The potential for microcredentials as a form of open learning to contribute to a social justice agenda in South African higher education

Abstract

This study explores how microcredentials could be directed towards social justice ends in South African (SA) Higher Education (HE). The Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) draft Open Learning Policy Framework (OLPF) is premised on understanding open learning as a social justice imperative, identifying digital badges and microcredentials as strategically significant in open learning. Microcredential activities in SA HE are still nascent, so academic staff from only one SA university, who were actively experimenting with digital badges and microcredentials, were able to be interviewed. Interviews with selected local and international informants involved in researching and/or working with microcredentials in HE were also conducted, to investigate other practices and approaches in this field that could advance social justice in SA HE. The social justice framework of Nancy Fraser, which theorises ‘parity of participation’ in the dimensions of economic, cultural and political injustice, provided the analytical lens with which to interrogate the qualitative data. The findings indicate that microcredentials can remedy systemic inequities for both staff and students in the university studied. More broadly, microcredentials can afford the recognition of alternative epistemologies and cultural practices, and linking microcredentials to qualifications frameworks can allow for increased mobility of workers who can access an ‘ecosystem’ of work and educational opportunities, and potentially improve their lives. However, a coherent, integrated national post-school education and training (PSET) policy environment, explicitly based on social justice principles, is urgently needed to facilitate and guide further microcredential development so that it may help remedy inequities in SA HE.