Getting the balance right: reflecting on the study pack as a pedagogic tool for self-directed learning in an Extended Curriculum Programme during the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

Reflective practice has gained considerable momentum as discourse central to meaningful pedagogy and professional development. Critical reflection, as an arm of reflective practice, illuminates the importance of interrogating one’s practice with the view to contributing to transformative teaching and learning. Since transitioning to remote teaching and learning in 2020, I have been forced to step outside my comfort zone of almost three decades of in-person, student-teacher interaction. The time had arrived for a shit in pedagogy and the need to address the “disorientating dilemma” (Mezirow, 1991) of getting the balance right between providing enough pedagogic tools for students to succeed, but also to ensure student self-directedness is fostered for the same purpose. Ater recurriculation of my subject in a Foundation Year programme in 2018, with more in-person contact time having been built in, I find myself only two years later ater implementation of the new programme, having to ‘recurriculate’ yet again. This chapter shares a critical reflection, based on Mezirow’s (1978) Transformative Learning Theory, of my experience when examining one of the pedagogic tools, namely the use of study packs, adopted over twelve months of remote teaching and learning brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdown in South Africa. This reflective journey has impacted my practice positively, specifically in the realisation that self-directedness is a pedagogical imperative, forming part of the pedagogic toolkit for transformative teaching and learning.