An imprint of the Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa JEANNE GAMBLE CURRICULUM RESPONSIVENESS IN FET COLLEGES Free download from www.hsrcpublishers.ac.za Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za 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 www.hsrcpublishers.ac.za © 2003 Human Sciences Research Council First published 2003 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. ISBN 0 7969 2036 2 Design and typesetting by Christabel Hardacre Cover design by FUEL Production by comPress Printed by Creda Communications Distributed in Africa, by Blue Weaver Marketing and Distribution, PO Box 30370, Tokai, Cape Town 7966, South Africa. Te l: +27 +21-701-4477 Fax: +27 +21-701-7302 email: booksales@hsrc.ac.za Distributed worldwide, except Africa by Independent Publishers Group, 814 North Franklin Street, Chicago, IL 60610, USA. www.ipgbook.com To order, call toll-free: 1-800-888-4741 All other inquiries, Tel: +312-337-0747 Fax: +312-337-5985 email: Frontdesk@ipgbook.com Free download from www.hsrcpublishers.ac.za Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za 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 Free download from www.hsrcpublishers.ac.za Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za 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 Free download from www.hsrcpublishers.ac.za Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za 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 Free download from www.hsrcpublishers.ac.za Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za 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 Free download from www.hsrcpublishers.ac.za Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za 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 Free download from www.hsrcpublishers.ac.za Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za 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 Free download from www.hsrcpublishers.ac.za Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za 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. Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za 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 Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za [...]... 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 . 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. 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 . 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