Excursions as an Immersion Pedagogy to Enhance Self-Directed Learning in Pre-Service Teacher Education

Pre-service teacher education should be underpinned by pedagogies that would enhance self-directed learning. Future teachers need to create contexts in the classrooms that would enable learners to, as self-directed learners, identify individual learning goals for themselves, search for appropriate resources, and monitor and assess their own learning. Self-directed learning is essential to adequately prepare learners for a complex and changing world. This paper focuses on the affordances of a first-year student teacher excursion to scaffold learning and the development of a professional identity, and to address the ‘apprenticeship of observation’ that could prevent optimal learning. Pre-service teachers often enter the Bachelor of Education degree with a naïve understanding of the teaching profession. Furthermore, they come from school contexts that often do not enhance self-directed learning. The faculties of education from three different universities have engaged in excursions for first-year student teachers, where the student teachers, as Homo ludens (the playing human), engage in problem-based and cooperative learning activities, exploring the complexities of the teaching profession. Social constructivism underpins the excursion. Findings over 17 years (2007–2023) across three universities—the University of Johannesburg, North-West University and the University of the Western Cape—show that such immersion pedagogy is a high-impact educational practice, in which student teachers learn from practice. The findings show that the excursion provides pre-service teachers with a more nuanced understanding of the teaching profession, enhanced sensitivity to diversity, social justice and inclusivity, an understanding of the value of reflection, and a sense of belonging as a student in the higher education sector. The findings also highlight the affordances of excursions to enhance self-directed learning, an important attribute to ensure continued professional development. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education institutions had to rethink teaching and learning, and this article also explores the transformation of face-to-face excursions to virtual online excursions.