Investigating Pedagogical Competencies of Post Graduate Certificate in Education Students to Teach Accounting: A South African Case Study

This paper documents the pedagogical competencies of Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) students prepared to teach Accounting. There is an arguably perspective that students who tailored their teaching qualification through the PGCE programme are not competent to teach at a school level compared to students who did an Initial Teacher Education Bachelors degree. Further, there is an observation that school principals prefer to employ B.Ed. teachers than PGCEs underpinned by the thinking that the former are better prepared in terms of pedagogy. The Social Learning theory foregrounded this study and sought to respond to two questions: What are the pedagogical competencies of PGCE students to teach Accounting? How can pedagogical competency be enhanced in the PGCE programme? This study adopted a qualitative approach and a constructivist paradigm to understand the research phenomenon. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with three school mentors and thematic analysis was employed to analyse the data. The study found that PGCE students are pedagogically incompetent to teach Accounting since they possess insufficient subject knowledge, limited conceptualisation of teaching strategies, and PGCE students dawdle to complete Accounting content. Furthermore, pedagogical competency among PGCE can be enhanced through programme development splitting into two phases and content modules development. In light of the above findings, this study recommends that PGCE students must be provided continuous professional development which would act as a bridge to the perceived incompetency among PGCE students in South Africa. The study also concludes that the PGCE programme among universities must focus more on pedagogical competency through Social Learning theory as it can fully capacitate students to achieve the expected competencies in teaching. The study contributes knowledge and proposes suggestions to improve teaching training programmes, particularly PGCE among South African universities. Keywords: Accounting, PGCE Students, Pedagogical Competencies, Social Learning, Professional Development