The Recognition of Prior Learning in Post-Apartheid South Africa

An Alternative Pedagogy for Transformation of the Built Environment Professions

Yashaen Luckan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000339543
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Professional Development

This book addresses a critical gap in the effective implementation of Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) in post-apartheid South Africa.

This book responds to a critical problem whereby a critical mass of historically disadvantaged persons continues to face exclusion by entrenched systems of professional education and training. Focusing on case studies from higher education and build environment studies, it defines the rationale and fundamental principles of an innovative model for the evaluation of RPL which can be adapted and applied across disciplines and professions while promoting high quality standards. RPL is considered as a transformative strategy to oppose the injustices of pedagogic exclusion and upskill a historically disadvantaged population. The book makes a strong case for an alternate system based on the potentiality of transformed legislation and frameworks in post-apartheid South Africa.

The book will be of interest to researchers in alternative pedagogies, scholars engaged with epistemologies of the South and alternative knowledge systems, legislative bodies, policy makers and facilitators of professional education.

1
Historic injustice, redress and transformation

Challenges facing higher education and the professions: issues of failure and inadequacy

Higher education in South Africa has failed to adequately address the injustices of the past, nor has it made any significant advancement toward socioeconomic redress or transformation, albeit 26 years into democracy. A critical mass of the economically active population, who would have learned their skills through toil and labour, continue to be shackled by restrictive measures and gatekeeping at higher education institutions, which do not acknowledge the wealth of skills and knowledge acquired and developed in the domain of practice. These persons would continue to remain constrained, unable to advance their socio-economic circumstances or those of their communities.

The advent of democracy in South Africa witnessed major changes in legislation aimed at redress and transformation; education had been flagged as one of the priority areas to achieve this. Higher education institutions consequently placed more concerted effort on broadening access to previously excluded communities, focusing primarily on learners who would have completed matric/high school graduation. Another ongoing priority focus area is that of curriculum transformation, inevitably raising issues such as decolonisation, which has recently become more topical.

While these initiatives are progressive to an extent, they inherently continue to ignore a critical mass of persons in the workforce who seek mid- to late-career upskilling. These persons are generally referred to as the “missing middle” due to the fact that the new democratic dispensation has had no material effect on their socio-economic circumstances; they continue to face discrimination through historically entrenched attitudes, barriers to access and unfair rules, policies and frameworks at institutions of higher learning. A broader impact of such an exclusive system is that the professional skill sets in historically disadvantaged communities are limited, thereby compromising the quality of knowledge and skills transfer required for the spatial transformation of these communities.

Formal education, access and exclusion

Higher education institutions in South Africa have continued to place emphasis on formal education and formal credit accumulation and/or reward while undermining the wealth of knowledge and skills which may have been obtained via alternate learning pathways such as informal or work-based learning. This is a fact which is evident in the policies and handbooks of these institutions. University entrance criteria continue to focus on the quality of matric passes or formal credits obtained through formal prior learning. RPL has generally been conflated with formal credit accumulation and transfer for the purpose of access into first-level undergraduate programmes or for advanced standing to access higher level academic programmes. While this is certainly an attempt at transformation, it does not explore all the possibilities afforded by transformed regulatory structures in post-apartheid South Africa, hence the failure to address some of the key challenges facing historically marginalised communities.

Despite some progressive changes at higher education institutions, the missing middle face certain realities which younger students may not. They do not have the notional learning time required of formal education as they face the daily struggles for survival in an inequitable economy, balancing work with family responsibilities; full-time study is therefore not a viable option. Professional education in South Africa largely continues to remain a full-time formal pursuit, accessible only to those who have the privilege of time and financial support.

This condition highlights an antithesis of the “pipeline” approach to transformation at institutions of higher education and training, which focuses on typical first-year university admission, young matriculants who would access formal higher education immediately upon completing high school studies. The underlying rationale of this approach is based on a hypothesis that recruiting and admitting a larger proportion of students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds into institutions of higher learning will result in the transformation of education and, consequently, the professions. The reality, however, is that institutions of higher learning do not have the necessary skills and support for a wider community of young learners from different socio-economic backgrounds and levels of preparedness for higher education. The consequence is that disadvantaged students would typically take a longer period to complete their qualification, if at all, due to severe socio-economic challenges. Another challenge for these students is that the curricula and pedagogic approaches have not adequately transformed for the pedagogic inclusion of learners from diverse backgrounds and contexts. The lack of support to these young learners invariably results in an unfortunate consequence whereby it is not necessarily the best students that progress to higher levels of study; rather, those with prior academic preparedness, financial resources and support have the privilege of advancement. Consequently, many academically capable students have no option but to drop out of their studies for employment to sustain their livelihoods and, very often, their own families; some never return to complete their studies. Architectural education is typically a five-year, full-time formal pursuit consisting of an undergraduate and postgraduate degree that offers no option for “stop-in/stop-out” studies.

The “pipeline” approach therefore does not effectively achieve its own intentions. It ignores the upskilling needs of the missing middle, while it lacks a support system for differently prepared learners from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. An alternative, agile and responsive system is therefore necessary. While RPL is proposed as a strategy for transformation, a systematic development thereof is required to have a real impact on redress and transformation while assuring high-quality professional standards to gain public confidence.

The key question guiding the critical inquiry of this book is: how can RPL, as an alternative system, contribute to the effective transformation of higher education and the professions in South Africa? This question seeks to uncover the possibilities of alternative ways of thinking about curriculum, pedagogies and practice to advance the potentialities of people and communities towards sustainable socio-economic development and spatial transformation.

The need for alternate modes of curriculum and pedagogy

Transformation is not a numerical pursuit; it is rather more about the difference it makes to advance the daily lives of the people and communities who continue to suffer from the scars of apartheid injustices. As highlighted, however, higher education in South Africa has not adequately responded to the needs and aspirations of marginalised communities. While the issues of access have been addressed in the preceding discussion, there needs to be a change of thinking and attitudes to drive a socio-ethical agenda for curriculum and pedagogic reform. The recent debates around decolonisation are part of a much deeper challenge to epistemological and ontological assumptions, a systemic problem of deeply entrenched hegemonies of the Global North that inhibit responsive curricula and transformative pedagogies to address the realities of the Global South. It is therefore necessary to briefly review the historic influences that shaped attitudes and perspectives of curriculum and knowledge production that have globally impacted higher education and professional practice, to be able to understand the nuances of the contemporary South African built environment education system.

The curriculum models that define professional education in South Africa are predominantly of the Mode 1 type of knowledge production (Gibbons et al. 1994) which is based on discipline, norms, canon and generalised acceptance of what may be judged adequate as curriculum and pedagogic practice. This mode is specific, controlled and bound within institutions, driving the seemingly indubitable agendas of the Global North. Mode 1 is indeed effective in defining curricula and practice for the benefit of industry, promulgating what I refer to as an “industrialised pedagogy”. While this type of system advances education for the benefit of industry and production, it promotes a rigid “flatland mentality” that excludes socio-economic and cultural diversity; it is essentially pedagogically exclusive. This form of curriculum typically reflects an intellectual traditionalist approach (Schubert 1997) in which learning is overtly skewed toward definitive skills for industrial production. It negates the critical value of multiple intelligences and experiences, thereby inhibiting the possibilities of innovative responses to decentralised contextual nuances.

This book argues for an alternate Mode 2 (Gibbons et al. 1994) approach fundament on heterogeneity and transdisciplinary practice that draws on multiple intelligences and multiple experiences; it is intrinsically pedagogically inclusive. The Mode 2 system inevitably unearths hidden curricula which draw on the lived experiences of learners; it essentially promulgates the inclusion of epistemologies of the South. Within this paradigm, diversity is critically important in a complex learning paradigm of alternative pathways to be able to promulgate the critical reconstruction of society. It is asserted that complexity requires much more fluid epistemologies that respond to multiple worldviews defined by complex place-based knowledge systems. It is therefore argued that the recognition of alternative learning pathways would espouse different perspectives in academic and professional discourse which would ask new questions of the relevance and value of curricula and pedagogic approaches in contemporary society as a complex mix of different experiences and world-views. This inherently poses a critical challenge to assumptions about knowledge and the knowledge society defined by dominant Global North worldviews. It is argued that a complex Mode 2 approach can enhance knowledge generation while it offers the potential for relevant and flexible professional education, along diverse learning pathways, in response to the contextual nuances of the Global South. RPL essentially includes a diverse learning community of multiple intelligences and experiences; however, deeply entrenched attitudes, perceptions and processes reveal a high level of tacit resistanwce to the effective implementation of RPL in South Africa.

Resistance and confusion

RPL is, indeed, a radical departure from the predominantly conservative South African professional education and training system; therefore, tension and discomfort would be expected. Despite clear policies and guidelines published by regulatory authorities explaining the context, rationale, rigour and quality assurance, RPL has generally been negatively perceived and, in instances, misrepresented and miscommunicated. One of the reasons for this is that, while RPL has existed as a concept and differently applied, the quality assurance aspect has generally not been adequately defined, formulated and communicated to all stakeholders. My personal interactions with architectural professionals and academics across disciplines have revealed that the lack of clearly defined quality-assurance systems leads to misunderstanding as evident in some of the following anecdotal comments:

[A] person can become an architect in six months to two years, rather than five years of study.

[W]hy bother studying further when you can just go out and work and become a registered professional?

I had to study for six years to become an architect, why should anyone be allowed a shortcut into the profession?

RPL is a quick back-door route to professional registration.

These comments clearly indicate the lack of awareness of the rigour required to recognise knowledge, skills and competence through RPL; however, it is not entirely the fault of persons making such comments. Such comments are indicative that there needs to be a clearly defined strategy for quality assurance to gain public confidence in RPL as an alternative learning pathway. Another area of a lack of awareness is the purpose of RPL in the context of broader national imperatives that focus on socio-economic redress and transformation. It is therefore necessary to contextualise RPL within broader transformative legislation, frameworks and policies that guide learning pathways in the democratic South African higher education and training environment.

Chapter summary

The chapter briefly introduced the problem of apartheid-based education on the socio-economic and spatial challenges of historically marginalised communities. The predominant Global North approaches to Global South challenges revealed an inherent ineffectiveness in the implementation of transformed legislation and frameworks in post-apartheid South Africa. The unique challenges of a critical mass of historically disadvantaged persons known as the “missing middle” population, a creation of apartheid, continue to be disregarded by the current forms of gatekeeping. This critical cohort, that was denied access through apartheid, continues to face pedagogic exclusion by pipeline strategies that focus on the young entrants into the higher education system. The rigidity and restrictiveness of the formal system were critically reviewed against different modes of curriculum and pedagogy in order to identify the potential for an alternative system to promote change in thinking and attitudes to drive a socio-ethical agenda for curriculum and pedagogic reform. RPL has been misinterpreted within the higher education institutions thereby compromising its potential. The problem faced by students with challenging socio-economic circumstances is generally disregarded by a formal system of full-time studies. It has been highlighted that a predominant Mode 1 type of knowledge production stifles the possibilities of other experiences and intelligences to be drawn into the learning space. The importance of a flexible/agile mode inclusive of lived and worked experiences therefore emerged as a critical area of consideration. The author posits that the recognition of alternative learning pathways would allow different persp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Historic injustice, redress and transformation
• 2 An overview of the transformation of higher education and training in South Africa
• 3 The NQF as a transformative system
• 4 Responses to higher education reform
• 5 Perceptions, experiences and attitudes of key stakeholders
• 6 A progressive built environment curriculum
• 7 RPL as a transformative strategy for redress and spatial transformation
• 8 An RPL evaluation model for built environment professions
• 9 A brief overview of challenges and potential opportunities for RPL implementation
• 10 Conclusion and recommendations
• Glossary
• Index