Curriculum reform in higher education : a humanities case study.
Date
2010-06-15T10:06:15Z
Authors
Adam, Fatima
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Abstract
This study explores the nature of curriculum change in the Faculty of Humanities at
the University of the Witwatersrand. In particular, it focuses on the relationship
between the new socio-economic and political context and curriculum reform trends.
While the literature indicates that trends throughout the world tend to privilege
particular curriculum discourses informed by global and market pressures at the
expense of institutional driving forces, neglecting the role of agency or local and
institutional discourses rooted in the particular histories and cultures of institutions
(Kishun, 1998), there is some indication that there could be room for institutionally
informed choices at the curriculum level (Slaughter & Lesley, 1999). Using a qualitative
approach, this study explores curriculum responses of the faculty within the context of
global and national pressures in order to better understand the nature of contextuallybased
challenges, strategies, practices and emerging curriculum trends.
University curriculum across the globe is experiencing significant pressure to transform
from its ‘insular’, distant and abstract form to one that is more responsive to the direct
needs of society. This increased focus on responsiveness results in a shift toward mode
2 knowledge approaches (Gibbons, Limoges, Nowotny, Schwartzman, Scott & Trow,
1994) which prioritise curricula that focus on skills, application and problem solving.
This shift is particularly challenging for programmes in the Humanities and Social
Sciences, which have prided themselves on opportunities to step back, reflect and
explore knowledge from a position of reasonable distance from everyday occurrences.
This study embarks on a journey to explore what the implications of the emerging
utilitarian discourses are for curriculum in the Humanities.
This study argues that the dominant global-speak evident in the literature is not
sufficient to account for the nature of curriculum change. While utilitarian discourses
dominate curriculum transformation efforts in the faculty, there are various strategies
for achieving responsiveness or usefulness, which has various implications for
traditional liberal curriculum practices. In fact, the study suggests that responses differ
by discipline, programme and even department, and range from radical to conservative
curriculum transformation. Thus sweeping generalisations do not sufficiently and
accurately account for the complexity of responses and outcomes at the institutional or
faculty level. Curriculum reform therefore results from the interplay of a number of
external and internal factors that occur within very specific contextual conditions.