A group of students from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC) recently visited Stellenbosch University (SU) to learn more about the South African education system and to gain some practical experience in a different context.

This is the third group from UNCC to visit South Africa and organisers hope that the relationship between UNCC and SU will soon develop into an exchange programme, with SU students possibly visiting North Carolina as soon as next year.

The visits were the result of collaboration between Prof Chris Reddy and Prof Peter Beets of SU and Dr Mike Putman of UNCC. SU's Dr Louise Botha became involved during her time as Fulbright scholar at UNCC in 2015 and that is when discussions about a possible exchange programme gained momentum.

"International exposure is very valuable in today's day and age. It broadens students' knowledge and understanding of other cultures and contexts and offers them the opportunity to compare and find out why other people do what they do, and what they do well," said Dr Botha.

The UNCC students spent most of their time at AF Louw Primary as well as Idasvallei Primary, and also visited Rhenish Primary.

During a feedback session, they identified two main things that made a big impression on them: The challenges created by the multilingual and multicultural composition of classes as well as the challenges teachers face in schools with less resources (schools in the lower quintiles).

They described their time here as amazing and said they learned a lot. "It was definitely worth it," they added.

Not only the students benefit from these visits – they've also created opportunities for academics to collaborate and to discuss the field of teacher education.

"We are working on joint ideas for conference presentations and publication of research ideas. These include comparative views on teacher education policies and practices at SU and UNCC. Dr Putnam has already done a conference presentation on a paper of which Prof Beets and I were co-authors," said Prof Reddy.