Chapters in Books (Curriculum Studies)

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Browsing Chapters in Books (Curriculum Studies) by Subject "Curriculum change -- South Africa"

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    Challenges for curriculum in a contemporary South Africa
    (AFRICAN SUN MeDIA, 2011) Le Grange, Lesley
    INTRODUCTION: Curriculum is a complex and contested terrain that is variously described based on disparate philosophical lenses through which it is viewed. When the word ‘curriculum’ is used it is generally understood as applying to school education, that is to the prescribed learning programmes of schools or more broadly to the learning opportunities provided to school learners, rather than to higher education. A survey of articles published in prominent curriculum journals such as the Journal of Curriculum Studies and Curriculum Inquiry, for instance, shows that very little space is given to articles on higher education. Ironically, the term was first used in relation to higher education rather than school education. It was Ramus, the sixteenth-century master at the University of Paris, who first worked on ‘methodising’ knowledge and teaching. It was in Ramus’s work, a taxonomy of knowledge, the Professio Regia (1576), which was published posthumously, that the word ‘curriculum’ first appears, referring to “a sequential course of study” (for more detail see Doll 2002:31). According to Doll (2002:31), Ramus’s idea of a general codification of knowledge (curriculum) flourished among universities that were strongly influenced by Calvinism, ostensibly because of their affinity for discipline, order and control.
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    Equity and access: a curricular perspective
    (AFRICAN SUN MeDIA, 2016) Leibowitz, Brenda
    Introduction: This chapter is concerned with equity and access to the curriculum, which has been shown by numerous analyses of statistics, as well as experience of those of us who are concerned to improve the state of education in South Africa, to be extremely problematic with unequal levels of student success. The view of ‘curriculum’ adopted in this chapter is an expanded one. It proposes the idea of the curriculum as an “active conceptual force” (Le Grange 2016:8). ‘Pedagogy’ and ‘curriculum’ can be plotted on a continuum from design choices at the micro level to choices at the macro level. Clearly the curriculum, even the expanded view, is embedded within a broader ecology of learning and living phenomena. However, for the purposes of this short chapter, the ‘learning’ dimensions are focussed upon. Equity and equality, it is proposed, are advanced within a conceptualisation of cognitive justice, which is itself interrelated with the notion of ‘social justice’ (de Sousa Santos 2014). Fraser’s (2009) description of social justice is extremely useful. She equates social justice with the ability to interact on an equal footing with social peers. In order to achieve this participatory parity in a higher education context, social arrangements would have to be put in place, which would make it possible for individuals to interact on a par with one other. The three dimensions of social justice, which are interrelated and mutually dependent, are: recognition, which refers mostly to the cultural domain and the recognition of the status of groups; distribution, which pertains mostly to the material domain, to resources such as computers, parents’ salaries to finance higher education; and, representation, which is more political, and includes who is regarded as a legitimate citizen, who may participate in political processes, and who is entitled to voice needs.