Contesting Discourses in Higher Education Curriculum Restructuring in South Africa

Overview & Synopsis

This article describes efforts from the mid-1990s in South Africa to reshape higher education curricula, and the responses of universities to a series of policy initiatives concerned with higher education curriculum reform. Pressures of globalisation and the local challenges of reconstruction and development formed the context in which higher education curriculum restructuring occurred. Two discourses, a credit-accumulation-and-transfer discourse and a disciplinary discourse, have shaped education policy making in South Africa since the mid-1990s, particularly in higher education. Policy initiatives to re-shape higher education curricula are discussed, as well as the ways in which science and humanities faculties at universities have responded to these initiatives. A typology of different curriculum forms is presented which suggests that in spite of the influence of the credit exchange discourse in policy documents, undergraduate curricula continue to be presented on a largely disciplinary basis.