d02p03

Foregrounding inclusivity and responsiveness: the case of the Foundation Public Administration and Governance curriculum design and development process

Presenter

Lynn Coleman is a senior lecturer and academic staff developer at the Extended Curriculum Programme (ECP) Unit at Fundani CHED at Cape Peninsula University of Technology. She was co-convenor of the HELTASA Foundation Special Interest Group in 2016 and 2017. She completed her PhD at the Open University in the United Kingdom. Her research interests include academic literacies within the vocational higher education context, literacies associated with visual communication and media courses, and curriculum design and development. Her research has been incorporated into edited volumes addressing the theme of literacies in the university context. She has also published in local and international journals on the topic of academic literacy practices in the vocational higher education sector.  

Megan Alexander is a lecturer at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in the Faculty of Business and Management Sciences. Previously she worked in the Education Faculty where she was the Teaching Practice Coordinator (FET). She completed her Master's degree in Linguistics at Stellenbosch University. Her research interests include training of higher education student teachers and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) college lecturers as well as teaching of Communication in English in the Extended Curriculum Programme (ECP).  

Andre Cornelius is a lecturer in the Department of Public Administration and Governance in the Faculty of Business and Management Sciences at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT). He teaches on both the ECP and regular diploma courses in his department. Before joining academia, his professional career was spent in finance in the private sector. Andre has a Master's degree in Public Administration from CPUT and his research interests include teacher training and extended curriculum provision. 

Robert Schultz lectures in various departments in the Faculty of Business and Management Sciences at CPUT. His teaching experiences include public sector finance as well as quantitative and financial literacies. He completed his Master's degree in Public Administration at CPUT. Before joining CPUT he worked in local government finance for over 14 years and readily brings this experience and insight into his classroom engagements. He has participated in curriculum development initiatives in the Foundation programme and recently published a research paper based on his Master's degree research.  

Abstract

In the South African higher education sector, extended curriculum programmes or ECPs are positioned as the primary systemic and funded curriculum initiative focused on improving student access to higher education and their overall success at university (Department of Higher Education, 2012). Most of the 26 universities in South Africa currently offer an ECP pathway as part of their various undergraduate degree or diploma courses. This level of investment in ECP provision signals ‘that in the view of the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) the ECP remains a significant intervention for addressing the challenges related to student throughput and success and improving graduate output and outcomes across the higher education sector’ (Staak, 2017).  

The academic development field in South Africa have long argued that institutional curriculum structures and practices should be the first point of intervention and corrective action to address the key challenges of low participation and high attrition, which characterise our university system (Luckett and Shay, 2017; Boughey and McKenna, 2016). The primary focus of the ECP curriculum strategy has been to address the ‘articulation gap’. As Scott (2013:21) notes, an ‘articulation gap’ highlights areas of ‘mismatch…between two consecutive educational levels of phases’. In South Africa the most prominent location of the ‘articulation gap’ is manifested between students’ schooling backgrounds and the assumptions made by traditional undergraduate curricula and programmes about this prior learning and educational experience (Scott, 2013; Council of Higher Education, 2016). Thus Scott (2013:21) emphatically asserts that "Irrespective of how talented they are, students whose home and educational backgrounds are disadvantaging, face daunting challenges in trying to cope with a teaching-and-learning process unresponsive to their needs’. The utilisation of the ‘articulation gap’ is premised on recognising the structural and institutional inequalities prevalent in the schooling system and the consequences this holds for especially black university entrants. 

In 2016 the department of Public Administration and Governance (PAG) at Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) embarked on an ambitious curriculum revision exercise: It sought to redesign its existing Extended model provision to a fully foundational model (DHET, 2012). A key starting point for this 18-month process was the recognition of and need to address the ‘articulation gap’ (Scott, 2013) and therefore ensure that the new curriculum would be inclusive and responsive to the needs of students enrolling in the PAG diploma. In this workshop presentation, we will provide a detailed overview of this curriculum revisioning process, highlighting the different ways in which the final curriculum plan attempted to centre the educational and transitional needs of prospective Foundation PAG students. Workshop participants will be encouraged to engage in a few activities that simulates some of the student profiling and needs assessment tasks completed during our curriculum revision process. Discussion and reflective commentary about the benefits and challenges of driving curriculum renewal and revisioning exercises based on student needs will also be facilitated.  

Presentation & Resources