Chapter 6: Concluding remarks
6.6 Recommendations
6.6.1 Professional staff development at NCDC 6.6.1.1 On the job training
Data reveals that curriculum specialists were not provided with adequate training and the company employed less qualified candidates. As this was confessed by Director-NCDC that
“This used to be the common practice of the Centre (NCDC) to give people short term training and long training, but this has stopped for many years now.” Therefore, if the government of Lesotho is interested in improving the quality of education in the country, it needs to invest in quality curriculum design and development. To do this, the country needs to improve conditions in the National Curriculum Development Centre to attract and employ highly qualified curriculum specialists and train them on the job to assist them to produce quality curriculum programmes at national, school, and classroom levels.
6.6.1.2 Employing qualified candidates
The NCDC should employ eligible candidates according to the specifications outlined in the advertisement of curriculum specialists (Appendix E; NCDC, 2010). According to NCDC (2010), it seems the company is aware of the caliber of employees required at NCDC. I have already discussed the quality of curriculum specialists required in chapter 2, but to remind the reader, I have copied figure 2.2 below and renamed it figure 6.3:
As shown in figure 6.3, the Curriculum Development Centre should employ curriculum specialists with experience:
At school as a learner – who has gone through Lesotho education system as a pupil;
In degree course – who has studied educational courses at degree level;
At school as a teacher – who has taught primary school science in schools;
In community – who knows the language and background of Basotho;
As a curriculum developer – who has developed curriculum at some level either university or college modules, school level or national level;
In short courses – who has attended courses on curriculum design and development;
In post graduate long term courses – who has a post-graduate degree, either Masters’ or PhD degrees;
In curriculum design – who has been involved in designing educational programmes.
6.6.2 Experience of specialists in curriculum 6.6.2.1 Involvement in curriculum activities
Curriculum specialists should be involved in curriculum activities such as curriculum conferences and writing and publishing articles to share curriculum experiences of Lesotho with the whole world.
6.6.2.2 Handling all phases of curriculum development
Curriculum specialists should be involved in the whole process of curriculum development, that is, design and development, dissemination, implementation and evaluation. At the moment, curriculum specialists are only involved in the first two phases, which are design and development, and dissemination. The monitoring of implementation is done by another department (Inspectorate) and evaluation by the Examinations Council of Lesotho (ECol). These means curriculum specialists lack first-hand information about what is happening in schools regarding the curriculum and do not have immediate access to results of evaluation.
6.6.2.3 Study tours
Curriculum specialists should not only read about curriculum systems of other countries, but should be granted the opportunity to visit other curriculum development centres through study tours. This will enable them to experience the curriculum systems and discuss in detail with all spheres of people involved.
6.6.2.4 Provision of adequate physical resources
There should be provision, maintenance, monitoring/inspection and regular inventory of physical resources. Resources include space (offices and furniture), equipment (computers with up-to-date hardware and software), fast internet connections, libraries (with curriculum and assessment literature) and adequate finance to replace and buy new resources.
6.6.3 Framework of epistemological requirements for primary science curriculum specialists
The lessons learned from this study point to the need for primary science curriculum specialists’
professional development programmes in Lesotho in order to deal with curriculum design barriers. This may result in improvement of both knowledge of curriculum and science. The comprehensive knowledge of these areas will develop confidence in science curriculum specialists in doing their jobs. As a summary of the abovementioned recommendations and also, basing myself on the work of Shulman (1987), Barnett (1992), Pinar (2004) and Martin (2008), as reviewed in the literature chapter, I propose a curriculum specialist epistemological improvement framework. Boaduo (2005) observes that Ministry of education (MOE) has not implemented most of the recommendations proposed by the various commissions, assuming that this will be one of the very few that will be implemented, there is high possibility that most of the curriculum design will be done by local curriculum specialists. Foreign consultants will be engaged only on areas that really need their expertise. I suppose that the framework will help primary science curriculum specialists with epistemological confidence to belief in their abilities and hence appreciate assistance from donor consultants. Figure 6.4 is a diagrammatic representation of this framework.
Figure 6.4: Framework of Epistemological requirements for Curriculum specialists Source: Barnett (1992)
As shown in Figure 6.4, the curriculum specialist is at the intersection of the five (5) areas of epistemology. Content epistemology entails knowledge of primary science subject matter and the knowledge of curriculum design and development. This is the type of knowledge I referred to, in this study, as adequacy for assignment. This knowledge is crucial for employment and performance of the primary school science curriculum specialist. It is mostly obtained prior employment through long term courses in different levels of Bed degrees, Masters’ and PhDs.
The knowledge can also be acquired through short term courses once the science curriculum specialist is on the job to supplement some of the skills and competencies.
The second is context epistemology which involves knowledge of local language and language of instruction in teaching and learning. Curriculum specialists need to be acquainted with the culture of the country to enable them to design primary school curriculum relevant to the children of Lesotho. As curriculum specialists need to compare different educational systems of various countries, they also should acquire the historiographies of a number of countries. This type of knowledge is basically acquired through experience not reading or studying. A curriculum specialist who has gone through Lesotho education system as a pupil; who has taught in Lesotho schools and lived in the community with the Basotho nation for at least five years, has a more context knowledge of Lesotho compared to anyone who has not.
Professional epistemology constitutes attitudes and competencies. Curriculum specialists need certain attitudes to acquire this knowledge. These include intrinsic motivation, love for curriculum and science, and love for the job. These attitudes will drive them into competencies of reading more about curriculum, writing and publishing journal articles on curriculum innovations and participation and attendance of conferences related to curriculum.
Structural epistemology is about support systems to help curriculum specialists to perform their work better. These include resources and infrastructure, leadership and management, and welfare of employees.
Lastly, self-epistemology focuses on the knowledge of self. This is what Pinar (1975, p.14) refers to as the knowledge of individual apparently idiosyncratic self. This consists of self- reflection, self-reflexivity, self-actualization, currere, autobiography and self-identity.