Developing an Enabling Pedagogy for Fostering Effectual Logic in Students

  • Teboho Pitso Vaal University of Technology
  • Malefane Lebusa Vaal University of Technology

Abstract

Developing students that demonstrate critical understanding of complex problems and the ability to resolve them as well as generate novel ideas that could be transformed into tangible results in addition to individually-graded skills that make students more productive is mostly at the heart of 21st Century teaching and learning. The historical focus on causation rationality in mostly research-intensive universities and replication of industrial processes in former Technikons has come under intense scrutiny in this century. At the heart of both this rationality and industrial processes replication is causal logic which has been guiding how knowledge is produced and taught. In this article, we problematise and critique causal logic as the underlying motif of teaching and learning in universities and advance the view that effectual logic holds better prospects of undergirding students' triarchic abilities of analysis, synthesis and application. We consider analytical abilities as key to critical understanding of complex issues and thus worthy of consideration in every pedagogic encounter. We also suggest that exploring new possibilities and generating new connections in every pedagogic encounter is a worthy cause. We propose that both these abilities be guided by consideration of means as the starting point with goals remaining open-ended. Iterative testing out of tentative goals developed in consideration of available means within the principle of affordable loss is an equally worthy cause in pedagogic endeavours. We explore these ideas further in the next sections as pivots around which an enabling pedagogy could be sketched
Published
2016-02-19
How to Cite
Pitso, Teboho, and Malefane Lebusa. 2016. “Developing an Enabling Pedagogy for Fostering Effectual Logic in Students”. South African Journal of Higher Education 29 (6). https://doi.org/10.20853/29-6-537.
Section
General Articles