D.Technologiae / Higher education, as both a “place” and a “paradigm”, has throughout its history confronted challenges in the internal and external environments of its functioning (Brennan et al., 1999; Hirsch & Weber, 1999). In the twenty-first century, the nature of these challenges has necessitated that both the organizational character and curriculum offerings of higher education institutions be adaptive and responsive to changes occurring in the external environment. How institutions of higher learning react to these changes, is an issue of divergent viewpoints. “Reform” and “transformation” – in the same mould as “adaptation” and “responsiveness” – are viewed in this study as the fundamental points of departure in articulating a trajectory along which change in the curriculum perspectives has to occur. As a ‘product’ offered to its ‘consumers’ – the paying students – the higher education curriculum has been a fiercely contested epistemological terrain. On the one hand is the concern that it services the interests of industry and commerce, to the detriment of society; while on the other, the curriculum has been viewed as reproducing elitist values. The problem then, is located in the realm of the curriculum’s capacity to respond to the contradictory nature of the multiple stakeholder interests. The South African higher education system is faced with the problem of firstly, de-contextualizing and disengaging the curriculum from its erstwhile political ramifications (CHE, 2000b). Secondly, affordable and quality higher education is expected to be assimilated into the broader national socioeconomic imperatives. From this study’s perspective, the problem statement is situated in the context of the curriculum’s capacity to meet the local reconstruction and developmental needs; while also adhering to international imperatives ushered in mainly by globalisation and the concomitant proliferation of alternative providers who have challenged the claim to epistemological hegemony by traditional universities. In other words, are current curriculum trends in higher education directed at meeting society’s needs; or is the entrepreneurial imperative more sacrosanct? One of the main challenges for South African higher education curriculum reform/transformation policy concerns then, should be to define and determine how the local and global curriculum polemics are to be reined-in in the broader ‘public good’ and social contract in improving the lives of all citizens. Through its empirical phase, the study has attempted to investigate the extent to which higher education curriculum trends ‘conform’ or ‘deviate’ from worldwide curriculum practices. In that regard, policy rhetoric was able to be differentiated from actual policy implementation. In order that problems of critical generalisability be obviated, data and method triangulation were utilised; also taking into account the institutional reconfiguration that had major consequences for the curriculum, especially at institutions undergoing “comprehensive” organizational and curriculum restructuring. The extent of institutional curriculum ‘deviation’ or ‘conformity’ was therefore determined on the basis of the collective integration of literature-based and empirical data and information/knowledge. The case study research conducted through questionnaires and interviews at the designated research sites (two higher education institutions with disparate academic cultures) therefore serves as the basis upon which larger investigations and broader perspectives could be incorporated, particularly from the extensive literature review. While the two case studies could have limitations of generalisability, some practices and trends lend themselves to a greater degree of the transferability of the findings. For instance, the knowledge stratification inherent in the Western university model (Makgoba, 1998; Scott, 1997) has perpetrated an environment of epistemological ‘supremacy’ within local higher education curriculum policy formulation frameworks. In that regard, it has emerged from the case study that Africanisation (in its epistemological, rather than ‘anthropological/cultural’ sense) is not part of a critical and mainstream curriculum organization tenet. While this observation could be argued to be institution-specific, it certainly also reflects a systemic trend. In the light of the epistemological context cited above, is it to be assumed then that the ‘politics of knowledge’ (Apple, 1990; Lyotard, 1994; Muller, 2000) is an extant curriculum/epistemological nuance even in the twenty-first century? The realizable outcomes of the study materialized in the conceptualisation and development of a trilogy of models on Africanisation; in which the input, mediating/modulating, and output triad factor characterises an environment of possibilities for its integration into the mainstream higher education curriculum.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uj/uj:14811 |
| Date | 20 January 2009 |
| Creators | Mkhonto, Themba Jacob |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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