In my article: ‘Quality Assurance in higher education: whose quality’ I introduced concepts such as: ‘massification’ and ‘de-elitism’ in our higher education, resulting from increased university education access. Increasing access to higher education came at a high cost. The Council on Higher Education (CHE) and the Education Statistics show that although large volumes of students were admitted into institutions, many stayed ‘hidden’ in the system longer than expected.

Students failed and either repeated levels, migrated into new programmes, or even moved to other institutions, or dropped out, altogether. Students congested the system. University and other institutions had to find solutions to this awkward predicament. Massification and de-elitism came at considerable costs to the country and the higher education system.
A significant reason for these students’ predicament is that this generation was ill-prepared for higher education studies. The new students did not possess the requisite skills to cope with higher education demands. The proponents blamed students’ deficiencies squarely on their schooling.

The higher education system could not address problems at the school level. School education was not in their jurisdiction. However, these students are at higher education doorsteps. Institutions needed to devise interventions that would enable them to deal with this predicament. This saw the birth of academic programmes (AD) such as Lesotho Science Pre-Entry Course in the later 1970s and early ‘80s, followed by the Pre-Entry Science Programme at the National University of Lesotho (NUL).

The AD confirmed a gap between the students who enrolled in higher education institutions and their professors. This divide meant that something must give. It was up to institutions to be innovative and design endeavours that would bridge this divide rather than point fingers. The AD programme has metamorphosed into numerous programmes.

The current Covid-19 pandemic urged higher education institutions to become creative in their teaching and learning projects. I have shared a brief account of AD in higher education. This article proposes a programme for providing quality higher education system through a centre for higher education development like the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at NUL. The article describes how a CTL can drive university education’s core business.

This article is desktop research. My contribution is purely academic.
CTL is an intervention endeavour facilitating university teaching and learning using cutting edge resources. It is a recommendation of a study carried by the Commonwealth Secretariat. CTL decrees to provide numerous teaching and learning development services to faculties. They include continuing professional development, emerging technologies in information and communication technology (ICT) to enhance quality teaching and learning and assist students’ with learning.

A challenge remains for developing countries where academics entering higher education teaching do not need to hold teaching qualifications. None of the higher education institutions that teach education, namely, the Lesotho College of Education (LCE) or NUL, offer higher education curriculum studies. The two provide school teachers’ qualifications.
CTL provides curriculum and pedagogic development support to academics. It is not clear, whether or not, participation in these staff development workshops is mandatory. Yet, academics who teach in higher education are teachers.

CHE describes academics’ quality in terms of disciplines’ qualifications. CHE mandates that academics must be one National Qualification Framework level above the programme they teach. CHE is entirely silent about the teacher qualification requirement.

Often the academics teaching experience, in terms of the accumulative years, may be queried. Academics only need to demonstrate their discipline proficiencies and not their teaching competencies. This promotes the stereotype that in higher education teaching, teaching ability is insignificant.
According to CHE, most lecturers in colleges and private universities hold undergraduate degrees. However, this practice may not be a train-smash, noting that these institutions offer mostly diploma qualifications. But diploma qualifications provide access to university education. Diplomas give a foundation to degree and advanced diplomas. Therefore, the best-qualified lecturers must teach at diploma level.

There is a difference in loyalties between being teachers and discipline specialists. Academics argue that their subject knowledge takes precedence over teaching. The apprehension that academics display against being teachers is sheer denialism. Often, the stereotype that they may have against education and teaching cause this denial. But classroom teaching is about imparting knowledge, and that is teaching.

CTL innovation is profound to NUL. It acknowledges the role of teaching in higher education. CTL is fundamental to higher education. The core business of a university is teaching and learning, community outreach, and research. Also, Bernstein’s EPD is the best tool that we can use to emancipate our higher education system by putting a Mosotho student at the centre of the higher education project.

I presented Bernstein’s EPD in an earlier article, ‘A Mosothocentric Curriculum’ to explain how Basotho academics may take full control of the knowledge they teach in their institutions. EPD describes an arena of struggle for what different actors view as valued knowledge in higher education.
Applying Bernstein’s EPD, CTLs are central to the university core business. CTLs must be a driver of higher education. Their role is to integrate the core business of an institution. For a CTL to fully achieve this role, an institution must make a systematic, concerted, and coordinated move.

CTLs must lead institutional processes of drawing mission and vision statements and core values. In so doing, they must put a Mosotho student at the centre. Institutions must describe attributes that their curriculum experiences will foster in their graduates. Curriculum experiences include the language of teaching, learning and assessment, textbooks, libraries, teaching and learning environments, students’ and support mechanism.
Some pundits and scholars drive the myth that knowledge is universal. The concept of ‘university’ derives from this myth of ‘universality of knowledge.’ In this myth, universities impart universal knowledge. But the question is, who is this knowledge universal to? Why are African students alienated from this ‘universal knowledge’? I differ with these proponents.

I argue that knowledge is contextual. It depends on the context in which it is created, decontextualised and imparted. Therefore, our academics must decide, on the knowledge they privilege for Basotho students.
Academics entering higher education teaching in Lesotho, do not need to hold teaching qualifications. Only those that teach education programmes must have education qualification. Even these, they do not have higher education studies qualification. None of the institutions that offer education teach higher education curriculum studies. The two higher education institutions that provide teacher educations are Lesotho College of Education (LCE) or NUL. They teach school education.

According to Bernstein EPD, academics in higher education must choose the knowledge they seek to privilege and decontextualise and present to students in their classrooms. While most academics would possess their discipline competencies their programmes require, many lack the requisite competencies and skills to decontextualise this knowledge into the curriculum and present it as curriculum experiences.

A scholar, Lee Shulman, introduced the concept, ‘pedagogic-content knowledge’ in the 1980s. This is the combination of content and teaching knowledge in the classroom. According to Shulman, students need a teacher who is more than knowledgeable about their subject. But they also need one who can teach their specific subjects clearly and effectively. This is true for higher education teaching and learning, as well.

This shows that while it is essential to possess discipline knowledge, it is equally crucial that academics all have pedagogic skills, curriculum studies and development knowledge. While I do not expect academics to be experts in all the three EPD fields, academics in departments must handle some EPD aspects. This is important because the three fields inform each other. Thus academics may possess both discipline and pedagogic knowledge.

Academics must create knowledge, decontextualise it into the curriculum, and impart it to students. Academics must not outsource their responsibilities to others. Often, the ‘other’ here are the dominant actors characterised by the language of instruction and assessment and textbooks.
CTLs must actively coordinate institutional academic activities. For instance, at NUL, CTL must lead an institutional collaborative initiative that would unearth and understand Basotho traditions, culture and values. The Faculty of Social Sciences and King Moshoeshoe I Institute of Leadership would provide their anthropological and social sciences know-how to this end.

In close collaboration with the Faculty of Education, CTL with institutional community and stakeholders must infuse Basotho culture, and values into the institutional mission, vision and value. They must together paint a portrait of an institutional graduate they envision. This portrait must describe attributes that this graduate will display. Lastly, CTL and departments must entrench institutional mission, vision statements, values, and graduate attributes into the curriculum they want their students to experience.

Institutions must desist from importing foreign curriculum. Knowledge is not universal. CTLs must work very closely with researchers in faculties, departments, disciplines, and regions to incorporate their discipline research into the curriculum. In short, we must teach our knowledge, ensuring that our graduates survive any work environment.
Institutions would need human resources to effect this vision, at both faculty and departments’ levels and CTL. Therefore, institutions must empower a critical mass of new actors to engage with the knowledge in this arena of social justice struggles. The actors, in this case, are the academics.

CTL list their mandatory activities. These include a series of workshops that the unit proposes for all teaching staff at the institutions. These workshops are not adequate. They would not enable CTL to transform higher education in Lesotho radically. It is short of helping Basotho higher education practitioners to become powerful actors in knowledge creation, recontextualisation, teaching and learning, as explained by Bernstein’s EPD.
CTL offers a series of workshops to academics on curriculum design, development and pedagogy.

These workshops may fall short for preparing academics to grasp the pedagogic knowledge they require to teach thoroughly. Although academics may participate in these workshops, they are voluntary, and may not be deep enough to make the academics they are designed to become fully capacitated. They do not demonstrate a concerted effort to achieve good learning. In other words, although the academics demonstrate full mastery of the content they teach, we may not be so definitive with the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment competencies.

CTLs must forge close collaborations with Faculty of Education, institutionally, nationally and externally, and units that provide similar services, elsewhere. NUL’s CTL particularly must collaborate with other higher education institutions. They have more experience and better qualified academic staff.

To overcome the shortcoming of the lack of higher education curriculum studies knowledge, CTLs must build a research base in higher education studies. They must develop academic staff as professional higher education educators, professional curriculum ‘experts’. CTL already offer all of this, but they must formalise these through research degrees.

CTL, thorough the Faculty of Education and LCE, must introduce postgraduate studies degree, such as coursework and research Master of Curriculum Studies in Higher Education. Institutions that over teacher education focus solely on school education. Higher education in Lesotho will be a new avenue, in this respect.

Academic staff members who are first-degree holders only do not qualify for admission into masters degree programmes. They would be eligible for a consonant postgraduate diploma or honours degrees in curriculum studies in higher education.
LCE offers undergraduate certificates and diplomas. They must strongly consider offering degrees. This education undergraduate degree programme will form a base for a relevant postgraduate qualification later.
Offering masters and doctoral research would generate knowledge in higher education while at the same time, capacitating these academics with advanced research skills. These academics may engage in research in all EPD fields. The academics would choose research interest areas from a position of strength and not through fear and deficiency.

For a CTL to optimally function, it needs to be fully resourced. CTL says they have three (3) established lecturer positions and support staff. The different tasks this article suggests mean that CTLs must employ a significantly bigger staff complement. The academic staff members must hold masters or PhDs education qualifications (preferably PhDs). CTLs’ core staff complement must comprise:

1. Lecturer: higher education curriculum studies;
2. Lecturer: staff development – continuing professional development
3. Lecturer: student learning and academic development;
4. Lecturer: educational technology; and,
5. Information and communication technology (ICT). ICT in education is also referred to as e-Learning. E-learning is a new area that institutions need to research ways to fully entrench them into our education systems.

When CTL is fully institutionalised, all the listed activities shall be units with more than one academics, depending on institutional needs, providing the teaching support to faculties.

In conclusion, CTLs are critical to higher education development. The massification of higher education brought a new type of student, thus, new challenges. The present Covid 19 pandemic diminished the role of contact teaching while magnifying our higher education system’s deficiencies. It revealed that it is not ‘business as usual.’ Even so, higher education must prevail and facilitate quality education to Basotho.
CTLs must integrate the core business of university focusing nature and characteristics of their product, the graduate. They must describe the graduate attributes in line with the missions and visions of their institutions.

CTLs must pave the way to professionalising higher education teaching. They must facilitate graduate studies in high education curriculum studies geared toward producing researchers and knowledge creation. All academics must have higher education teaching qualifications.
Academics must insource all curriculum activities in their institutions. Gone are the days of outsourcing knowledge creations, curriculum design and development.

Dr Tholang Maqutu