**2. A brief overview of the new approaches to higher education**

It may be necessary to review a curriculum to fulfil new needs, develop a new program, reach new goals, accommodate a new dean or chair, restore the original emphasis of the program and rationalise years of untamed growth [1], meet newly defined expectations and standards, and/or improve student and faculty satisfaction [2].

The postmodern curriculum has influenced professional considerations that guide decisions made by lecturers in curriculum reform [3, 4]. As a result, extensive research into 21st-century skills is being conducted to gain some insight into higher education curriculum [5]. Refs. [6–9] argue that there are three aspects of the

#### *Relevance of New Higher Education Approaches in Zimbabwe's 'Second Republic' DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99934*

postmodern core curriculum. These include a focus on civic teamwork and not band rivalry, a rounded process position rather than distinct parts, and a multi-layered, cross-cutting, or interdisciplinary curriculum, which includes integration of societal values. Through different state-controlled mass media channels, the government of Zimbabwe justified Education 5.0 as endogenous, not loaned out, and avantgarde to Western values of higher education delivery in the country. On that basis, the state concluded that innovation and technology policy must pay attention to the kinds of incentives one would eventually get after the creation of a product that actually solves a problem in a particular sector or industry to enrich the lives of ordinary people [9]. However, it appears as though the calibre of Zimbabwe's education path has had questionable relevance. When modifying the curriculum, it is important to consider the difference between making minor and comprehensive alterations to the curriculum review.

Dill [10] posits that Education 5.0 has been informed by the sense of contemporary competitive markets, the application of inducements for exceptional innovations and industrial activities, and the process of professional self-regulation. While belief and esteem for certified decisions must be earned and justified, valuable declaration and validation systems must support, not impede, that professionalism. Institutional self-improvement enhancement and innovation must be balanced and vice versa. It could be argued that an inward-looking profession that learns from encounters, an active and self-regulated system, is more sustainable than one that is both imposed and external. Such education control mechanisms will never be successful. Thus, the ballistic nature of the uptake of Education 5.0 in universities and other tertiary institutions tends to force lecturers to simply scratch the surface. This is so because educators do not perceive themselves as part of the curriculum reforms.

Many state-run systems have launched a coordinated set of education policy initiatives and reforms aimed at fine-tuning what Harvard Professor Elmore refers to as the "hub of learning practice." That is, "how teachers understand the nature of knowledge and the student's role in learning, and how these ideas about knowledge and learning are manifested in teaching and classwork" [11]. Thus, a complete and collaborative curriculum demands a "full examination of how academics conceive their role and how the curriculum itself is defined, analysed, and changed" in the process of curriculum reform, especially [12]. Hence, the invention of higher education has evolved over the years from one generation to the next [13]. This is due to changes in the nature of economic problems being faced by people the world over and the need to provide solutions to challenges. This is the reason why the postmodern era curriculum has been changing over the years.

As such, [14] note that the postmodern curriculum is a "curriculum-inaction," as it is fluid and flexible in nature. Similarly, [12] asserts that curriculum variations are also imaginative and molten. This means that curriculum review and revision are not cast in stone. Elsewhere, curriculum reforms have yielded positive results [15–18]. Thus, Education 5.0 is non-linear because it is difficult to come up with a master plan and rationale for a fixed core curriculum. This is because global problems change every now and then. By default, they require different creative, innovative, and enterprising ideas and solutions. Public education started off benchmarked on teaching, specifically the "basics," around the 1780s [19]. Technology was remotely used in this education system as an aide by educators in the teaching and learning process [17]. Research was introduced later in the beginning of the 20th century [20] and then came community service. The kind of education that depended on these three variables became known as Education 3.0, which later led to the development of Education 4.0 and 5.0 [17].

In 1956, Bloom outlined the taxonomies of foundational stances that can be promoted to effectively make lesson plans in any course at different levels of teaching [21, 22]. The differences and densities of thought, branded by Bloom and later updated by other scholars [15, 23], continue to play a role in teaching and learning.

An advocacy and lobby entity based in the United States, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills and Learning (P21), argues that learners need proactive skills, knowledge, and professional conduct to successfully enter the current competitive industry. This enables them to provide solutions to the ever-evolving economic challenges of the time. The fast-track land reform program (FTRLP) was implemented in 2001 after an auspicious year for the Zimbabwean economy in 2000. Since then, the country has been struggling to provide the basics, including education, to its citizens. The country's tension with the West grew to an extent that even the Bretton Woods Institutions, namely the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), seized to avail funding to Zimbabwe. As a result, the country's critical sectors were left to rot or some have been slowly collapsing, including the tertiary and higher education sector reforms, due to a lack of stable funding except for selected humanitarian causes. To make matters worse, the magnitude of local educational decomposition grew after White commercial farmers and investors backed off in retaliation to the FTRLP. Higher education students' outcomes include foundation subjects and 21st-century themes; learning and innovation skills; information, media, and technology skills; and life and career skills [24]. However, there are different ways to emphasise students' capabilities and how they use what they learn in real life. In the evaluated literature, there is common consensus across studies on the desire for new forms of education and training to deal with global problems. Despite this contract, there is no one-of-a-kind and unique approach to what are known as "21st-Century Skills" [11, 25].

The spread of technologies, increasing globalisation and internationalisation, and the shift of industrial social communities to knowledge-based social economies have all contributed to the 21st-century skills education discourse. Therefore, demand for innovation and industrialisation and its diversity in education may be informed by variations in developmental situations. The large and probable demands of "21st-century skills" should be known in the broader spectrum of development across the globe. The absence of facts about the effective delivery of "21st-century skills" also points to the need to come up with new educational paradigms. It remains a huge task to obtain information on the brunt of the sorts of system-wide intrusions linked with their release.

It appears innovation and industrialisation are not new "21st-century skills". Rather, some may see them as "newly important." Industry today wants workers that are able "to find and analyse information from multiple sources and use this information to make decisions and create new ideas" [26], p. 631. Educational philosopher John Dewey proposed education "grounded in experience" [27], p. 13. This suggests students should learn skills for the future, usually those that enable them to be inventors, so that through interaction with phenomena they can eventually solve the ever-evolving problems of life. Furthermore, [27], p. 14 argues that Dewey was a visionary who defined an educated person as someone who thinks and reflects before acting, as someone who also responds intelligently to a problematic situation and finally assesses the consequences of the shown plan of action. This outlines the nature of the new millennium learner.

In 2009, the United States Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was quoted in the press as arguing that 21st-century skills "... increasingly demand creativity, perseverance, and problem solving combined with performing well as part of a team" [19], p. 121. After all, the continuum of the development of the education system has transformed slowly while the groundwork for wider change has been in

#### *Relevance of New Higher Education Approaches in Zimbabwe's 'Second Republic' DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99934*

the cards. Major changes were necessitated by technological advancements, social networking, and a deeper understanding of educational processes as well as new legal and economic frames of reference, resulting in the birth of Education 3.0 [28]. Education 3.0 was fluid and was strongly distinguished by teaching, research, and community service [29]. The system, like the former education paradigms, treats students as the same but allows for a mutual learning community.

Additionally, [30], p. no page claims that this third educational landscape was centred on

*...rich, cross-institutional, cross-cultural educational opportunities within which learners themselves play a key role as creators of knowledge artifacts that are shared, and where social networking and social benefits outside the immediate scope of activity play a strong role.*

Also, [29] shared similar views about the state of Education 3.0. They argue that students can be creators of knowledge, which they can then share with society to solve problems. However, distinctions between artefacts, people, and processes are distorted, as are distinctions between space and time. HEI positioning, including policies and strategies, changes to meet the challenges of prospects presented by changes in the world, such as the need to create new products and improve standard of living. In addition, Education 3.0 held much promise for higher education in general. It poses serious challenges to existing universities, including their failure to groom creators of goods and services [29].

Yet, [29] argues that administrative challenges intensify as teaching becomes more and more linked to technology. To offer and share knowledge, e-learning is often used as the technology of utility. Several e-learning platforms such as Moodle, Eagle, and Changamire have been developed and are ready to use. This development led to a dualised teaching and learning approach, that is, a combination of e-learning routines and traditional face-to-face teaching and learning methods [29]. This implies that somehow circumstances forced lecturers at CUT to design a curriculum fit for the virtual mode.

In broad terms, the first, second, and third education paradigms downgraded the academic apprentice to a submissive function whereby the student was treated as an empty slate to be filled with knowhow rather than as a decisive and inventive crisis resolver [28, 31]. The models force differences in stages of mastery among learners and frown at guaranteeing proficiency in education for all. Resultantly, the three generations of education grew irrelevant in the current post-industrial society globally and have been accused of "failing, or passive and unmotivated learners" [31]. This is because technology was used by teachers to enhance the learning process rather than to change how things were done in teaching. Learning is supposed to be individualised, learner centred, made to order, and impressionable so that learners can show mastery of skills and knowledge during and after higher education and training.

Over the years, world problems have become increasingly tense and thus the shortcomings of Education 3.0 led to the development of Education 4.0 [32–34]. Through Education 4.0, students are allowed to learn in solitude with the aid of the Internet. This enables critical and creative thinking as well as societal interaction in inquiry-based learning. Creative thinking concerns thinking beyond the bounds of convention so that learners can solve challenges they face in life [20]. Societal interaction is about how learners involve themselves in teamwork or collaborative skills necessary for the functioning of the communities they live in [35].

In Malaysia, Education 4.0 has been used as the starting point for the revision of the tertiary education curriculum [20]. The Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education tabled the 2015–2025 Malaysia Education Blueprint (MEB) with the intention of aligning the country's education system with global trends. The MEB aims to revamp the Malaysian higher education paradigm with the desire to "balance between both ethics and morality along with knowledge and skills" [6, 20]. It is in the interests of the MEB that students are supposed to carry the country's flag high and understand Malaysia's international relations with other states regionally and overseas. This is one attribute MEB shares with the fifth ontological and epistemological educational approach adopted in Zimbabwe in 2020. It is based on indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) or local heritage with a desire to produce products using resources that are available in the country [36].

On the contrary, several programmes and technologies have been included in the redesigning of the university curriculum in Malaysia. Business communities, both local and international, were invited to webinars, seminars, and workshops that discussed how the country should proceed technologically and industrially [20]. Malaysia held fruitful stakeholder consultations before the adaptation of the fourth education reform. Thus, the reform blueprint was clear and professionally guided by competent process leaders and curriculum review committees. To that end, Education 4.0 in Malaysia has been argued as the future for creative education that responds to the needs and expectations of industry and commerce, where people and equipment align to allow new potential. Similarly, as early as 1980, Zimbabwe's first education and culture minister, Dzingai Mutumbuka, argued that the post-independence government's dependence syndrome on theory-based education policy inherited from the Rhodesian government was a time bomb and that there was an urgent need to do away with it. The minister left the post, but his legacy continued into the 1990s. The Chetsanga Report of 1995 and the Presidential Commission into Education and Training (CIET), also known as the Nziramasanga Commission (NC) of 1999, were sanctioned by the government. The two considerations became keynote efforts meant to revolutionise the country's post-independence Western-based education system. By then or at that time, both explorations concluded that Zimbabwean education should be driven towards the production of goods and services. Some of Zimbabwe's neighbours, such as Zambia and Malawi, as well as a few other Southern African countries, have already adopted the NC recommendations and found them to be fruitful. However, Zimbabwe, as the think tank of noble high-end higher education skills, has so far refused to accept NC's recommendations. This anomaly has seen the country's economy fall. The effects forced the government in 2020 to fast track the tertiary and higher education sector teaching, training, and learning from Education 3.0 to Education 5.0. However, the development coincided with the need to limit or abolish face-to-face teaching and learning and replace it with online means and ways, whether synchronous or asynchronous. Thus, this study seeks to establish the relevance of the Education 5.0 policy in Zimbabwe. It also investigates the importance of VLEs in teaching and learning in higher education graduate programmes.
