The conditions for digital integration: A comparative case study of three TVET colleges in KwaZulu-Natal

Abstract

Digital technology has spread unevenly through South Africa’s public technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges. This article examines what determines whether the technology available to a college becomes part of everyday teaching. It reports on a comparative study of three public TVET colleges in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), ranging from a well-connected urban college to a dispersed rural college, drawing on interviews with managers, institutional documents and three complementary theoretical perspectives. The analysis identifies three conditions that must be secured together: technical reliability, institutional ownership and curricular compulsion. The cases do not support a fixed sequence in which these conditions develop; instead, each college was constrained by a different condition. Learner access remained a separate but interacting material constraint. The comparison therefore supports a diagnostic approach that identifies which condition remains insecure in a particular college, what institutional action could secure it, and where wider public provision is required.