Negotiating meaning around issues of graduateness in SA Higher Education: practices and dilemmas in designing 21st Century Curricula

Mej Ndagire Kizito, Instituut vir Kurrikulum en Leerontwikkeling, UNISA

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Introduction

Our honorable South African Higher Education minister’s comments, although slightly biased towards producing one type of graduate – “the kind of graduate that is needed to fight poverty and unemployment”, depicts the tensions we have to engage in when confronting the questions surrounding the concept of “graduateness” and graduate attributes (GA)s for students who are products of our South African Higher Education system. On one hand, universities are under pressure to produce graduates ‘fit’ and ready to enter the labour force (Pauw, Oosthuizen & Van der Westhuizen, 2006). On the other hand, the curricular design and pedagogical challenges of preparing adults for work in an unknown, unpredictable and rapidly evolving   ‘super-complex’ future seem insurmountable because of contending influences (Barnett, 2004).  How can we negotiate meaning around issues of ‘graduateness’ in such an environment?

This paper has emerged as a personal reflection on the development of a statement of “graduateness” carried out at the University of South Africa (Unisa) between 2009 and 2010.   As a reflective piece, it has a hermeneutical (subjective and interpretive) slant and offers some preliminary suggestions arising from an ongoing research inquiry that seeks to understand how graduateness in the form of graduate attributes can be developed and implemented as part of the curriculum or teaching and learning provision across the five colleges at Unisa. This paper is not designed to offer detailed empirical findings, but rather to reveal possible difficulties and dilemmas which occur when this kind of project is undertaken and to make possible suggestions of how they could be handled. It is a semi-theoretical paper, driven by practical problems. The theoretical side has to do with conceptualisations in the constitution of an understanding of the term ‘graduateness’; the practical side is motivated by our general lack of insight of how to develop and operationalize graduateness and the related graduate attributes into practical and assessable outcomes that inform our teaching and learning processes for an increasingly unpredictable future.

In discussing the difficulties and dilemmas related to assigning  meaning to graduateness, I take Piet and Elize Naude’s (2005) assumption of regarding higher institutions (individually or as a collective),  as systems taking on the role of moral agents, and   implicitly having social contracts with   the societies in which they function (p. 59).  These contracts will depend on the institutions and the economic, cultural and political environments in which they are situated. In these environments, the negotiation of meaning around issues related to developing graduateness statements is a dynamic process with each institution acting as either; an object, in instances where external forces influence decision making or; a subject  where the institution assumes a leading role as the driver of the decision making. Two challenges emanating from this positioning are highlighted. The first one is a compliance attitude that institutions tend to assume in order to satisfy external scrutiny and respond to public accountability demands (such as quality assurance agents and professional bodies). The second one is a need to create environments where students are able to form individual identities, and adopt a ‘spirit of inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge’ (Hewton, 1983). The argument is that the resultant stance adopted then shapes the tone and form of the graduatemess statement developed.

The core of the main ideas developed in this discussion resonate with Barnet’s (2000a; 2000b; 2004) assertion that designing a contemporary higher education curriculum has uncertainty as a major design component. It requires a shift of focus where the design principles used embrace, but move beyond epistemological (knowledge-based) and action (skill-focused) frames into an ontological space of being. At task is the preparation of students for a supercomplex world. “A supercomplex world is one in which the very frameworks by which we orient ourselves into the world are themselves contested” (Barnett, 2000, p. 257). The suggestion is that the development of a meaning of ‘graduateness’ and graduate attributes follows a similar route. 

The paper is organised as follows. First, a description of Unisa’s ‘graduateness’ statement development process is provided to position the discussion. Second, the term ‘graduatetness’ is contextualised and linked to the development of graduate attributes. The issues of graduate employability and unemployability are also briefly explored. Third, a combination of Barnett’s (2000a; 2000b & 2004) on framing curriculum development ontologically, together with Renate Girmes ( 2009 ) model  re-thinking curriculum development is proposed as a useful structure for informing the development of graduateness and encompassing graduate attributes.

The Unisa Case of Developing a Graduateness Statement

The University of South Africa has five colleges: CHS (College of Human Sciences); CLAW (College of Law); CEMS (College of Economic & Management Sciences); CAES (College of Agriculture & Environmental Sciences) and CSET (College of Science, Engineering & Technology).  The Unisa Senate Tuition and Learner Support Committee (STLSC), appointed a graduateness task team to draw up a Graduateness Statement for the university. This team was tasked with developing a university-wide statement of graduateness as part of the improvement and implementation of the Unisa Curriculum Policy. The aim of the statement was to provide a broad concept for graduateness whereas the signature module/thrusts were meant to provide a way of ensuring that the ideals of graduateness expressed in the statement were met. The statement was to be accompanied with signature modules and signature thrusts.

An initial draft statement of Graduateness developed from contributions from the Directorate: Curriculum and Learning Development (DCLD) and the College of human Sciences was used as a point of departure. This was then distributed to various stakeholders in the university who critiqued it and was able to provide a collated college/stakeholder view on the draft statement. The task team then refined the statement based on the inputs and developed a statement which is now ready for submission to the STLSC for approval and implementation as the official Unisa statement. In this paper I will only present the original draft statement and responses from the departments.

Unisa graduates -first draft

• have a critical sense of their location on the African continent with its histories, unique challenges, opportunities and potential
• critically analyse and evaluate the credibility and usefulness of information and data from multiple sources in a globalised world with its increasing information and data flows and competing narratives and claims
• are receptive to different opinions and sensitive to diversity
• deal competently and reflectively with uncertainties, complexities and paradoxes within an awareness of the world as a dynamic, often unpredictable and interrelated system
• have the vocabularies to communicate effectively with a range of audiences and its literacies in order to broker responsible, innovative and sustainable alternatives and futures
• are critically aware of their own learning and development needs and future potential within the broader scope of their individual and collective planetary citizenship
• are confident citizens who are able to fulfil and serve in multiple roles in their immediate and future local, national and global communities

The first statement embraced the ideas from the College of Human Sciences. If you scrutinize it closely, it carries a very strong sense of being and identity. There is reference made to identity and situatedness in an African context. There are dispositions such as receptiveness - being receptive of different opinions and sensitive to diversity, and criticality- critically analysing the credibility of information from different sources - are mentioned. There is also a sense of the graduate being able to survive in a world of uncertainties, as well as being able to communicate effectively. The notion of becoming a responsible citizen is espoused, together with a sense of self confidence and an awareness of each individual’s role in society. The statements do not give any indication of how the attributes are to be operationalized.

Table 1: Responses from the other four colleges

The comments about the graduateness embody each individual college’s stance. The attribute expressions from the College of Human Sciences epitomize the ‘ontological being’ with shades of dispositions and skills. The College of Agriculture & Environmental Sciences has a similar outlook but with an emphasis of the graduate as an all round practitioner. For the College of Economic & Management Sciences, the graduate attributes developed point to a ‘job- ready’ graduate while College of Law had an accomplished academic in mind. The law college was the only college emphasizing incorporating the attributes into the modules and not adding them as separate entities to the programmes. The College of Science, Engineering & Technology graduate attribute statements display the last reflexivity in terms of what the graduate should become. The emphasis seems to be on completing the course with some additional required competencies. However, there is mention of incorporating the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) principles.

Condensing the attributes into one unified statement for the university proved a challenge even though the university had to make a stand. It was felt that not enough had been done to explore two main challenges, interpretation and operationalisation. There had not been a clear indication of how the graduate attribute design decisions had been made (interpretation). One could not easily deduce from the statements, how these attributes were to be expressed in actual learning modules. There was a lack of a conceptual or theoretical framework on which to base graduate attribute development decisions. 

This paper is the beginning of a process of constructing such a framework. Before doing that, one has to look at ‘graduateness’ as a concept.

Situating ‘graduateness’

What is graduateness? Since the early 1990s, government initiatives and the global higher education environment have been increasingly paying attention to the issue of graduateness. This has largely been due an increased need for an understanding of the role higher education can play in shaping graduates of this fast-paced, continuously- changing knowledge-based economy which needs to be driven by highly skilled, competent and flexible individuals.  South Africa’s response tallies very closely with calls made to investigate the nature of those qualities characterising a graduate (Otter, 1992; Higher Education Quality Council (HEQC), 1996). To take the UK definition: ‘Graduateness’ was referred to as “the description of a set qualities that usually mark a person who has undertaken a degree course developed under the auspices of nationally monitored quality systems” (Glover et. al, 2002, p. 303).

In the 1990s, the Quality Enhancement Group of the HEQC in the UK set up the Graduate Studies Programme (GSP), whose aim was to identify the attributes expected of graduates across all degree programmes and programme clusters, and how these attributes could be defined and assessed.  The UK HEQC came up with a three-fold model of graduateness -

• cultural (based on acceptance of shared cultural values as in medicine);
• curriculum (based on assimilation of a body of knowledge as in law);
• cognitive (based on the acquisition of intellectual attributes) (Glover et al.p.295)

This categorization is very similar to Bowen’s more nuanced model (1977) of what an undergraduate should be undertaking at his/her time of study. This consisted of:

• cognitive learning (verbal skills, quantitative skills, substantive knowledge, rationality, intellectual tolerance, aesthetic sensibility, creativeness, wisdom, and life-long learning);
• emotional and moral development (personal self-discovery, psychological well-being,        human understanding, values and morals and religious interest); and
• practical competence (including future orientation, adaptability, leadership, citizenship, discovery and encouragement of talent, advancement of social

These categorisations illustrate  that although ‘graduateness’ appears to simply refer to a set of attributes which university graduates possess, this concept is broader and more complex as it takes on forms transcending the acquisition of skills and knowledge.  Before proceeding, a dimension which needs clarification is the distinction between ‘graduateness’ and ‘employability.

Graduatenss and employability. It is important for us to draw a distinction between these two terms. While ‘graduateness’ is “defined as the effect of knowledge, skills and attitudes of having undertaken an undergraduate degree, ‘employability’ refers to an enhanced capacity to secure employment” (Glover et al., 2002, p 294). The reason there has been increased association (almost direct equivalence) between graduateness with employability is due to the pressure on universities to produce employable graduates. Additionally, for many students, the reason for enrolling for higher education is to prepare for future employment. That is why there is a drive, especially in comprehensive universities such as UNISA, to forge closer links with workplaces when developing curricula. According to Naude & Naude (2005), institutions have become objectified, and as a result, have increasingly adopted a consumerist attitude to knowledge. We now have institutions headed by Chief Operating Officers who make sure that the university’s “main aim is to produce knowledge of an applied nature for clients who need o be ready for the real world of industry (Naude, 2005, p. 62).

One of the texts putting forward a convincing argument for graduate employability is Knight & York (2004). In their book, they propose a framework for employability that is truly integrated into the Higher Education curriculum. This framework leads to a proposal of a new model, with a much wider system boundary, which the authors refer to as the USEM model, being an acronym for:

• Understanding of subject matter, (mastery of the subject matter of a field);
• Skilful practices (so-called generic skills in addition to subject-specific skills);
• Efficacy beliefs (trust that one can make some impact on situations and events); and
• Metacognition (awareness of one’s own competence as well as limitations combined with an insight in how to learn more)

However, there still seems to be a problem of graduate unemployment.

Graduate Unemployment. With all these developments, one would expect that an increase in the number of graduates produced would alleviate the problem of unemployment. Unfortunately, in South Africa, this has not been the case. Graduate unemployment in South Africa doubled in the first decade of democracy, despite a worsening skills shortage. According to Pauw, Oosthiuzen & van der Westhuizen (2005), graduate unemployment grew from 6.6% in 1995 to 9.7 % in 2005.

In a (Department of Policy Research Unit) DPRU survey of 20 South African companies in order to establish why graduates were unemployable, the following reasons were cited:

• graduates had the  qualifications but not the practical skills and experience
• the wrong types of graduates were being produced, there was an oversupply over social science graduates and not enough technical graduates
• graduates were not suited to fill in posts at a managerial level
• skilled staff were poached by other companies or emigrated to other countries
• graduates are not always of high quality/
• oversupply of graduates with diplomas and certificates rather than degrees

The poor and inferior primary and secondary education quality of the trainees was mentioned. The specific competencies and skills that graduates lacked included: time management, communication, creative thinking, and the ability to work independently. These are now incorporated in the SAQAs (South African Qualifications Authority) framework as critical skills and are also embedded in the Council on Higher Education (CHE) graduate attribute statement. Additional training and mechanisms for improving the quality of education were suggested as possible ways of addressing these problems.

South Africa has also been interrogating the differences of opinions that higher education and the workplace have about the role of each other. In fact, there seems to be agreement around a need for better articulation between higher education and employment in the workplace. To that effect, the Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition (JIPSA), which is a sub-division of the broader framework for accelerated and shared growth project Accelerated and Shared Growth in South Africa (ASGISA), sponsored a focused study on employer perceptions of graduates. As a result, Higher education South Africa (HESA) and SAQA commissioned a baseline study on South African graduates from the perspective of employers (Griesel & Parker, 2009). 

This study focused on establishing those attributes employers expected as opposed to what they actually got. A total of 99 employers responded to the questionnaire. Some of the key findings were as follows:

• Proficiency in English and communication and ICT skills were regarded as important for employability. Higher education needed to devise strategies to address the inadequate training new graduates had in these areas.
• Employers valued the conceptual foundation, knowledge and intellectual approach to tasks which graduates demonstrated.
• The gaps between higher education outcomes and employer expectations were most prominent in the areas of task-directed engagement and the application of knowledge.
• Various other attributes need to be instilled in graduates during their time at university, including soft skills, a strong work ethic and personal initiative

The authors cautioned  universities to be realistic about the extent to which they could produce graduates ready for employment as it was also on the onus of the employers to provide on-the-job training and continuous performance support (Griesel & Parker, 2009). 

With the working environment becoming less predictable and insecure, higher education is now expected to focus on students’ employability rather than employment (Johnston & Watson, 2006, p. 235). From the employer’s perspective, determining whether a graduate is “employable” depends upon whether the graduate exhibits the attributes which are expected to ensure their preparedness for the workforce” (Harvey, et al., 1997).

In an increasingly complex society and knowledge-driven economy which requires individuals who can meet the challenges of a global economy characterised by rapid change, will ‘graduateness” based on the employability agenda provide an appropriate framework for 21st century university education practice? Is it sufficient and moral for universities to merely produce graduates for the workplace?

We now examine the graduate attributes.

Graduate attributes

‘Graduateness’ has a direct associationwith graduate attributes. Graduate Attributes (GAs), (also known as graduate capabilities/ key competencies/generic skills) are becoming central to the curriculum design and strategic teaching and learning planning in higher education (Barrie, 2006; Knight & Yorke, 2004). In South Africa, the Council on Higher Education (CHE) has embraced the Graduate Attribute development agenda by enumerating the following graduate competencies as those required by South African graduates in the 21 st century: Computer literacy; Knowledge configuration skills; Information skills; Problem solving; Teamwork; Networking; Mediation skills; Social sensitivity (Council on Higher Education, 2001). These graduate attributes are the “key skills” (Fallows & Steven, 2000), that are deemed necessary for our South African to survive in a 21st century climate. They include a mix of knowledge, skills and dispositions, and do not focus on one or two of these only (Hager, 2006). Barnett (2006) recommends that graduate attributes not be construed as sets of skills or even knowledge, but that they are viewed as “certain kinds of human dispositions and qualities” (p. 61).

The challenge we have in South African universities is that of interpretation and operationalisation. There is often a tendency to superficially align the graduate attributes with units of study without thorough engagement by both higher education teachers and students (Barrie, 2006; Cathcart, Kerr, Fletcher & Mack, 2008). And while there is an abundance of well developed sets of desirable graduate attributes, there have been few attempts to identify the commonalities between these different sets of attributes, and to offer some kind of synthesis.  We seem to lack a conceptual or theoretical framework on which to base graduate attribute development decisions. Barnett’s (2000a; 2000b; 2004) work could offer a platform for the beginning of an interrogation of such a framework.

Barnett situates the process of curriculum in a supercomplex world. This is an unpredictable an fragile world , where “the fragility is brought about not merely by social and technological change”, but is incorporated in “ the way we understand the world, in the way we understand ourselves and in the ways in which we feel secure about acting in the world” ( Barnett, 2000, p. 237). He sees contemporary curriculum design as an education project tasked with, producing within each student a set of a hybrid of subjectivities within this supercomplex world. In this world, developing frameworks for understanding phenomenon is unstable as targets and contexts shift continually. As a result, the design process requires a renewed interpretation and understanding of three main human development elements, namely, “...the epistemological (knowing), praxis (action) and ontological (self identity), (Barnett, 2000 p. 258). These are interrogated briefly in the following paragraphs.

Epistemological (knowing). Universities no longer have epistemological domination where the curriculum design is solely under the whims and control of the academics who act as the knowledge producers and the guardians of knowledge cannons. Gibbons et. al (1994) conceptions of Mode 1 and Mode 2 forms of knowledge still exist but with slightly different formations. Mode 1 is still discipline specific, formal and is created and upheld by experts within the discipline. However, an epistemological gap is created when one attempts to directly transfer the universal claims of Mode 1 knowledge to solving practical problems.  This is when an exigency for “knowledge-in use” or Mode 2 knowledge surfaces. Even Mode 2 knowledge, which is inter-disciplinary by nature, and in which problem solving is a central idea, is ill-equipped to address supercomplex world challenges. We are now compelled to move toward Mode 3 knowledge, “...which is a knowing -in-and-with uncertainty”.... “No matter how creative and imaginative our knowledge design, it always eludes our epistemological attempts to capture it” (Barnett, 2004, p. 251). What we now consider as knowledge takes on multiple formations, is differentiated and elaborate. University constructs and representations of knowledge are continually being challenged (Barnett, 2000a; 2004).

Praxis (action). Higher education, in its response to society needs has had to confront the challenge of producing skilled human capital for the labour market. This is where the call for more generic and graduate skills has been made. There is a shift towards an essence of ‘perfomativity’ and demonstrable skills where what is important is not just what the student knows but what the student can do. “Within the curricular, students are being asked to assume more perfomative identities together alongside their cognitive personae” (Barnett, 2000b, p. 261). As such, students are being called upon to become flexible, self-reliant and able to take the responsibility of reconstituting themselves in order to adapt to work demands.

The curriculum is shifting from one of internal contemplations and identities that emerge when teacher and student interact in a learning milieu, to one motivated and modified by external pressures. All of a sudden, Bernstein’s (1996) concepts of framing and classification which were useful in providing an understanding of the boundaries and tightness /looseness of the pedagogical relationship between teacher and student as they engage with curriculum contents, can no longer offer a satisfactory analytic framework for understanding curriculum. As disciplines are called upon to demonstrate their functional value in a global society, and external stakeholder participation in curriculum design becomes prominent, universities find themselves in a dilemma. On one hand  there is a pressure from the labour market to produce ‘job-ready ‘students, while on the other hand universities want to maintain their status  as sites of critical and  transformatory engagement with knowledge production and dissemination.

Although it is now possible to produce accomplished technicians and technocrats who able to deal with real-world problems and present themselves appropriately, this is done at the expense of exposing the students to a curriculum in which they are unable to meaningfully engage with others in a world in which nothing is certain.  Within the constraints of resources (time, human capital and money) that most mass higher education systems operate in, institutions have had to make choices between the two curriculum positions. The tendency has been for the older elite universities, which offer the sciences to remain inflexible with limited exposure to the world of action, while the newer vocational universities deliver competence-based programs with restricted meta-cognitive competencies. (Barnett, 2000b, 2004). According to Barnett (2004), seeing , “universities and teachers as consumers of resources, or even producers of resources on one hand,  and seeing universities   as sites of critical even transformatory engagement are, in the end incompatible positions , no matter what compromises  and negotiations are sought” (p. 249).

Ontological (self identity).  In a world that is increasingly becoming more complex and diverse, universities teachers are going to find the design of curriculum and graduate attributes problematic on two fronts. First of all, the precipitous explosion of knowledge entities in the world makes the selection of what is relevant a hazardous task. With the information overload and the growing layers of approaches and suggestions of how to handle them, we are becoming cognitively overwhelmed. “This is a world that is radically unknowable: even though we make modest gains here and there, our ignorance expands in all kinds of direction” (Barnett, 2004, p. 250). The second problem has to do with a level of uncertainty suggestive of the notion that whatever we do, we can never come to a complete and satisfactory description of the world. 

According to Barnett (2004), the educational task in these conditions of uncertainty shifts from an epistemological standpoint to an ontological one. The educator’s role becomes one of enabling individuals to thrive in supercomplexivity. This is not achieved by the acquisition of knowledge and skills but of moulding towards an authentic being shaped by certain types of dispositions. These include terms such as carefulness, thoughtfulness, humility, criticality receptiveness, resilience, courage and stillness. He argues that these dispositions will yield the qualities such as adaptability, flexibility and self-reliance that employers look for in prospective graduate employees (Barnett, 2004, p, 258-259). A counter argument would be that the dispositions Barnett mentions are rather difficult to teach and obtain evidence for. In other words they are difficult to operationalize.

While I agree with Barnett that an ontological outlook is the ideal approach to graduate attribute development in the 21st century, the practicalities of the contexts we work in as higher education institutions leaves very little room for making  radical curriculum and pedagogical shifts that easily. I believe it is possible to have the enhancement of the authentic being as a grounding developmental theory while keeping the elements of knowing, skills and disposition building as part of a graduate attribute development exercise.

For example, McKenzie & Higgs (2008), in their re-development of a curriculum aimed at helping rural management graduates become job-ready on graduation used four domains of capability development (p. 391). Their assertion was that in order to achieve a relevant education for practice in the 21st century, education providers could partner with industry and professionals, to take students on a meaning-making and capability development journey using the four fundamental domains of discovery. These included:

• Cultivating the relevant , skills, knowledge and understanding
• Learning to strive and act in the absence of complete information (uncertainty)
• Enacting participation, relating and eventually to leading
• Self emergence transformations (p. 392).

The authors’ intention was to draw attention to the structure and process of delivering the course. The course was organised around the four fields of interest. The authors also demonstrated a process whereby job-readiness required that the students be taken on a meaning-making learning journeys in which the four designated areas were introduced and covered progressivity as student assumed a role of practitioner in training (p.396). The point being made here is that it is not enough to think about the graduate attributes in isolation, one should simultaneously think about their operationalization.

Proposing a way forward

Given the supercomplex nature of the fast-paced, information-bound and technologically-driven contemporary world and the challenge it presents to higher education, the contention is that we need alternate approaches of making curriculum design decisions. The traditional approach used in the South African context seems to be insufficient to meet the demands of dealing with current changes. Instead, the proposal is that the kind of graduatetness we would like to aspire to develop is one where it is not just the acquisition of knowledge, skills and dispositions that is important, but the acquisition of the capacity to live and thrive in a supercomplex world. This has to be done, even though one is aware that, “designing a curriculum and practicing a pedagogy - of the kind where the unknown is built into it as living principles of educational exchanges and accomplishments -  is not a set of practices we readily understand, but ones about which we will have to carry on learning” (Barnett, 2004, p. 260). In other words, it is an ever-ending and increasingly challenging educational project.

This short synthesis has not yet produced a satisfactory model for a framework for developing or negotiating meaning about graduateness. However, provisionally, Barnett’s (2000b) human development elements, the epistemological (knowing), praxis (action) and ontological (self identity) can be used as starting design boundaries. In view of the unpredictability and uncertainty of the contemporary world, each institution will then have to make decisions around whether to develop graduates who are readily employable-succumbing to the demands of the labour market, or focus on the development of individuals who will be able to thrive in a rapidly changing world.

At Unisa, we are in the process of testing out Renate Girme’s (2009) model of a way of re-inventing the curriculum. She argues that the established curriculum is based on asking questions and providing answers in a way that makes the answers “hidden”... She offers an alternative in which the starting point is the posing of relevant questions- questions raised by mankind, by the students, those in industry, the lecturers, and by the disciplines. “These questions are then translated into tasks and challenges ‘aufgaben’ that matter to the learners and are at the same time representative of the locations in which they are embedded” (Girmes, 2009, p. 1-2)

 She proposes nine basic questions for creating learning centers. The responses to these nine questions are different actions using specific type of knowledge, skills, orientations and dispositions. The resulting constructs form a set of activities providing a description of what it means to learn around the using knowledge and skills around the locuses of the questions.  A mapping strategy relating the questions, the disciplinary knowledge and the navigation tolls and activities can form the framework of a curriculum.

The table 1 below is a representation of the nine questions, the corresponding area of disciplinary knowledge and activities learners could take to explore these areas.

Table 2: Renate Girme’s nine questions

Girmes (2009) has mapped out a possible curriculum landscape using a cartographical representation of the nine questions and activities. This consists of:

Three relationships arranged in terms of

• A clarification of the conditions
• Possible interventions
• What could be/and has beeen done

The sites or places for possible action categorised as:

• Room/space/things/objects
• Time and process/form
• Meaning/sense and language/media

Juxtapositions of the questions, activities and orientations can provide the basis of building a curriculum and graduate attributes.

At Unisa we are in the process of combining Barnett ontological approach with Girme’s curriculum matrix as a means of finding generalized languages of designing curriculum and graduate attributes.  We are using the model shown in Table 2 to ask questions in different learning areas while shifting our design decisions in a direction which emphasizes the becoming – or being of our graduates. In the next phases of research we plan to report about how we have used a combination of both Barnett and Girme’s approaches to mould curricular around questions such as, “What does it mean to become a teacher, a social scientist, a politician, a retail manager, a graphic designer,  or  an engineer etc in a 21st century climate?”.

Table 2: Renate Girme’s Curriculum model (2009)

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