Life orientation teacher training needs in career guidance at rural high schools

Abstract

The inclusion of career guidance in the life orientation (LO) curriculum has posed a number of challenges for LO teachers in South Africa. LO teachers seem to experience confusion, feelings of incompetence, and insufficient training that points to a need for training and professional development. The purpose of this article is to explore the training needs of LO teachers in teaching career guidance at rural high schools in the Lephalale Municipality of the Waterberg District. A qualitative research approach was followed in this study. This study was a small investigation in which non-probability purposive sampling was used to select 2 secondary schools and 1 LO teacher per selected school. Face-to-face, semi-structured interviews were used to elicit responses from a purposefully selected sample of 2 Further Education and Training (FET) LO teachers at 2 rural high schools in the Lephalale Municipality. FET LO teacher training needs in teaching career guidance emerged as a major theme and is discussed in this article.

Keywords: career guidance; FET phase; Life Orientation; life orientation teacher; rural high schools; training needs