BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE FOR STUDY
1.4 The Birth of Academic Development (AD)
Volbrecht and Boughey (2004) define Academic Development (AD) as “an open set of practices concerned with improving the quality of teaching and learning in higher education” (58). The definition of AD quoted by Gennrich (1997)11 succinctly outlines the purpose of AD:
all those areas of work at a tertiary institution that contribute to the transformation and ongoing development of the capacity of students, staff, curricula and organisational structures, to meet the ongoing demands of the
10 The Historically Black Universities (HBUs) that that came into existence during apartheid were segregated:
universities which admitted African students were Medunsa University, University of the North, Vista University, University of the Western Cape, North West University, University of Transkei, University of Fort Hare and University of Zululand. The University of Durban-Westville was demarcated for Indians; while the University of the Western Cape serviced the educational needs of the Coloured race group.
11 “This definition of AD was in the Draft AD Proposals Document, University of the North West, October, 1997, p. 1” (cited by Gennrich, 1997: 2).
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changing scale of socio-political values of the society in which the institution is situated (2).
Forrest and Winberg (1993) spelt out the wide aims of academic development in a South African situation – to provide a learning environment and support mechanisms which:
1. actively attempt to counteract the limitations of the apartheid education;
2. play a role in enabling transition from the distortions, restrictions and fragmentation of the past towards the creation of a new order for the future; and,
3. facilitate academic study (347).
With the shift from ASP to AD, there has been the change from a peripheral marginalized endeavour to an integrated university activity that was more holistic. The offering of AD in the 1990s at tertiary institutions in South Africa involved a shift in focus from student to the institution “as the higher education system prepared to transform itself in anticipation of a new political order ... AD work came to centre on the development of teaching methodologies and curricula which would meet the needs of the anticipated black majority in the student body” (Boughey, 2007: 2). This shift initialized changes in learning environment, curricula; teaching practices; and student development as well as staff development. AD became an umbrella term which incorporated staff development, student development, curriculum development and organizational development (Troskie-de Bruin, 1999; Baijnath, 1997). “AD, through the infusion model, represents a shift from student to curriculum as a whole and hence to the university and is aimed at developing an appropriate learning and teaching environment” (Goodman, 1994: 257). “AD was not seen as a separate activity but part of the ongoing business of teaching and learning in tertiary education, concerned with the broader curriculum that encompasses the teacher and the learner as well as the content” (Bulman, 1997: 9).
In 1997, the greater call for change to AD involved staff, students, curriculum and research.
According to Khabanyane (1997), all these aspects are interwoven, because to develop staff implies to develop the methods of imparting knowledge by the staff through making use of a better-developed curriculum that addresses the needs of the learner, which may result in better-developed students, since they will have been taught to gather knowledge in better way. It is an indication of a better-developed research if the staff can use the curriculum to address the needs of the students (1).
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Gennrich (1997) comments on AD provision and transformation of a tertiary institution:
AD potentially impacts on every aspect of an institution’s planning and implementation. But for this to be a reality, institutional management has to not only support AD initiatives, but to own AD as an integral part of its ongoing transformation ... Transformation is regarded as an essential part of any educational process, in that it involves an ongoing sense of responding to the needs of different types of students within an ever-changing socio-political and economic environment. AD recognises that tertiary institutions are not immune to their situational contexts, and that it is in fact vital for their existence to respond appropriately to constantly changing external demands in an ongoing and proactive manner (2).
In light of transformation, the comment by Jacobs (1997) is valid: “Unless the academic contexts within which AD interventions occur and the policy frameworks which shape these contexts are seen to be part of the process of transformation and challenged to change, there will be no significant reshaping of the tertiary sector and AD initiatives will continue to have minimal impact (161).
The proponents of AD have seen it as a way of helping students. Shepherd and Karodia (1992) have made specific reference to the fact that on first entry into university, students – besides [those having] undergone the ravages of the apartheid education system in South Africa – might not have been exposed to conceptual, analytical and pedagogical skills to develop learning. Besides this, they are in an “unfamiliar academic environment, an alien culture” (168). To help students bridge this gap, these researchers have argued favourably for a holistic, integrated approach that emphasises development of staff and students. This leaning towards AD approaches the issue of student development as a learning experience, it integrates all the participants and is sensitive to the environment in which it takes place.
The premise with this type of thinking is that if students are to develop, so must staff.
Hence, staff development is central to the issue of student development. They suggested a closer integration between the management of coursework, teaching practice and the curricula. Their view of AD was that, rather than being “offered in a piece-meal fashion, it needed to be offered as a comprehensive, co-ordinated year long programme involving ALL [authors’ emphasis] first year students” (Shepherd and Karodia, 1992: 170). AD’s link with staff development meant that the AD staff member was making the shift from working only with the students to working with academic staff, i.e. the lecturer, tutors and module co-ordinators.
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Researchers (Shepherd and Karodia, 1992; Baijnath, 1997 and Troskie-de Bruin, 1999) isolated curriculum development as being an important component in AD. In this regard, Forrest and Winberg (1993) state that:
[t]he curriculum therefore would have to be developed in such a way as to centralise the development of systematic, independent and creative thought, while simultaneously promoting the subconscious acquisition and conscious mastery of the linguistic forms demanded by this, and understanding and mastery of the academic study skills appropriate to the learning environment.
All of which has implications for syllabus and materials design and involves [our] conception of methodology (348)
AD was a strategy of institutional academic redress. The National Plan for Higher Education (NPHE) (2001) outlines that AD includes:
1. Extended curricula rather than supplementary support;
2. The need for students to be integrated into the mainstream; and, 3. The need to be responsive to all students (DoE, 2001: 31).
As with the opposition against ASP in the 1980s, AD, too, was contested. The provision of AD has been subjected to questioning by the likes of researchers such as Akoojee and Nkomo (2007), who state that Academic Development Programmes (ADPs) are marginal to institutional practices. They also stated that the fact that the student intake enrolled for ADPs are black draws attention to the issue of disadvantage and the issue of black students being categorised as deficient. Using the same argument that was used against ASPs by other opponents, these critics categorically state that “AD serves as a programme directed to ensure institutional fit, rather than enabling institutions to adapt to their new charges”
(392) This point, like the Deficit Theory, problematizes the issue that institutions make very little change to accommodate diversity, but expect black students to be able to adapt to the institutional culture.
For Masenya (1994), ADPs are associated with black students’ underpreparedness rather than the under-preparing socio-educational realities in our society which are indicative of power relations between the subordinate and dominant groups. Leaving the academic standards at HWUs unchanged means that the HWUs are maintaining their ideological hegemony which defines students’ underpreparedness. The term ‘hegemony’, coined by Gramsci in the period from 1891 to 1937, signifies the way dominant ways of thinking and being may become common-sense to us, with the result that they are never questioned. If the intention of the introduction of ADPs at HWUs is to bring black students from
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disadvantaged backgrounds up to recognised academic standards, the question that needs to be asked is, “What standards and whose academic standards” are being protected (Mabokela, 1997: 431). Perhaps the answer to the question of standards had been prematurely answered by Nzimande (1988) who, at an earlier ASP Conference, commented that the decision not to sacrifice the dominant white liberal academic standards at the HWUs was a defense mechanism of those who were unable to relate to black students and were thus reluctant to sacrifice institutional “academic standards” (116).
On the issue of institutional standards, Hunter (1991) asserts that with the intake of underprepared students, HWUs need to understand the educational needs of the underprepared students and implement institutional change by restructuring course content and teaching strategies without altering their assessment standards. This point is linked to the issue of institutional accountability expressed by Akoojee (2002) who states that
“institutions will have to develop ways to ensure that personnel will be appropriately skilled and re-skilled into new ways of engaging with the new community of students ...
this will include novel ways of dealing with teaching and learning provision, including peer mentoring and other strategies” (7). However, with regard to the issue of access and academic standards, in embracing diversity in HEIs, the quality of higher education should not be compromised.
The issue of the deficiency apparent in black students and the resistance of the institutions to change are highlighted by Mabokela (2000), who argues that when black students were admitted to HWUs, some of these universities explored alternative admissions criteria. He explains that the philosophy underlying the structure of alternative admissions programme operated from the assumption that black students were the problem and remedial education was the answer. This philosophy assumes that the underdevelopment among the black students could be addressed by paying attention to their deficiencies rather than by altering organizational structures within the universities.
There were, however, more favourable views on the inclusion of mechanisms to assist students at tertiary institutions. Gasa et al. (1994: 49) offer commentary on the issue of the LoLT that African students from poor educational backgrounds experience. They state that language is a crucial means of gaining access to important knowledge and skills and this can determine academic achievement. They believe there is a link between language
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competency and conceptual understanding. They went on to state that at tertiary level the language problem cannot be dealt with in isolation; and that these students require a holistic approach of intervention. Their thinking was that if tertiary institutions were committed to opening access to students who would otherwise not gain entry, there was a need to ensure that the academic and intellectual skills of these students are enhanced to their full potential. This calls for the University to put into place mechanisms to support the alternative admissions policy and consolidate the potential academic ability of students.
An equally relevant point raised by Gasa et al. (1994) was that all students experience difficulties adjusting from secondary to tertiary education, an issue they expand on by commenting that:
[u]niversity is a unique learning experience with new demands and expectations. Coping with these demands involves learning how to learn, modifying existing study strategies, abandoning others and developing new, more effective strategies, as well as monitoring one’s learning. What has been observed is that the successful students, of whatever race, are students who are active learners who think about and react to course content and use a variety of thinking skills to fit different academic situations” (48).