Abstract
Using Margaret Archer’s constructs, namely structure, culture, and agency, this paper argues that although there are commendable structural changes in the CHE (Council on Higher Education) and RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning) policy which accommodate marginalized and unstructured experiential knowledge, thus equating it with ‘scientific’ knowledge produced by the university, there remains subtle preservations of material interests of the corporate agent (CHE policy maker) and the ideas, beliefs, and theories the latter holds about the place of unstructured learning and knowledge in universities. To advance this argument, a critique is mounted on three accommodative sub-units of the CHE RPL policy, namely: the notion of exemption, residency clause, and the ten percent ceiling on the number of applicants admitted through RPL. The rare allowance for exceptional deviations to the two latter notions (by CHE) is infused in the foregoing critique. In the final analysis, a reconsideration of these provisions is suggested.
Highlights
The origins of RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning) in South Africa are political
The nuanced argument inserted here is that actors are not absolutely powerless; it is that they stand in a relation of at least less powerfulness in comparison to the corporate agent, and their degree of negotiation and transacting at the level of action and decision can only tend to conform to policy
The paper acknowledged the contested nature of knowledge and how the politics thereof transport itself into the policy-making processes of the sector policy, and how these in turn play out at the institutional contextual level of practice by social actors in unpredictable ways
Summary
The origins of RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning) in South Africa are political. It was driven by labour movements (Ralph, 2016). The nuanced argument inserted here is that actors are not absolutely powerless; it is that they stand in a relation of at least less powerfulness in comparison to the corporate agent, and their degree of negotiation and transacting at the level of action and decision can only tend to conform to policy Their own view on politics of knowledge boundaries and how to cross the latter through RPL cannot be divorced from the provisions of the CHE policy as conditioning and enabling structural properties and powers. There is a corporate agent with a vested interest in the preservation of funding (structure) which happens to converge with the cultural systemic property (knowledge what and knowledge how) at the level of discourse about RPL The outcome under these interplaying constructs is more complex, depending on the beliefs and theories of role players in institutional contexts. This proposition is found wanting in relation to articulation principles of equity, fairness of procedures related to assessment and validation of learning (DHET, 2016)
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