Abstract
This thesis, written from the perspective of an academic staff developer, examines the phenomenon of academic agency in curriculum development in South African higher education. In light of rapid change, academic staff are often required to be agents of change. However, despite there being a plethora of research on agency, understanding what agency is and how it is achieved in respect of the work that academics do requires greater clarity. The question that this thesis addresses is: How is academic agency in curriculum development achieved and under what conditions? Working from a critical realist philosophy and drawing on literature on agency, specifically on the seminal work of Emirbayer and Mische (1998) and development of their work in the ecological approach to teacher agency (Priestley, Robinson and Biesta, 2012 & 2015) as well as Bernstein’s (1999, 2000) concepts of the knowledge structure and the pedagogical device, I develop a theorisation of academic agency as a lens to explain the complexity of academic agency in curriculum development in South African higher education. In so doing I extend the work on the ecological view of teacher agency by Priestley et al (2015) by adapting some of their insights to an exploration of the case of hospitality studies in a comprehensive university located in higher education in South Africa. A qualitative approach using a single discipline as a case study was adopted. Using narrative inquiry, in-depth interviews were conducted to facilitate an understanding of the lived experiences of participants. The findings reveal that academic agency is achieved through a complex interplay of biographical and contextual influences. The prior experiences of academic staff and their values and beliefs about teaching in hospitality, in combination with their aspirations for themselves and their students informs their curriculum development practices. In terms of contextual influences including the history of the merger, the vocational nature of the discipline and its structural location, together with an institutional culture that places greater value on research and performativity, is crucial. Our knowledge of the world is fallible thus I discuss the limitations of this study. This is followed by some reflection of the importance of academic agency, the implications of this for academic staff development and suggestions for future research.
Ph.D. (Education)