Challenging established rules is the way forward for teaching and learning at universities

A university is a space for challenging established ideas and engaging in open ended inquiry. “Our mandate in Higher Education is to help our students to understand that.”

So said Dr Mandy Hlengwa, Senior Lecturer, Education, and Coordinator: new Generation of Academics Programme, Rhodes University, to senior university leadership at the recent Higher Education Conference held in Pretoria. The Conference was themed “The Future of the University.”

But there is a lot more that is happening in our world – our context is changing. As we move into this new phase, we have to think about how we teach, what we impart to our students to make them think about what is established and how to challenge that.”

The senior educator said this went beyond knowledge acquisition – which was “incredibly important”, stressing that she was not negating disciplinary knowledge.

“Being able to ensure that our students understand disciplinary knowledge, how it is created and what their contribution is, is essential. I take that as a given. I want to concentrate on other things that we should be doing at the university.”

Dr Hlengwa highlighted three ideas for a university of the future:

• Possibilities: What are the possibilities that we have, and that are to come? If you think about our disciplinary areas, what possibilities could we face because of the knowledge and skill sets that we have? Possibilities, for me, are things that have not yet come, that you can see on the horizon, like a horse riding towards you.
• Imagination and Exploration: Unlike possibilities, Imagination is What If? Imagination is recreating that which we do not know, but possibly can exist, and exploring the bounds of that. “This is rooted in the idea of realism – in actual things that are in our system. Think about context: there are mechanisms that are realities in our institutions. There are discourses that will either enable possibilities in how we teach, or constrain how we imagine and understand what we are going to do to explore some ideas. Our mandate in T&L is to guide our students to take maximum advantage of being in multi-disciplinary environments, working outside and within their discipline. So the idea that we can solve and understand our world primarily and only from our own discipline is, in my view, a lack of imagination and exploration. CoViD taught us how to work across disciplines to come up with solutions and innovations. If our students have specialised knowledge and expertise it’s not enough if it resides in them. Our job is to help them understand why it’s important for them to communicate that to others who have a different kind of knowledge and expertise to work with the challenges they might face.”

The conversation around Higher Education and the future oriented university must include sustainable development and how it is integrated into curricula, Dr Hlengwa said. “It’s no longer a concept that belongs outside – only being studied by those in environmental sciences. sustainable development has to be across our institutions in our curricula.”

She added that those in positions of influence had to be involved in shaping the conversation to integrate sustainable development into the curriculum.

“It is a way to generate new knowledge to contribute to developing appropriate competencies and to raise sustainability awareness.”

She said to understand the knowledge in any discipline, certain competencies were needed – regardless of the discipline. Dr Hlengwa said: “If a student graduates without these competencies, we are not doing our job.”

• Active participation in society: To modify and shape the future of society, and to guide its social, economic, technological and ecological changes along the lines of sustainable development.
• Systemic thinking and handling of complexity: “One of the conference speakers talked about the changed approach to teaching history, given AI. Now, they are thinking about critical thinking rather than what happened in the 1800s. We live in a super complex world. Our students need to understand that their knowledge skills and discipline have a role to play in unpacking and understanding complex problems and social ills.”
• Acting fairly and ecologically: “Social justice extends into our ecology; fairness across the human realm, and within our ecological system.”
• Planning and realising innovative projects: “This is the imagination and exploration part.”
• Interdisciplinary work
• Ambiguity and frustration tolerance: “Our students like to work in groups. One of the hidden curricula around students going into groups is the understanding that there is going to be ambiguity. How do you navigate and tolerate frustration? Are you always going to be in a position to say ‘I don’t like this; this doesn’t hold to my truth’ and walk out the room? You learn that walking out does not work. Group work is a classic example of how our students learn.”

Dr Hlengwa said that traditionally, academics had been the centre of and the primary source of knowledge, delivering content through lectures. However, she said, in the future university, the educator’s role would increasingly focus on facilitating learning rather than merely imparting knowledge.

“AI will tell you what happened in every history book that was ever written in less than a few seconds. If we are the source of knowledge and we think imparting that is our role, we will butt heads in what happens now that our context has changed.”

1. Cultural competency and social awareness in classrooms with students from diverse backgrounds was essential, Dr Hlengwa said. She added that professional learning communities or peer mentoring programmes enabled academics to share experiences, discuss challenges, and learn from one another.
2. Understanding and applying learning science — the study of how people learn — so that academics can make evidence-based decisions in their teaching. Given that the cohort of students was different every year, “We need to understand how this generation of students coming in in 2025 thinks; what are they coming in with so that we can make some assumptions about them? That, of course, we must test.
3. Professional development focused on helping academics to manage diverse classrooms, address students’ emotional and mental health needs, and foster an inclusive learning environment was key. “I’m not a psychologist but I do have a responsibility for my student. I have to work out if it’s a knowledge or a language issue; or falls under emotional and mental health needs. How does that impact or influence how I foster a learning environment?”
4. Professional development programmes focused on enabling academics to integrate technologies into their teaching practices effectively. Dr Hlengwa believes that lecturers have to choose technology that fits with what they want to achieve, for which they need to understand what is available.

There was no institution, she said, where academics did not feel like there was a lot that they had to contend with, in terms of their own career trajectory; what they are expected to achieve with their students; and to design their own professional development pathways.

“We are the institutions; we are having to make difficult decisions institutionally and at the individual level. How do I fit it all into a 24 hour day, in a way that doesn’t break and burn me out? How do I continue to be an effective academic, contributor of knowledge in my discipline and institution?

“We are going to have to make difficult decisions that, perhaps two years later, will seem like they might not have been the greatest idea. The values in our institutions need to be overt — what are we prioritising?

“One of the dangers is that we think we have to do it all. I don’t think that’s sustainable.”

Charmain Naidoo is a contract writer for Universities South Africa.