An Evaluation of Foundation Provisioning Curriculum Delivery Workshops for Enabling Epistemological Access

Abstract

The issue about how to enable Foundation Provisioning lecturers to design and deliver curriculum for underprepared students that would enable them to access disciplinary epistemologies and succeed in their programmes of study is the focus of this paper. It argues that the curriculum is a point of leverage in terms of enabling epistemological access, embedding graduateness and academic literacies, foster engagement in active, collaborative, and self-regulated learning in foundation provisioning. Framed in the interpretive perspective, this case study research used various Scholarship of Curriculum Practice (SoCP) frameworks to reflect on Foundation Provisioning curriculum development interventions offered by academic developers of the Teaching and Learning Centre in an institution of Higher Learning. The curriculum development workshops were used as cases for this study which focused on the infusion of academic literacies, alignment of curricular to specific level descriptors, integration of technology to enhance teaching and learning, assessment in the Foundation provisioning context, the development and strategic use of the Foundation Provisioning learning guides. Data was obtained from a total of forty (40) Foundation Provisioning lecturers who were involved in the workshops. An evaluation questionnaire which consisted of open questions and a rating scale was used to solicit participants’ views on the benefits of the curriculum development workshops, dispositions to act on the insights gained, and areas where improvements in the Foundation curriculum are sought. Qualitative data were analysed thematically, and a rating scale was used gauge the overall benefits of the workshop. The research findings report on the benefits of using the epistemological access construct, and the curriculum frameworks as theoretical tools for reflecting on foundation provisioning activities and outcomes, and areas of foundation provision practice where these are applicable, as well as areas where improvement and further development of teaching and learning practices are sought. The study concludes that there is need for the fore-grounding of lecturers on the curriculum frameworks that underlie foundation provisioning, and the capacitation on how to embed knowledge literacies in the foundation curriculum. Recommendations for foundation curriculum alignment in the form of adjustments to the module learning guides and the strategic use of these learning guides to foster learning are made. The need to plan and embed in the actual curriculum delivery, tracking, active learning, and other foundation literacies is recommended.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n11p109