Abstract:

Higher education institutions are expected to design and develop curricula that are aligned to societal, economic, and industrial needs. A curriculum must be responsive to address the immediate and long-term sustainable solutions that are influenced by local and global changes. The Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) in South Africa promulgated that all universities qualifications should align to the Higher Education Qualification Sub-framework (HEQSF). Higher Education institutions were caught between a rock and hard place. This request impacted Universities of Technology (UoTs) differently, as the systems during the apartheid era favored traditional universities and still allow them more academic freedom. For UoTs it meant a total revamping of their curricula while continuing with the huge teaching workloads. This paper presents the reflections of Arts and design lecturers' experiences on their curricula design and development journey of HEQSF curricula alignment processes a new territory for the majority of the lecturers who are experts in arts and design specialisations. The qualitative research method and design were executed and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from a sample of lecturers from the faculty of Arts. The data was then analysed using the Atlas ti software. The main findings revealed that the gap in the curricula development and design processes made it difficult for lecturers to undertake the curriculum alignment process. The finding highlighted the need for lecturers to be trained and skilled with educational foundations including curriculum development competencies in order to undertake curriculum review processes. It also became clear that subject content knowledge is not enough for the demands of higher education lecturers and that pedagogical content knowledge is just as important.

Keywords:

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), Curriculum Design, Curriculum Development, Higher Education Qualification Sub-Framework (HEQSF).