Modelling Curriculum Change for South Africa's Future: The Value of the Undefinable

Alongside knowledge production, the curriculum in higher education remains a complex construct at the core of the university. The process by which educational goals can be realised through curricula requires accounting for qualification purposes, their location in disciplines, the teaching and learning culture of the institution, and the interplay between institutional, national, and global contextual forces (Roberts, 2015). In South Africa, there remain numerous debates about the role of the university (Badat, 2008, 2016; Bhengu et al., 2006; Lange, 2017). Higher education has been a lever for social, political, and economic change, with teaching and learning contextualised around the social location of a university, its students, and faculty. Since 1994, South Africa's state planning and implementation of policies, structures, and systems have been designed to address apartheid's negative structural and social legacy. This chapter develops a series of provocations toward the integration of "supercomplexity" as a framework of institutional curriculum change geared towards the preparation of graduates for a rapidly changing world. The goal is an approach to curriculum change that reflects the complexity of higher education in South Africa, recognising that transformation and adaptation to trends intersect with social, economic, and historical features which act against their transformative potential.