The teaching and learning of entrepreneurship have become critical in accelerating entrepreneurship activity in South Africa. Appropriate education in entrepreneurship provides students with skills, knowledge, and opportunities for growth and development to prosper in the field of entrepreneurship. By examining activities in the Bachelor of Commerce's (BCom) Management Major, which embeds entrepreneurship learning, at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), the chapter identifies gaps in its curricula design. It compares the Major with the principles that govern entrepreneurship education and curricula design theories. The chapter concludes that an appropriate curricula design for entrepreneurship development should foster learning that promotes entrepreneurship intention; it thus proposes a Management and Entrepreneurship Major that is more appropriate.
TopIntroduction
In the mid-1990s, the newly-elected South African government faced a challenge to build a democratic country in an intensely divided, primarily disadvantaged society left to it by the apartheid government (Ensor, 2004). “There was a need for every sector of society to be rebuilt and developed, most particularly education, which was seen as the main instrument to advance the life opportunities of South Africans, as well as the opportunity to secure sound social and economic development into the new millennium” (Ensor, 2004, p. 340).
The responsibility of Higher Education thus went beyond the creation of professionals. It included the responsibility to 'decolonize curricula' through the provision of relevant, inclusive and tailored education for the country. Given this backdrop, the narrative on 'decolonized curricula' can be described as the dismantling of the colonial hold on education and replacing it with one's context and reality. According to Kelley (2000), colonized education views everything as civil, and acceptable if it is according to European (Western) standards and norms. The 'decolonized' perspective of the education system denounces this notion of the ‘west’ and finds relevance in designing specific and appropriate curricula for South African Higher Education based on an inclusive approach.
With the rate of unemployed graduates in South Africa gradually increasing, entrepreneurship is recognized, globally, as a stimulant for economic growth and innovation (Radipere, 2012) and (Unterhalter, 2010).
Entrepreneurship is a dynamic process of vision, change and value creation towards the implementation of creative solutions to identified opportunities (Kuratko, 2016). The application of entrepreneurship in an economy can often lead to the development of small businesses, which are the drivers of economic growth and innovation (Kuratko, 2016). To create both intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs that will help South Africa achieve what it hopes to achieve economically, which is accelerated economic growth, the curricula design for entrepreneurship qualification must consider the unique South African context.
The word curriculum is from the Latin word currere, which means to run a course (Etymonline, 2020). Over time, this meaning has evolved and defined as a systematic plan for instructing to achieve specific results (Geyser, 2004). Wojtczak (2002, p. 216) defines curriculum as “an educational plan that spells out which goals and objectives should be achieved, which topics should be covered, and which methods are to be used for learning, teaching and evaluation”. On the other hand, Coles (2003) cited in Smithson (2012, p. 3) defines curriculum as “the sum of all the activities, experiences and learning opportunities for which an institution (for example, society) or a teacher (for example, a faculty member) takes responsibility, either deliberately or by default”. Lastly, Tanner and Tanner (2007, p.12) describe curriculum as “that reconstruction of knowledge and experience that enables the learner to grow in exercising intelligent control of subsequent knowledge and experience”.
All of these definitions are of importance in designing 'decolonized curricula' in South Africa, post the apartheid regime. The main objective of this chapter is to assess the relevance of the Entrepreneurship offering within the Management Major offered by University of KwaZulu-Natal's (UKZN's) BCom degree, based on these definitions. Through the critique of relevant literature, the chapter conceptualizes an appropriate curricula design for a hybrid Major which will be referred to henceforth as the Management & Entrepreneurship Major. The pertinent question and answer tackled by this chapter are whether this Major fosters Entrepreneurial Intention and Efficacy within the context of South Africa?