Theoretical Projections for a “Post-COVID-19” Response to Curriculum Development in South African Higher Education

Abstract

The following chapter presents a critical discussion of what the future of higher education in South Africa might look like in a post-COVID-19 world. It basis this projection on certain tendencies or circumstances that have presented within the context of a global pandemic, referred to as the COVID-19 virus and its impact on education in general. At the centre of the higher education project is curriculum transformation – a term that will be defined using definitions from local educationists in South Africa. Breifly, curriculum is dynamic and contingent on human actions, thoughts, values and ideas and this is what allows it to be ‘trasnforming'. In relation to a transformative curriculum, the argument is also presented in the chapter for adopting the term, ‘new normal' in relation to a proposed ‘curriculum praxis' to encapsulate and describe a future-orientated, post-COVID-19 response to this educational project of living beyond or living with the pandemic. At this stage, the parameters of what that would look like are open and emerging. Future projections theorise a transformative curriculum that is dynamic and adaptive to ‘context' both local and global, ‘content adaptive' (meaning reflexive and adapting in the face of the context) as seen already in the shifts taking place in how higher education institutions adapted their pedagogy. Further projections may be theorised in the content of a transforming curriculum in what ‘existent conditions' are emerging contingently or sporadically to deal with the pandemic crisis (but specifically its impact in the area of higher education). This works well within the theoretical framework of the chapter, chaos theory. The preceding conditions include taking stock of certain elements are referred to in the theorizing of this chapter. Qualitative content analysis is used as the method of choice.