Learner perspectives on corporate world involvement in secondary schools’ curricula

Abstract

South Africa is in a competitive global economy, with enterprises, industries, and service sectors demanding world-class academic, technical, and professional skills and competence. To meet these expectations, the secondary school education system must deliver high-quality learning experiences that connect all secondary school students to the real world by building a strong foundation of academic, technical, and work-related skills. This study’s aim is to explore the corporate world's involvement in the advancement of secondary school learners in moulding learners to be assets for a future workforce. In this study, we borrowed the theory of Bourdieu’s (1995) Social Theory to analyse data and to answer our question: To what degree does the corporate world involvement in secondary school benefit learners? We choose the constructivist paradigm in order to use qualitative methodologies to investigate the reality of the participants. Semi-structured interviews and photovoice were employed to collect data for this study. The population sample comprised of two secondary schools from which the researchers sought to acquire learner perspectives’ and to draw conclusions about how much the corporate sector has been able to contribute to the secondary schools to benefit learners. The study discovered that corporate world businesses get involved in various ways such as offering bursaries to learners, motivational workshops, sports kits, and so forth. This type of involvement by the corporate world usually results in improved teaching and learning, workplace experience, and chances for future employability.