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1.12.5 Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP)
The FTLRP refers to the accelerated land reform programme which was sparked by land occupations in Zimbabwe from around the year 2000 onwards. It involved forced and often violent removals of thousands of former white farmers at the instigation of Zimbabwe’s War Veterans (Cliffe, Alexander, Cousins, & Gaidzanwa, 2011).
1.12.6 A1 Farmers
Under the FTLRP, Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Lands categorised models of resettlement into two main categories which are the ‘A1’ and ‘A2’ models. The A1 model promoted smallholder farmers who are referred to as ‘A1 farmers’ in this study, while the A2 model was meant for more middle to large scale farmers referred to as ‘A2 farmers’ (Chavhunduka, 2016) . The latter are not part of this current study. The A1 farmers engage in smallholder production on either small-scale independent farms of, on average, twenty hectares, or in villagised arrangements with shared grazing and clustered homes (Matsa, 2011; Muyengwa, 2013; Njaya & Mazuru, 2014; Scoones et al., 2011). Villagised arrangements have land sizes of, on average, five hectares, and have communal grazing of about twelve hectares. The majority of A1 farmers were former peasants from the overcrowded communal areas and who were mostly of low socio- economic status and often excluded from education.
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presents the motivation, significance and delimitations of the study. Finally, it presents the limitations, definition of key terms and organisation of the thesis.
1.13.2 Chapter Two: The study context
Chapter Two presents the study context. It starts by briefly explaining the socio-political and economic background of Zimbabwe and Masvingo province in particular. The agro-ecological zones were also presented with special emphasis on the impact of climate change on agriculture production processes in Masvingo Province. Another aspect looked at in this chapter was the provision of general and vocational education in pre and post-independence Zimbabwe. The chapter ends by explaining the emergence of A1 farmers as a result of the FTLRP as well as the relationship between NGOs and the State in post-independence Zimbabwe.
1.13.3 Chapter Three: Theoretical Framework
The chapter presents the theoretical framework that informs the study. The study is anchored on Critical Realism (CR) as the overarching theoretical framework. CR, as its name suggests, is a realist philosophy, which argues that there is a real world out there that is intransitive in that it exists independent of the researcher’s knowledge of it.CR facilitates an understanding of the causal mechanisms of a phenomenon, in this case, curriculum responsiveness. Bhaskar (2010)’s laminations of social phenomena as well as the position-practice system provided the analytic lenses. To complement CR, the researcher also used Ian Moll’s model of curriculum responsiveness as an organising framework for the study. The application of CR in studying social structures, and in particular educational institutions, will also be supported from previous studies. The final sections of the chapter discuss the origins and applicability of Moll’s model to education as well as its relevance to this study.
1.13.4 Chapter Four: Literature Review
Chapter Four presents the literature review. The chapter is divided into two sections for ease of management. Section A covers current debates in vocational education and training while
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Section B covers Agricultural Education and Training in Zimbabwe. The chapter covers the major international and local debates in vocational education and training such as vocational education for productivity and employability (market responsiveness) and non-market responsiveness. The debates on responsiveness are also covered in this chapter.
1.13.5 Chapter Five: Research design and methodology
Chapter Five presents the research design and methodology for the study. This chapter was influenced to a great extent by CR which was used to under-labour for this qualitative comparative case study. It includes the research approach, selection of study sites, comparative case study design, data collection instruments, data analysis and ethical considerations for the study. All the above elements of research methodology sought to apply elements drawn from critical realism.
1.13.6 Chapter Six: The Colleges Responses to A1 farmers learning needs
Chapter Six presents and discusses findings on the two colleges’ responses to the learning needs of A1 farmers using the inductive analysis explained in Chapter Five. The chapter offers a rich description of what both Colleges are doing as they respond to the learning needs of A1 farmers.
This was done on a college-by-college basis to preserve the individuality of the cases.
1.13.7 Chapter Seven: Curriculum responsiveness through the eyes of VET managers, lecturers and learners.
The first section addresses the experiences of Ministry officials, principals, lecturers and students on curriculum responsiveness to the learning needs of A1 farmers. The second section addresses the challenges to VET curriculum responsiveness from the perspectives of these stakeholders.
20 1.13.8 Chapter Eight: Study synthesis
Chapter Eight is the final chapter for this study. It presents the summary, conclusions and recommendations of the study based on the research findings. The chapter also looks at the implications of these conclusions on VET policy and practice in the Masvingo province of Zimbabwe. Using critical realist mode of retrodictive inference, the causal mechanisms influencing curriculum responsiveness in VET can be generalised to other contexts in Zimbabwe after testing their applicability in these contexts. Generalisations in CR are at the level of mechanisms having isolated specific ones in a study and then assess their presence or absence in another context.