institutions of higher education, represent
communities or groups of scholars, which we call colleges, organised and maintained to
achieve certain purposes. Such communities must be governed in such a way as to provide
a degree of freedom, flexibility and variety with a maximum amount of order, accountability
and responsibility. The employer-employee relationship is not appropriate for an academic
community. Although more standardised than many other institutions of higher education,
teacher education colleges are fundamentally different from business, military, and
governmental organisations that influence, indeed almost dominate, modern thought and
behaviour. Faculty members do not work for the college; they are the college, responsible
members of a self-governing community whose relative autonomy is crucial to the nature
and process of higher education.
This perspective, highly shared by most participants in this study, points to the following
characteristics of effective college governance: (i) strong leadership, particularly among
college administrators; (ii) strong internal organisational structures, sensitive to the needs of
stakeholders; (iii) formal and informal dialogue between the various groups within colleges;
(iv) effective flow of information; (v) co-operative relations at internal and inter-institutional
levels as well as between government officials and members of the college community; (vi)
no interference with the legally allowed level of college autonomy; (vii) accountability on
the part of colleges to government and the wider society; and (viii) partnership with the
schools. Democratically elected student and staff representation should be ensured, and
those elected should be represented at all levels of college governance.
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