Empower our teachers to deliver on promise of curriculum reforms

Not before time, lots of brains have been working flat out on overhauling Kenya’s education curriculum, and recently I attended a meeting co-hosted by the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) and Kenya Private Sector Alliance, at which the leaders of KICD laid out the framework for the proposed new approach.

Before I offer you the highlights, let me rush to reveal my reactions as the presentations unfolded: The framework is terrific, wonderful, marvelous! It’s really been thought through; it has taken full advantage of global and local best practice; and I was mightily impressed.

The curriculum has borne in mind the ideals contained within the Constitution, Vision 2030 and Sustainable Development Goal No. 4 (“Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all). And it has defined an excellent vision,
“Nurturing every learner’s potential”, along with an equally on-target mission: “To produce an engaged, empowered and ethical citizen, contributing to make a socially, economically and politically stable society.”

The mission is supported by three pillars, and I was happy to see that the first of these is values, including those drawn from the Constitution.

“Theoretical Approaches” comes next, and I encourage you to Google each of the four listed, as I did: Instructional Design Theory; Vygotsky’s Social-Cultural Theory; Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory; and Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development. Sounds mind-boggling? So be it.

We’re not done though, for after the theories come the principles that guided the reform: opportunity, excellence, diversity, inclusion, parental empowerment and engagement, community service learning, and differentiated curriculum and learning.

Then we heard about the core competencies (this is key – the move from focusing merely on content to building competency): communication and collaboration, critical thinking and problem solving, imagination and creativity, citizenship, digital literacy, learning to learn and efficacy.

Finally, and no less impressively, comes the development of what are called “pertinent and contemporary issues.”

The first of these is citizenship, which comprises peace education, integrity, ethnic and racial relations, social cohesion, patriotism and good governance, child’s rights, child care and protection, and gender issues in education.

Then there’s health education, covering HIV and Aids education, alcohol and drug abuse prevention, life style diseases, personal hygiene, and common communicable and chronic diseases.

Life skills and values are next, including moral education, human sexuality and family life. This is followed by “education for sustainable development”: environmental education, disaster risk reduction, safety and security education (small arms, human trafficking), financial literacy, poverty eradication, and countering terrorism, extreme violence and radicalisation.

Then “non-formal programmes”: guidance services, career guidance, counselling services, peer education, mentorship, learning to live together, clubs and societies, and sports and games. And finally community service learning and community involvement, and parental empowerment and engagement.

Phew! What an exhilarating and comprehensive list, derived as a result of research both in best practice countries elsewhere and locally, including among international schools in Kenya.

Along with the excitement though comes a major worry: How will we transform our teachers to handle it all – even a fraction of it? What a daunting challenge!

The KICD has defined three components to meet this challenge. The first is pre-service training, upgrading the present certificate requirement to a diploma level. Then there’s capacity building for those already in the field, to acclimatise them to the shift from content to competency.

And thirdly there’s a big focus on continuing professional development, including school-based training. Pilot schemes are planned, with a phased roll-out to follow.

(I must mention here that Alice Nderitu’s workbook ‘‘Beyond Ethnicism’’ – reviewed by David Aduda in the Daily Nation recently – does a brilliant job of showing traditional chalk-and-talk teachers how to become effective facilitators, a key requirement of the new style of teaching and learning. The book guides head-teachers to create healthy communities within and around their schools, and it should become the basis for the needed teacher and head-teacher coaching.)

I was happy to learn that the unions are on board with the proposed curriculum framework. They’re on the National Steering Committee that has been formed to drive the process, and they have made supporting comments about it.

This came as a pleasant surprise to me, given that teachers the world over are likely to resist anything that takes them beyond their existing comfort zones.

Meanwhile however, as always the dominant focus of the teachers’ unions seems to be on maximising the wages of their members. Yes, we must attract more of the brightest and the best to become teachers; and yes we must therefore pay them well.

We must get away from the thought that “if you can’t do, teach”, and this must be in the context of providing value for money for our children, not to mention that it implies an actualisation of the dreaded “P” word, productivity.

We heard and shared so much more that morning, about increasing transition and retention rates; building technical and vocational skills and changing the whole perception of their significance and dignity; ICT as a core learning tool, all the way from the pre-primary level; catering for children with special needs; the (somewhat controversial) use of vernacular languages; transforming teacher training colleges; the move from 8-4-4; ongoing engagement with the private sector – the consumers of the output; the need for ongoing flexibility as new challenges and opportunities emerge; and how to finance the reform initiative.

When at the beginning of the meeting I heard that the KICD had carried out a thorough needs analysis I wondered if the “wants” expressed would indeed match the contemporary “needs” as I perceived them.

But the more I heard the more convinced I became they did. Now, ladies and gentlemen, to the elephant in the room: Bringing the teachers and headteachers to the party and making the reform deliver on its promise.

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