A Social Realist Perspective in Urban Planning Curriculum Transformation for Sustainability Mainstreaming: Learning from the University of Johannesburg

Transforming higher education curricula has gained traction in the past few decades, particularly in post-colonial Africa. The discipline of urban planning has not been spared especially in the context of South Africa. Numerous efforts have been exerted to infuse several aspects that among others include locally contextualized curriculum, the fourth industrial revolution tenets and sustainable development principles. However, the extent to which sustainability values have been successfully mainstreamed to ensure transformative practices that promote students’ access and success remains an unchartered territory. Consequently, in this paper, I explored the experiences of the urban planning department at the University of Johannesburg in transforming its curricula. In the paper, literature on curriculum development and reform in South African Higher Education was distilled. I adopted a case study research design and a qualitative research approach to gather qualitative data through the application of positionality and documents analyses to reveal the extent to which social realism perspectives have shaped curriculum transformation in the departmental programme development and reviews. The results reveal that curriculum development and reviews within department of urban and regional planning is a complex and messy reality that is shaped by Margeret Archer’s structural, cultural and agential emergent powers and properties. This is very evident within the Master in Sustainable Urban Planning and Development (MSUPD), an interdisciplinary programme which enables and supports lifelong and blended learning in sustainable development education. It trains a variety of professionals who find solutions to complex urban sustainability challenges. In conclusion, I recommend that concerted efforts are need to strengthen and infuse sustainability orientations and building blocks of sustainability education that include societal, institutional, environmental and economic imperatives.