“Reschooling” higher education: the dynamics of curriculum in South Africa

Higher education systems across the world have had to adjust to pressures to adapt curricula to competing challenges including employability, innovation, national development and social justice. This has led to a field of scholarship on curriculum which does not locate curricula within a conceptual, ideological and pedagogical context. Both the social and individual contexts are essential to the process of crafting curricula that are responsive to and reflective of their location. This chapter argues for a renewed focus on re-schooling higher education in South Africa as a critical approach to fostering a coherent vision for the role and purpose of universities. In respect of curriculum, it articulates an understanding of re-schooling as a process by which universities, and the value they create, are shared across society in a way that revitalizes research, teaching and learning. This process is further explained through engaging with dominant trends shaping curriculum in contemporary South African higher education, including decolonization and the 4IR. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the need for reschooling the South African higher education sector in light of this discussion.