21st Century Skills and the Curriculum: Doomed Pedagogical Fad or Key to a More Equal Future?

• In Event: Refusing Systemic Inequality: Curriculum as Disruptive-Productive Device for Equity Aspirations

Abstract

The gross inequalities that remain prevalent in the neoliberal South African schooling context have reached unprecedented heights. The reality of the majority of schools not receiving equal curriculum materials and resources are but one example of such inequalities. In the midst of this grim picture, a concurrent national (and international) call is made to place more emphasis on 21st century skills development in the curriculum. However, what is needed to realise the development of 21st century skills necessitates more equality in terms of educational provision.
It comes as no surprise that market-driven principles have been packaged under guises such as the 4th industrial revolution (IR) and 21st century skills sets. Discourses associated with the 4th IR and 21st century skills sets require research, policy and curricular engagement. In this paper, I will critically unpack 21st century skills and indicate what this means for the South African curriculum. In doing so, I will demonstrate how the unequal status quo ante remains intact despite vehement attempts to transform the education system and to bring about a more equal future.
This theoretical paper will entail a diffractive reading (Barad 2007; Du Preez & Simmonds 2020) of literature pertaining to 21st century skills development and literature about inequality in curriculum spaces. A diffractive methodology will facilitate the process of theorising the disruptive-productive potential of curriculum with an emancipatory and liberating intend. A selection of the work of Paulo Freire dealing with inequalities in the curriculum will be explored alongside Wallin’s (2010) active and reactive forces of currere.
It will be argued that the unequal playing field in South Africa, coupled with national and international calls for the infusion of 21st century skills in the curriculum, is often the result of a reactive response to curriculum. I argue for the active force of currere to be fostered as a more robust way to think about the possibilities of a more equal future. The active force of currere is not an a priori image of pedagogical life, but denotes the immanent potential of the becoming of pedagogical life (Le Grange 2019).
The scholarly contribution that this paper aims to make is closely related to the title of this paper, namely to question whether the emphasis on 21st century skills in school curricula is in fact a doomed pedagogical fad or key to a more equal future.
Barad K (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Du Preez P & Simmonds S (2020). Reading posthumanism and decolonisation diffractively towards (re)configuring an ontoepistemic approach to religion education. British Journal of Religious Education, DOI: 10.1080/01416200.2020.1809993.
Le Grange L (2019). Currere’s active force and the concept of Ubuntu. In: Hébert, Cristyne, Ng-A-Fook, Nicholas, Ibrahim, Awad and Smith, Bryan (Eds), Internationalizing Curriculum Studies: Histories, environments, and critiques. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. pp. 207-226.
Wallin JJ (2010). The Conceptual Powers of Currere. In: A Deleuzian Approach to Curriculum. Education, Psychoanalysis, and Social Transformation. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230115286_1.

Author

• Petro Du Preez, North-West University