Opportunity and the Pandemic: Re-imagining Business Management Curriculum for First-generation Students under Cover of Pandemonium

Abstract

First-generation university students negotiate with clear and evident difficulty the transition from the familiarity of secondary (high school) education to tertiary (university) education. The impersonal nature of tertiary education generally—and particularly so since the pandemic advent—accentuates marginalisation of vulnerable youth and impinges on effective learning and a favourable learning experience. A more desirable state would include demystification of the processes of becoming a student-customer, firstly, and thereafter a learner-initiate. Teaching faculty, in the (necessarily virtual) classroom, serve as the user-interface with the impersonal and often impenetrable administrative and teaching dimensions of the university exosystem. The rationale is that, were the pathway from high school graduate to student-customer and learner-initiate to be less harrowing, the transition would be more composed and the journey to degree completion more gratifying. Scaffolding this rationale as a reconceptualised first-year management studies curriculum draws upon Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model of learner development, and the foundations established by Vygotsky’s socio-cultural model of learning. In this frame, proximal processes arising as learner interaction with microsystem and exosystem dimensions of socio-economic and socio-cultural inheritance, can be addressed in the classroom to transcend learner disaffection. An entry-level management principles curriculum delivered to a substantial cohort in the second semester of 2021 served as object of phenomenological observation and interpretation. The student-experience pathway was emphasised as instructor-directed, student-focused and compensatory. Two foci are brought to the fore in this paper, rendering the curriculum content accessible for the student profile, and overcoming assessment helplessness and despondency. These accomplishments are elaborated as features of backwards design and emphasis on teaching and learning as social interaction with a more knowledgeable other.