Why focus on Social Sciences?

It is envisaged that the 25 target social science programmes will respond differently to the need for renewal and revitalization due to varying university contexts shaped by the leadership, policy dynamics, attributes of teaching staff as well as the available physical facilities, infrastructure, and teaching and learning materials. A bottom-up approach will, therefore, be adopted to integrate PedaL in the target social science programmes. The process will be led by teaching staff who will participate in the PedaL training programme. The teaching staff will be expected to establish the gap between the ideal situation and the current situation and to establish a basis for reforming the target social science programmes. They will also identify elements of the programmes that should be enhanced and propose strategies for introducing change.

The teaching staff will then recommend these changes to the University PedaL Implementation Committee for approval and subsequent implementation through the appropriate university structures. It will be the responsibility of the University PedaL Implementation Committee to confirm and align the outcomes of PedaL with broad university policy and strategy on teaching and learning based on their understanding of the processes, systems, actors, and resources needed to effect the strategy. Each target social science programme consists of several courses and PedaL will be adopted incrementally through the courses. Early adopters will provide a launch pad for piloting renewal and reform and gradually replicating innovations to ultimately transform the programmes.

As part of the PedaL training programme therefore, the teaching staff will review the vision of the target programmes. This will entail a re-examination of the values, beliefs and expected outcomes of the target programmes in general and the respective courses in particular. It will also entail a quick survey to gather information from other teaching staff, students, alumni, students, prospective employers, and policymakers. One of the issues to be investigated is whether the target programmes have responded to changing external, social-economic, and political and workplace needs and challenges over time; and, the contribution of specific courses to the programmes.

A key output of the PedaL training programme will be a plan for implementation of PedaL pedagogy in specific social science programmes, a mechanism for monitoring and evaluation of the implementation process and outputs, and disseminating results.