Inclusive education, innovation converge at academic summit

“Innovation in pedagogy does not always originate from abundance. At the University of Cape Town (UCT), and I suspect at many institutions across the Global South and elsewhere, some of our most significant educational developments have emerged directly from necessity. They have been shaped by the recognition that the curricula and teaching practices we inherited were not working equally well for all students, and that we could not afford to wait for ideal conditions before acting.”

Speaking on “People and pedagogy: Inclusive education and innovation in contexts of disruption and inequality” at the 2026 Times Higher Education (THE) World Academic Summit (WAS), Deputy Vice-Chancellor (DVC) for Teaching and Learning Professor Brandon Collier-Reed touched on how institutions are committed to innovation and entrepreneurial capability in constrained or unequal environments. He also explored pedagogy-integrated community‑based problem-solving, applied research and enterprise development.

He discussed how institutions can adapt to evolving demographics while maintaining academic quality and coherence; as well as what mechanisms, such as democratising platforms, institutions are leveraging to deliver the promise of universal access.

This year’s summit is the first of its kind to be held on the African continent and is co-hosted with the University of Bristol as part of a long-standing strategic partnership between the two universities. The theme for 2026 is: “Knowledge, justice and futures: Universities in the age of intelligence”.

Necessary and generative

“South Africa’s higher education system was shaped by a long history of racialised exclusion. The effects of that history do not disappear at the point of admission. Many of our students arrive from schools that could not adequately prepare them for the demands of university-level study,” said Professor Collier-Reed.

He noted that many carry financial pressures that compound academic difficulty. For many, English is a second or third language. Furthermore, the cultural and knowledge frameworks of curricula may feel unfamiliar and even alienating.

“Our 2021 Teaching and Learning Report acknowledged that there was an achievement gap between demographic groups, and that many students across the board experienced helplessness, alienation or disengagement. What the work of the past five years has taught us is that these are not problems of student deficit. They are, in very significant measure, problems of institutional design. That reframing has been both necessary and generative.”

Through curriculum change projects across all faculties, a synthesis of those projects reveals a consistent and important finding, according to Collier-Reed. “The most significant university-wide impact has been the systematic confrontation of curriculum overload. In faculty after faculty, the evidence showed that students were being asked to carry excessive credit loads, navigate overly complex programme structures, or cope with curricula that did not adequately support progression and belonging. This was not a student problem. It was a design problem.”

He spoke about pedagogy as problem-solving. He told the audience about the Faculty of Engineering & the Built Environment and how the mechanical engineering course “Engineer in Society” deliberately reframes engineering as a socio-technical practice. In the Faculty of Commerce, assessment was redesigned away from narrow content reproduction and towards the demonstration of graduate attributes through reflective essays, group projects and capstone experiences.

“Technology matters where it reduces genuine barriers.”

“A further expression of how pedagogy can integrate community-based problem-solving and enterprise development is found in UCT’s Hasso Plattner School of Design Thinking Afrika, which structures learning around design thinking methodologies and community-embedded challenges,” Collier-Reed said.

“The diversity of the students UCT now educates is, moreover, multi-dimensional. It encompasses a growing international and continental student body; increasing numbers of students for whom English is a second, third or fourth language of learning; a widening range of prior educational experiences; and a growing proportion of students who manage significant financial, caregiving or employment responsibilities alongside their studies. Adapting to this diversity is not best understood as finding a single adjustable parameter in an otherwise fixed system.”

Future-oriented capabilities

Touching on democratising access, Collier-Reed said: “At UCT, we have made significant investments in digital learning through our learning management system, the development of early-alert dashboards tracking student performance in real time, and the Data Analytics for Student Success programme that generates course-level reports for course convenors each semester.”

He added: “Technology matters where it reduces genuine barriers. But the deepest forms of democratic access to higher education require changes to what is taught, in whose language it is taught, how students are assessed, and whether the curriculum acknowledges that knowledge is produced in many contexts and not only in those to which our disciplines have historically paid attention. That is a longer and more demanding project than any platform can deliver on its own.

“The UCT Teaching and Learning Strategy 2030 explicitly names future-oriented capabilities, including entrepreneurial and innovation dispositions, as part of the curriculum transformation agenda for the next five years.”

“We also know that some conditions shaping student success sit beyond the classroom.”

Collier-Reed concluded with some candid reflections. “The evidence from our curriculum change projects is encouraging but uneven. Some of our most important structural reforms are still in their early implementation phases. We also know that some conditions shaping student success sit beyond the classroom: financial uncertainty and insecurity, unequal schooling, [and] the mental health pressures that accompany a demanding university environment. These cannot be resolved through pedagogy alone. They require sustained institutional commitment and, beyond institutions, societal investment in the conditions of access.

“What I do believe, based on recent evidence, is this: the relationship between rigour and inclusion is not a tension to be managed by finding a clever middle ground. It is a relationship to be developed by understanding that the design of the curriculum is itself an act of inclusion or exclusion, long before any student sits in front of an assignment.”