Abstract
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.