Curriculum as a verb: Reimagining TVET lecturer education through student narratives of justice and inclusion

Abstract

The urgency of curriculum transformation in South Africa's technical and vocational education and training (TVET) sector arises from converging global and local pressures-technological disruption, youth unemployment, sustainability challenges, and the unfinished project of decolonisation. While lecturer education programmes such as the Advanced Diploma in TVET at Nelson Mandela University claim to advance humanising pedagogy, they often remain shaped by technicist logics, monolingual practices, and the marginalisation of African epistemologies. Drawing on qualitative narratives from 15 graduates of the National Certificate (Vocational) programme, this article argues that meaningful transformation of TVET lecturer education requires centring students' lived experiences, critiques, and aspirations as catalysts for reimagining curriculum and pedagogy. Their accounts reveal how current practices reproduce exclusion through English-only instruction, limited recognition of Indigenous knowledge, and work-integrated learning framed as bureaucratic compliance rather than critical praxis. By situating these insights within Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy and Le Grange's notion of curriculum as a verb, the study positions students as epistemic agents rather than passive recipients. It addresses a gap in scholarship that rarely connects student-voice research to TVET lecturer-education reform, demonstrating how participatory, justice-oriented pedagogy can advance epistemic inclusion. The article contends that preparing TVET lecturers to navigate volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) contexts demands a shift from narrow professionalisation toward transformative, Africanised, and socially responsive praxis.