Constructing and transforming the curriculum for higher education : a South African case study

Abstract

This study explores the various processes that constructed and transformed the undergraduate curriculum in a Faculty of Education at a South African university. It attempts to delve beneath the representation of post-apartheid curriculum change as a linear process. The thesis argues that scholars should attempt to unravel how the curriculum performs the task of social transformation at the site of the university by empirically investigating how the relationship between structure and action links with the ideals of post-apartheid higher education policy. Theoretically, this study posits that the deficit in the local literature on the use of the structure/agency relationship as a heuristic device for examining institutional change should be addressed with the relational sociology of Pierre Bourdieu.