Enabling Vocational Lecturer Capacities Toward Sustainable Human Development: Toward Radical Revisioning

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of a curriculum development journey of the AdvDip (TVT), a program designed to prepare South African TVET lecturers as progressive pedagogues. It responds to Akoojee’s (2016) call for “radical re-visioning” that truly transforms the TVET system. In considering contextual realities linked to poverty, inequality, and human development, a humanizing pedagogy (Freire 1993) and the capability approach (Sen 1980) is used as these are deemed to be responsive alternatives to the standard educational and economic frameworks. The chapter begins with an exploration of the current TVET landscape against the background of prevailing contextual realities; then the curriculum journey is described through an overview of events that resulted in the choices made toward a suite of modules that aim to cultivate a progressive pedagogue. Finally, the chapter ends with an overview of Africanization and decolonization imperatives integrated into the curriculum design so as to ensure the inclusion of indigenous perspectives. It is hoped that through the enactment of a humanizing pedagogy and a capability approach, TVET lecturers develop the kind of transformative teaching and learning praxis that position them as agents of hope and change and of those who are able to promote social justice, equality, and human well-being.