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Curriculum in Higher Education: Beyond False Choices

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Thinking about Higher Education

Abstract

This chapter is an invitation to “think about higher education” from the rich and contested site of curriculum. Much of the contestation around curriculum occurs against the backdrop of global concerns about a general failure of higher education evidenced in poor articulation between the school and university, poor completion rates, the performance gap between privileged and under-privileged, under-employed graduates, and the general failure of higher education to meet the needs of the knowledge society. Scott (2009) describes this crisis in South Africa as a systemic failure: higher education in South Africa is failing the majority of its young people.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Morrow (2009) is compilation of his essays spanning a period from the late 1980s to the early 2000s.

  2. 2.

    The term ‘black’ is used here inclusively and constitutes those students who under apartheid would have been classified African, Coloured and Indian.

  3. 3.

    By ‘ideology’ Bernstein means power or powerful ideas.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Higher Education Development (CHED), University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

    Suellen Shay

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  1. Suellen Shay
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Correspondence to Suellen Shay .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Work Based Learning, Middlesex University, London, United Kingdom

    Paul Gibbs

  2. Institute of Education, London University, London, United Kingdom

    Ronald Barnett

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Shay, S. (2014). Curriculum in Higher Education: Beyond False Choices. In: Gibbs, P., Barnett, R. (eds) Thinking about Higher Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03254-2_10

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