Acceptance of co-operative education practice by the academic staff at Technikon South Africa

Abstract

Technikons advocate the practice of co-operative education, which is an educational strategy that integrates learning through productive work with the theoretical curriculum. However, only 35% of theTechnikon SA programmes have a compulsory experiential learning component. Grounded theory research was undertaken to determine some of the basic assumptions of Technikon SA’s academic staff in this regard. Rather than starting out with a specific research problem, grounded theory explores an area of interest and allows what is relevant to emerge. Semi-structured interviews with four open-ended questions, were conducted with a stratified-random sample of 25 teaching staff at Technikon SA. It was found that, although there is some willing compliance and belief in co-operative education, it is not indicative of the organisational culture of Technikon SA.