This thesis investigates the curriculum discourses of academics within a University of
Technology, exploring their responses to curriculum challenges and considering the
degree to which national and institutional shifts contest existing curriculum
discourses. Curriculum discourses are identified and discussed against the national
and institutional environment and are found, to some degree, to reflect the
entrenched assumptions of teaching and learning that were dominant during the
apartheid era. Existing curriculum discourses also reveal the influence of curriculum
practices adopted within the highly bureaucratic technikon system out of which the
institution has evolved.
This critical inquiry rests on the assumption that with more insight into socio-cultural
values and assumptions, understandings of knowledge, teaching and learning, and
existing power relations within individuals’ working context, the possibility of
transforming curriculum will be increased. Selecting a small sample of twelve
participants from the Durban University of Technology, I conducted in-depth, open-ended
interviews intended to explore these academics’ curriculum discourses.
Adopting discourse analysis as my primary method of data analysis enabled me to
explore the discourses which academics use to construct the notion of curriculum
and their own roles in regards to the curriculum. Further to this, I used my own
experience of the institutional context and the literature on the national
and international contexts of higher education to inform the study and add to the
richness of the data.
Issues of professional, disciplinary and institutional knowledge and culture are
acknowledged to play a central role in participants’ curriculum discourses. These
socio-cultural factors are found to affect academic identity construction and change,
assumptions about knowledge production and dissemination and notions of teaching
and learning. These insights are then overlaid onto a consideration of the extent to
which academics have the agency to transform their curricula to align with current
higher education policy and the societal and economic transformation agenda.
Competing curriculum discourses evident in post-apartheid policy, enormous
institutional changes resulting from mandated institutional mergers, changed
institutional management team profiles, significantly different student profiles and
increased student numbers have all to a large degree overshadowed issues of
teaching and learning and led to confusion, disillusionment and uncertainty among
the academics participating in this study. There is evidence of a weakening
institution-identity with academics feeling uncertain about their roles and
responsibilities within the institution, feeling under-valued by the institutional leaders
and over-burdened in their workloads with limited support and resources. On the
other hand there is a strong identification with workgroups which include both
professional and departmental groups that share sets of assumptions and
established practices that provide academics with the stability, familiarity, security
and affirmation that they need. The issue of individual agency as reflected in the
findings, demonstrates that there was a continuum of participant agency that
tentatively points to a correlation between the level of agency and the amount of
stability and value gained from allegiance to and participation in workgroups.
Despite the increasing pressure upon academics to interrogate their own systems
and disciplinary structures that chiefly focus on a traditional mode of specialised
knowledge production, there is limited evidence of significantly changed
understanding of curriculum practices. Furthermore there is little to suggest that
these academics’ curriculum practices have been impacted by international trends
towards globalisation, marketisation and shifts in modes of knowledge production.
Traditional views of knowledge construction and low skills training discourses were
strongly evident in the data. With the challenges presented not only by the need for
economic and social transformation within South Africa, but also by the need to
respond to fast-paced technological and knowledge advancements, exceptional
leadership and improved capacity are required to enable rather than inhibit
curriculum transformation. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2010.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ukzn/oai:http://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za:10413/3904 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Powell, Paulette. |
| Contributors | McKenna, Sioux. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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