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09 February 2022 | Story Lacea Loader

After careful consideration and in consultation with various stakeholders, the management of the University of the Free State (UFS) today decided that the online registration period will be extended by one week until Friday 18 February 2022.

In line with this decision, classes will commence on Monday 21 February 2022, to give students enough time to register and prepare for their academic activities.

The university’s decision to extend the online registration period derives, among others, from logistical and external factors that contributed to students only being able to register from the week of 7 February 2022.

Channels available for students to contact the university during the registration period:

► Central contact centre: +27 51 401 9111 (if you want to speak to one of our agents)

Central contact centre booklet
► WhatsApp chatbot: +27 87 240 6370 (if students want to conduct an online chat conversation via text messages)

Registration assistance: System-based online registration assistance functionality through the UFS website

Comprehensive registration information is available at:   www.ufs.ac.za/register

Visit https://www.ufs.mobi/register and follow the checklist #StepbyStep 2022 online registration.

News Archive

Rhodes professor calls for accountability in teacher education
2013-11-14

 

 Prof Jean Baxen of Rhodes University and Prof Dennis Francis, Dean of the Faculty of Education of the UFS.
Photo: Stephen Collett
15 November 2013

 



Lecture (pdf)

 

“Our education system needs quality teacher education.”

This was the message from Prof Jean Baxen, Deputy Dean of Research at Rhodes University in Grahamstown. She delivered the Education Public Lecture on ‘The lives of children, citizenship and teacher education: challenges and opportunities’ at the University of the Free State’s Bloemfontein Campus.

Growing up in White River, the rural areas of Eastern Transvaal (as it was previously known), Prof Baxen took the audience on a journey of the imagination. She shared stories of how she and fellow learners walked miles to get to school and how her son found himself in a situation of being unsure about his own racial identity, questioning what it meant to be ‘coloured’. She also related stories of how teachers are not sufficiently prepared to mediate information on HIV/Aids.

These stories revealed how little teachers cared, and also how difficult and challenging it is for learners to cope in such teaching and learning environments – thus calling for quality teacher education.

She stressed the fact that quality teacher education is needed in South Africa to assist in curbing the challenges children and fellow citizens come across in our broader society. “It is important that, as teacher educators, we should groom teachers to find and understand their identity, sexuality, and also the world they live in. There is an urgent need for us to hold ourselves and others accountable and to not distance ourselves and make it someone else’s responsibility – it is our joint responsibility as citizens,” she said.

We need a pedagogy that would navigate and start formulating a language that we could use to face these challenges, she proposed.

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