Theories of change steering transformation at the UFS: a conceptual analysis
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Date
2019
Authors
Makae, Pule Isaac
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of the Free State
Abstract
The historically white universities, particularly the Afrikaans-speaking in South Africa were seen to be determined not to transform. However, at the dawn of democracy, there seem to be eagerness to change. This was prompted by the National Education Policy Investigation (NEPI, 1992) and the National Commission of Higher Education (NCHE, 1996) that resulted in the increased participation of black students who were previously excluded from the historically white campuses. Due to the increase of black students a great number of challenges emerged, e.g. the revision of the curricula, teaching approaches and the universities’ autonomy. As a historically white university, the UFS had to follow the new democratic government instruction of transformation which was accelerated at beginning of the 20’s.
In order to trace the transformation initiatives at the UFS, a number of relevant documents was consulted, e.g. 1) Education policy documents on higher education, i.e. The Constitution of the RSA, NEPI-1992, NCHE-1997, Education White Paper 3-1997, National Plan For Higher Education-2001, Guidelines for Mergers and Incorporations-2003, the UFS Ministerial Reports on Transformation and Social Cohesion and the Elimination of Discrimination in Public Higher Education Institutions (2008), The Oversight Committee on university transformation-2013 and Higher Education South Africa (HESA) presentations to the Portfolio Committee on Higher Education-2014. 2) Research articles advocating change in South African Education sector, 3) Academic and research articles advocating transformation at the UFS and 4) the Annual Reports of the UFS to the Minister of Higher Education & Training.
Meta-Analysis was performed on both the results of the survey that aimed at determining the perceptions and experiences of students and staff regarding race and ethnic issues at the UFS in 2010 (Louw, Jooste and Makae, 2011) and the results from the Perception Audit commissioned by the UFS in February 2014 with the objective of reinforcing the university’s commitment of stakeholders’ engagement and to its’ core values of academic excellence and human reconciliation.
A qualitative approach was followed and, guided by the interpretivist paradigm; a document analysis was performed on the above-mentioned documents. I devised a simple critical hermeneutics framework to keep the consistency of the document analysis. Five prominent theories of educational change were selected and their characteristics were used to do the matching exercise on the documents and surveys. These theories are: Survival is Optional, Action Theory, Innovation and Diffusion, System Psycho-dynamics and Post-Conflict Pedagogy. The two most prominent theories that emerged as explanatory theories for the transformation process at the UFS are: Action Theory and Survival is optional. This means that the need to implement strategies for change was driving the transformation process at the UFS for a large part. The driver of this action was top leadership of the university who knew what was required and how to execute the action plan. An interesting pattern emerged that in policy documents and university-generated documents, namely that all five theories of change featured, which is in contrast to the survey results in which Action Theory and Survival is Optional featured prominently. Amongst others, the conclusion is drawn that universities, as generators of knowledge, can do much better if their transformation processes are guided by explicit theoretical considerations. Also, stakeholder voices, as found in surveys, may give an indication of transformation that is probably a closer depiction of the trajectory that transformation takes than institutionally developed reports. The limitations of this study are acknowledged within the limits of what an interpretivist paradigm allows.
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Keywords
Thesis (Ph.D. (Higher Education Studies))--University of the Free State, 2019, Transformation initiatives, University of the Free State