Digital Images to the Rescue of Academics as Knowledge Resources for Educating Curriculum Studies Students

Educating is an action of using knowledge to assist students to address their real-world personal needs, generating unique personal skills and values. Digital images, as images that consist of picture elements, have become important resources for sustaining education. A cause of concern is that academics use such images to drive learning for sustainability. The intention is to motivate students thereby, thus enhancing their education. In the process, students must comprehend their unique internal intelligence. As such, this study explores the academics’ usage of digital images to educate curriculum studies students at a university in South Africa. Ten academics were purposively and conveniently sampled for this study. Online reflective activities, focus-group discussions, observations, and semi-structured interviews were used for data collection. A pragmatic paradigm with participatory action research, content analysis, and a natural identity framework were used to frame this study. The findings reveal that academics were able to educate students to understand both large and small pictures of the digital images. The large and small pictures represented performance-based and competence-based curricula. However, it was difficult for the students to apply or link what they experienced by way of the digital images to their curriculum studies and real-world problems until the participatory action research was extended from Phase One to Phase Two. Consequently, this study suggests that the reflection stage of participatory action research is the dominant stage of the education process. Reflection supports students in their quest for understanding their internal intelligence, thus naturally addressing their personal, societal, and professional needs.