Educating students for effective community engagement: student perspectives on curriculum imperatives for universities in South Africa

Abstract

ABSTRACT The public sector, including higher education institutions (HEIs), has a critical role to play in the national post-apartheid transformation agenda in South Africa. With the formalisation of community engagement (CE) as a core function of HEIs, universities are now required to contribute to the socio-economic development of communities and to promote students’ social and civic responsibilities through community engagement. Students are viewed as both agents and beneficiaries of community engagement. We propose that students of HEIs in South Africa have to be educated and prepared for engaging with communities, otherwise the potential to cause harm (albeit unintentional), specifically to previously disadvantaged communities, is real. Based on our proposal, this article presents the findings of exploratory research conducted for developing curricula to prepare students for community engagement practice and scholarship at the University of Fort Hare (UFH), in the Eastern Cape. Students currently involved in various forms of community engagement and areas of scholarship were purposefully selected from both the rural and urban campuses of UFH. The research asked the following question: What should be the nature and form of education/preparation of students, for the different kinds of CE activities and scholarship undertaken at UFH? The notion of ubuntu formed the philosophical base, with holistic education as the theoretical foundation of the study. The research drew from the scholarship of Barnett and Coate (2005) on the three functions of university curricula – knowing, acting and being – which we deem well suited to the functions of community engagement in the South African context.