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An imprint of the Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa
JEANNE GAMBLE
CURRICULUM RESPONSIVENESS IN FET COLLEGES
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Compiled by the Research Programme on Human Resources Development,
Human Sciences Research Council
The research for this book was co-funded by Ntsika Enterprise Promotion Agency.
Published by HSRC Press
Private Bag X9182, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa
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© 2003 Human Sciences Research Council
First published 2003
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Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 A historical perspective on FET curriculum 5
Introduction 5
From past to future: two modes of interpretation 6
The technical and vocational curriculum considered in historical terms 7
Conclusions: learning from the past 11
Chapter 2 Intermediate knowledge and skill for employment 13
Introduction 13
The ‘new global economy’ 14
Employer demand 18
The impact on education and training 21
Conclusions: from employment to employability 27
Chapter 3 Intermediate knowledge and skill for self-employment 29
Introduction 29
The policy context 29
Two pathways to self-employment 30
The knowledge and skill required for successful self-employment 33
The role of FET institutions in preparation for self-employment 36
Conclusions: learning-led competitiveness 40
Chapter 4 Practice and theory in the FET curriculum 41
Introduction 41
Te c hnological capability – the new demand 41
Bringing practice and theory together 43
Conclusions: linking practice and theory 50
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Chapter 5 Language in the FET curriculum 53
Introduction 53
Communicative competence 54
The role of language in concept formation 56
Language in teaching and learning 57
Conclusions: language and communicative competence 59
Chapter 6 Curriculum futures in FET colleges 61
Introduction 61
The call for employability 61
Possible future curriculum scenarios 63
Education and training for the informal economy 67
Conclusion: curriculum responsiveness 69
References 71
iv curriculum responsiveness in fet colleges
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Introduction
The task of building knowledge and skill at the intermediate level has, for a long
time, been the appointed curriculum responsibility of technical colleges. For many
years, this responsibility and task was part of a system of apprenticeship, which
prepared young men and women, from one population group only, for entry
primarily into the engineering and hairdressing trades. Later, preparation for
various business-related occupations became the focus of many newer colleges,
which did not have strong relationships with those industry sectors that supported
apprenticeships.
Although the technical college sector was the last to be subjected to policy reforms,
the process is now in full swing. Both the Department of Education (DoE) and the
Department of Labour (DoL) have been engaged in a legislative process that has
produced the Further Education and Training Act (1998), the Skills Development Act
(1998) and the Skills Levies Act (1999). Specific reforms to be introduced in South
Africa’s technical colleges were spelled out in A New Institutional Landscape for
Public Further Education and Training Colleges (DoE, 2001).
These legislative and policy instruments are intended to change the nature of
technical and vocational education and training in South Africa, fundamentally.
Once the restructuring of the institutions, and the governance and funding
arrangements have been crystallised, in terms of the new legislative and policy
frameworks, the curriculum will in turn be restructured. The controversy and
debate regarding Curriculum 2005 that is taking place in the primary and
secondary education sector is not the main issue in the further education and
training (FET) college curriculum. The main issues focused on in this sector
have centred round the low pass and throughput rates; the limited range of
programmes offered; and the restrictive nature of centrally administered curricula.
Further concerns are the lack of adequate workshop facilities and the need to
include work experience in the curriculum. In the engineering field, the decline of
the apprenticeship system and the subsequent lack of opportunity for students to
gain practical work experience has added to the requirement for ‘a fundamental
overhaul of programmes and provision’ (DoE, 2001: 12).
What is visualised and proposed is a new and dynamic FET college sector that
can meet a multitude of needs. It is worth quoting from the New Institutional
Landscape document to show the scope that is required.
The support for lifelong learning requires a network of FET colleges. The new system
will need to work with different partners to deliver responsive and relevant
programmes to meet the needs of individuals and the wider social and business
introduction 1
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community as a whole. The achievement of our national policy imperatives of redress
and economic inclusion depends on the existence of accessible, high-quality and cost-
effective learning opportunities for young people and adults. (DoE, 2001: 6)
The implications for the FET curriculum of such policy statements are daunting
and challenging by any standards, but particularly for those institutions that
have a ‘low status’ history and a limited track record in terms of curriculum
development. On what sources can the FET college sector draw to find the
inspiration to develop and deliver the necessary and required curricula?
An answer that comes to mind immediately is that they will want to find out what
FET colleges in other parts of the world are doing. They will also look towards the
newly established Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) for guidance
on how to find their way through the requirements for qualifications and
programmes which have been set by the South African Qualifications Authority
(SAQA) with regard to the National Qualifications Framework (NQF). These
processes are already underway, so this book takes another route. First, it examines
the literature to understand how education and training are linked to employment
and the economy. Second, it looks at current debates and factual evidence on how
to translate the needs of industry and employers into meaningful changes in the
curriculum. This approach is perhaps a controversial one as it lays itself open to
the criticism that economic demands and an instrumental approach are
determining the future of education and training. Can education and training ever
provide only what an economy and employers want? The answer is clearly ‘no’ and
a scan of the recent South African policy documents shows a far broader vision
than one that just focuses on economic demands.
A successful FET system will provide diversified programmes offering knowledge, skills,
attitudes and values South Africans require as individuals and citizens, as lifelong
learners and as economically productive members of society. It will provide the vital
intermediate to higher-level skills and competencies the country needs to chart its own
course in the global competitive world of the 21st century (DoE, 1998b).
However, one of the criticisms of current FET policy documents is that they do
not adequately address the economic context in which the transformation of FET
will take place (McGrath, 2000). The need to be part of the global competitive
world is acknowledged and so is the need for equity and redress, but little is said
about the nature of intermediate and higher-level knowledge and skill and,
particularly, what this means in curriculum terms.
The requirement for FET colleges to prepare their students for a world of work
that includes both employment and self-employment as possible options also
presents challenges. While entrepreneurship and small business management are
currently included as subjects in a range of programmes, there is doubt about
whether these subjects offer sufficient preparation for the complex task of actually
starting a business enterprise. There is also scepticism and doubt expressed about
whether colleges are, in fact, in a position to contribute meaningfully to
2 curriculum responsiveness in fet colleges
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preparation for self-employment. If FET colleges are expected to take on this task
as a mainstream activity and not simply as an add-on to what they really do best,
namely the development of technical and technological capability, will they
succeed? There is widespread acceptance that education and training should have a
particularly important impact on the enhancement of informal job creation in
order to sustain livelihoods. There are many references in the various policy
documents, which point to the need for some form of change to the question of
economic inclusion. This redress should focus on attending to the needs of the
informal economic sector. How such redress is to be achieved, however, is by no
means clear.
Even though we may wish it were possible, theoretical and empirical sources
cannot produce ready-made answers to the questions such as the ones raised
above. Practices cannot be taken out of a particular location in time and space,
and used to serve as solutions in another time and place. Furthermore, all texts are,
to a certain extent, ideologically biased in one direction or another. This bias, in
turn, shapes the explanations and prescriptions the texts articulate. A wide range
of texts has been consulted to ensure that the reader encounters a variety of views
and arguments. Even though the sources used are restricted to texts available in
English, which inevitably emphasises Anglophone (English) interpretations, they
are of sufficient range and quality to provide a balanced perspective.
The first chapter examines the origins of technical and vocational education and
training in South Africa, and traces the ways in which these roots have shaped
curricula over time. In Chapters 2 and 3, the nature of the demand for
intermediate knowledge and skill for employment and self-employment are
explored from both economic and employer perspectives. Placing these two
focuses side by side allows for both common ground and differences to emerge.
In curriculum terms, they are, in fact, not as far apart as many may think.
The ways in which the messages received from economic and employer contexts,
with regard to intermediate knowledge and skill, can be implemented in the
curriculum is dealt with in the fourth and fifth chapters. Chapter 4 deals with
conceptual arguments about the nature of the relationship between theory and
practice, while Chapter 5 examines the role that language and communicative
competence plays in the teaching-learning process. These chapters focus on
practical lessons learnt by other countries that are further along the path of FET
implementation, although evidence from South Africa is also reviewed. In the light
of the evidence and arguments reviewed, the concluding chapter suggests possible
future curriculum scenarios and argues for a set of curriculum principles that
deepen, rather than dilute, knowledge and skill at the intermediate level.
It is hoped that the book contributes to building an understanding of the
complexity of the challenges facing curriculum development in a sector that has
been described as fragmented and without a common institutional character and
identity (DoE, 1995). The educational task of designing, developing and
implementing responsive programmes, needs a ‘community of practice’ that takes
introduction 3
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into account economic and labour market debates yet still defines responsiveness
in terms that can be defended on curriculum grounds. This, in the end, is the
strongest contribution that FET colleges
1
can make towards realising the vision
that guides current policy reforms.
Notes
1Vocational education and training (VET); technical and vocational education and
training (TVET); technical and further education (TAFE); further education (FE) and
further education and training (FET) are terms used in different countries to refer to
more or less the same kind of educational provision, although FET in South Africa is
only partially synonymous as it also covers senior secondary schooling. South Africa is
currently changing from VET to FET and the two terms are used interchangeably.
4 curriculum responsiveness in fet colleges
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chapter 1 5
CHAPTER 1
A historical perspective on
FET curriculum
Introduction
One view of curriculum change is that it should break with the past. Another view
advocates that an analysis of the past should be used as a foundation for
curriculum change. It is the latter view that provides the rationale for this chapter.
Two historical pathways, which have influenced curriculum development in the
technical college sector in South Africa, are sketched. One traces the origins of
technical education and the other traces the origins of industrial or vocational
education. These two pathways were connected to, and partly determined by,
South Africa’s racial legacy. They also, however, pulled technical and vocational
education in directions that bear a marked resemblance to the division between
high skill and low skill that emerges from economic and employer perspectives
reviewed in the next chapter.
The warning is thus, that history may easily repeat itself, with the main dividing
line and determining factor no longer being race, as it was in the past, but rather
the ability of colleges to get the theory-practice combination right. Calls for
increased responsiveness may well lead to a focus on the practical and
occupational that overshadows the educational task of the formation of cognitive
concepts within a theory-practice framework. On the other hand, the continuation
of a system where the majority of students study only theoretical courses, without
access to practical training and on-job experience, is equally problematic from an
educational point of view.
This chapter returns to original formulations of the theory-practice combination
that constitutes knowledge and skill at the intermediate level. It is argued that,
simply because unequal provision based on race determined past policy, this
should not mean that earlier formulations of the theory-practice combination are
ignored and discarded in an attempt to eradicate racial inequity.
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From past to future: two modes of interpretation
Breaking with the past
FET colleges currently function in an environment filled with both institutional
and curricular change (DoE, 2001; Gewer, 2002). Below is an example taken from
a recent South African publication on further education and training. Curriculum
change is depicted as a decisive break with the past in order to establish new ways
of presenting the curricula, which support an integrated approach to education
and training. The call is for a closer ‘fit’ between the everyday world of practical
knowledge and the changing demands of the workplace.
Dowling (1998: 19) argues that past-future representations of this kind of change
rest on a ‘dystopia-utopia’ dichotomy, or split, with both ‘dystopia’ and ‘utopia’ as
imaginary places or conditions: the one (dystopia) where everything is as bad as
possible and the other (utopia) where everything is as perfect as possible.
‘Dystopian-utopian’ dichotomies create problems for the present. This is because
the future is not yet a reality, yet it often becomes the template or model, against
which current practices must be evaluated – a kind of utopian or idealised ‘best
practice’. Gee (1994: 83) argues that such texts seek not just to describe, but also to
create, a new reality, in which boundaries between what ‘is’, what ‘will be’, what
‘must be’ and what ‘ought to be’ are frequently blurred. The past then becomes ‘out
of bounds’, so to speak, and a view of educational change, as one in which new
elements are added to the old, is not considered.
Building on the past
A radical break with the past is one way of mapping out the future. Building on
the past is another. In a complex, comparative analysis of the strategies followed in
6 curriculum responsiveness in fet colleges
Ta b le 1.1 Curriculum changes as a break with the past
The curriculum of the past The curriculum of the future
Focuses on transmitting existing knowledge. Focuses on creating new knowledge as well as
transmitting existing knowledge.
Prioritises divisions in a fixed framework. Prioritises flexibility, continuity, and multiple access
routes and exit points.
Value is placed on knowledge and learning for its Value is placed on how knowledge can be applied
own sake. and used for transformation.
Higher value is placed on subject knowledge Emphasis is placed on the interdependence of
than on relationships between subjects. knowledge areas.
Assumes a hierarchy and boundary between school Emphasis is placed on the relevance of school
and everyday knowledge so that problems emerge in knowledge to solve everyday problems.
transferring school knowledge to non-school contexts.
Source: Angelis & Marock, 2001: 90
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[...]... grounding in academic knowledge, with employers being responsible for work-related skill and vocational knowledge in the workplace In the United Kingdom (UK), the idea of employers helping to design elements of the curriculum and teaching materials, and influencing the ways in which teaching is undertaken, has enjoyed far greater emphasis Linking education and training to work experience Combining education... training system there is a trend towards inserting the general into the vocational At the same time, there is a trend towards inserting the vocational into the general 16 curriculum responsiveness in fet colleges Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Schooling and higher education will be particularly affected by the demand for more practical/vocational/technological components within the general curriculum. .. percentage growth in the number of apprentices attaining artisan status with the annual 20 curriculum responsiveness in fet colleges Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za percentage change in GDP for the period 1986–1999 to illustrate the existence of ‘training lag’ ‘Training lag’ is caused by the short-term and cost-driven nature of employer decisions to train They explain that, during economic boom... 10 curriculum responsiveness in fet colleges Conclusions: learning from the past Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za It has been argued that a curriculum of the future’ in further education and training (FET) needs to be informed by an adequate perspective on a curriculum of the past’ A historical perspective shows that, from its earliest beginnings, technical and vocational education has included... education and then they either undergo training in a vocational training institution or have enterprise-based training in the formal or informal sector, before they enter a period of wage employment This period of wage employment is seen as a necessary and important preparation for sustainable enterprise self-employment.2 32 curriculum responsiveness in fet colleges ... regarding the introduction of new technologies, nor of the educational processes involved in multi-media and self-instruction approaches New roles and broader expertise Having identified two main problems, the report then focuses on how specialisation is increasing It is argued that an increasing number of trainers never teach or train They specialise in various components of educational practice, including... school or college in their areas of specialisation While advances in knowledge make it necessary to increase subject specialisation, methods of teaching and training have also become specialised areas in their own right Distance learning, multimedia teaching, and combinations of structured learning and workplace experience now run alongside direct teaching as ways of making the teaching-learning process... central to meeting curriculum demands of the future A comprehensive study conducted by the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training in European Union countries (CEDEFOP, 1990) shows how mainstream thinking about the roles, chapter 2 23 profiles and training needs of teachers, instructors and trainers in technical and vocational areas has shifted and broadened Some of these findings are... sustain unless both parties benefit In this regard, it is interesting to note Brown and Keep’s (1999) comment on the fact that business/education partnerships are based in particular cultures They view the emphasis on the need to bring business and education into closer and direct partnership as being stronger in Anglo-Saxon countries than elsewhere in the world (1999: 63–64) In Japan, schooling has,... role than national planning in determining the structure of supply It is argued that attempts to influence learning patterns at a national level will have to deal with both international and locally-based labour supply While curriculum will remain a national and domestic matter in each country, children and adults will increasingly be aware of international or global trends in knowledge This will make . secondary schooling. South Africa is
currently changing from VET to FET and the two terms are used interchangeably.
4 curriculum responsiveness in fet colleges
. Building on
the past is another. In a complex, comparative analysis of the strategies followed in
6 curriculum responsiveness in fet colleges
Ta b le 1.1 Curriculum
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