Abstract
This chapter explores the need to equip student teachers with the skills that will enable them to train and develop their learners for employability. However, given the broad understanding of employability, it is important to recognize that the quality of a university graduate is not just a reflection of the quality of the curriculum and its supporting academic environment. It reflects the demands of the industry as well as the competence of the regulating body (i.e. related government institutions) in shaping the characteristics of higher education graduates. It might be overly simplistic to say that universities are encouraged, if not pressured, to produce employable graduates. The higher education sector therefore needs to recognize and understand the context of employability for their graduates to ensure that their students can live up to the expectations from governments and employers.
TopFoundation Of Education
Foundation of Education (FoE) courses as the bedrock of teacher education and the teaching profession. These courses constitute the basic ways of thinking about schooling, the formal processes of education, focus on developing, understanding of the different perspectives of teaching as a profession and how these perspectives affect education. Many of the FoE courses offer historical, philosophical, psychological, sociological, economic, and administrative perspectives of education and how these perspectives influence our understanding, practice and appreciation of the education process in a country’s context. This understanding and practice and appreciation enable STs to develop the ability to acquire knowledge, skills, values and dispositions as well as the ability to interpret all that within their educational contexts.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Teacher Education: Training of student teachers in Higher education institutions.
Soft Skills: Those skills that relate to personality traits and habits.
Hard Skills: Academic and technical skills that can be acquired through education.
Foundations of Education: Group of subjects that constitute the basic ways of developing, explaining and understanding the different perspectives of teaching as a profession.
Student Teacher: An individual who is being trained to become a teacher.
Competencies: Ability to call on skills, literacies and other capacities of life to be successful across many facets of life.
Employability: This is the ability to develop skill, understandings and personal attributes – including positive attitudes to work, to others and to the world’s resources.
Higher Education: Institutions that offer post-secondary education beyond colleges.