Growing talented people through cooperative education : a phenomenological exploration

Abstract

Internationally, talent is regarded a key success factor for global competitiveness. However, organizational talent is challenged by continuous change. The Apartheid heritage in South Africa further presents major challenges with regard to the growing of the talent of people. Cooperative education, a structured educational strategy that progressively integrates academic study with learning through productive work experiences, presents itself as a means to grow the talent of the South African people. The literature review identifies the core properties of cooperative education and the study has attempted to distil the core principles of a phenomenological research design. The specific ‘phenomena’ which the research focused on are existing joint ventures between higher education institutions and business enterprises aimed at educating people and growing talent. A selection of the voices of the research participants are presented in this article. Although the present study identifies several shortcomings regarding the practice of cooperative education, it pioneers the notion that the growing of talent can be enhanced through a cooperative education strategy.