An investigation into curriculum alignment in building construction curricula

Abstract

The nature of objectives of vocational education and training (VET) in Botswana identifies it as a national strategy aimed at augmenting economic growth and development. This assigns importance to investments on VET as a form of investment in human capital targeted at the economy and specifically to meet labour market needs. Thus, educational accountability, prompted by economic, technological and structural changes is of great importance to the major stakeholders of VET. This research examines a VET curriculum, specifically the Botswana Technical Education Programme-building construction curriculum, in regard to the degree of alignment between the curricula and the training needs of the building construction curricula. At the core of the research is the need to investigate the fitness for purpose of the curricula designed to provide skilled manpower to the building and construction industry. The research results indicates that: <ul> <li>-- there is a sharp contrast between the broad occupational needs of the industry and the focus of the written curriculum. The written curriculum is skewed towards the provision of training at the unskilled occupation levels while the human resource needs of the industry are within the technical and professional skilled occupational areas;</li> <li>-- vocational educators have developed the written curriculum at the micro level of the building construction industry, while the industry requires programmes to address macro level goals of the industry;</li> <li>-- the BTEP validation model presented responds to concerns of internal quality control processes in curriculum development (performing various vetting functions on the document). It does not provide overall guidance for alignment strategies to be used to ensure alignment of the curriculum and the training needs of the industry;</li> <li>-- the tension between employers from the industry on the one hand, and vocational educators on the other, stems from criticisms that vocational programmes are out¨Cof-touch with the realities of the industry;</li> <li>-- VET educators are not acting as brokers of government policy. Government has a very clear policy on the role and purpose of VET and has provided a direction for the role of VET in this regard.</li> </ul> Further research needs to be concerned with the wider economic implications of having a supply driven VET sector as opposed to, at minimum, striving to create a balance between the supply and demand side of vocational training. The VET sector in Botswana also needs to be concerned with building industry/education partnerships to address issues of workforce development. Future research needs to identify ways in which VET educators can maintain currency of knowledge and thus keep VET curriculum relevant. Copyright 2005, University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. Please cite as follows: Bennett, S 2005, An investigation into curriculum alignment in building construction curricula, MEd dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-09052005-100444 / >