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 is intensified by intersecting global and local imperatives technological disruption, youth unemployment, sustainability, 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 and professionalisation, they often remain constrained by technicist logics, monolingual practices, and the marginalisation of African epistemologies. This article argues that meaningful transformation of TVET lecturer education requires centring the voices of students their lived experiences, critiques, and aspirations as catalysts for reimagining curriculum and pedagogy. Drawing on qualitative narratives from graduates of the National Certificate (Vocational) programme, the study illuminates how current pedagogical practices reproduce exclusion. Students describe alienation through English-only instruction, the absence of community-rooted and indigenous knowledge, and work-integrated learning framed as bureaucratic compliance rather than critical praxis. These accounts reveal the disjuncture between policy rhetoric of equity and the lived curriculum experienced in classrooms, while articulating a demand for curricula and lecturers that are dialogical, culturally sustaining, technologically adaptive, and responsive to socio-economic realities. Anchored in Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy and Le Grange’s notion of curriculum as a verb, the article positions students as epistemic agents rather than passive recipients. It contends that preparing TVET lecturers to navigate volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) contexts requires a shift from narrow professionalisation toward transformative, Africanised, and socially responsive pedagogy.