Chapter 6: Concluding remarks
6.3 Main findings
6.3.3 Performance of foreign consultants
6.3.3.3 Value added by consultants to Lesotho curriculum design
Consultants were engaged to assist curriculum specialists to design the curriculum. The analysis of roles and responsibilities of curriculum specialists against the terms of reference for consultants in chapter 5, table 5.2, reveals that all the work consultants were doing, was exactly the same as that of curriculum specialists except the consultancy exit report. To explain this further, I present the expected deliverables of consultants as specified in the TORs for both assignments (NCDC, 2011; NCDC, 2013) below. The last column shows how the task is related to the duties of curriculum specialists:
The expected deliverables for foreign consultants and curriculum specialists are almost the same.
This means foreign consultants were doing curriculum specialists’ work. This is not a surprising outcome because, as per description, foreign consultants were engaged to assist curriculum specialists. The only unfortunate outcome is that the exercise does not seem to be economically
sensible since two groups of people are paid to do one job. To remedy the situation, there are two options, either:
The curriculum of Lesotho is designed and developed by foreign consultants and the idea of curriculum specialists be phased out. After the consultants have finished curriculum design, the inspectors can do the work of curriculum monitoring;
The government should employ well qualified curriculum specialists and curriculum specialists should be capacitated in such a way that they will be able to perform tasks of curriculum design and development without the assistance of foreign consultants.
b) Value added by consultants to the curriculum (i) Structural organisation of curriculum
One of the challenges of curriculum specialists in designing and developing the curriculum of Lesotho was to organise the integrated primary curriculum. The curriculum specialists admitted that they were unable to interpret the curriculum and assessment policy framework in terms of organising the integrated primary curriculum and this is one of the problems that led to the engagement of foreign consultants.
Consultant 2 claims to have assisted curriculum specialists to organise and structure the new integrated primary curriculum Grade 4. The comparison of the two curricula (Old standard 4 science syllabus and new Grade 4 integrated curriculum) shows that the structuring of the new integrated primary curriculum Grade 4 did not really require the assistance of a consultant. As I have discussed these in chapter 5, section 5.7.3, Table 7.3 below illustrates similarities and differences between the primary science syllabus standard 4 and the integrated primary curriculum Grade 4.
There is not much difference in structural organisation of the standard 4 primary science syllabus and the integrated primary curriculum Grade 4. The differences and similarities are shown in table 6.3. There are not any special additions and value that would require the services of a foreign consultant. The differences can be viewed as improvements on the structure of the old primary syllabus. These could have been done by the curriculum specialists especially since the changes are given in the curriculum and assessment policy framework (MOET, 2009).
(ii) Organisation of learning outcomes in both curricula
As mentioned earlier, consultants claim to have trained curriculum specialists on formulating learning outcomes and assessment criteria. A more detailed comparison on learning outcomes of both curricula follows. This is inspired by the fact that the curriculum and assessment policy framework describes the new integrated primary curriculum as more contextually relevant and linking it with real life problems (MOET, 2009). The researcher decided to use learning outcomes in both documents as learning outcomes show the type of product that will be produced by the curriculum. This is because when teachers teach, they use learning outcomes to
develop instructional packages. Similarly, when assessors set examinations, they use learning outcomes. I selected learning outcomes in the standard 4 primary science syllabus from the science topic called “senses”. Those in the second column of table 6.4 are for the integrated primary curriculum Grade 4 and are science related learning outcomes selected from “unit 2:
Health and Safety” since there were very few learning outcomes that are related to science in unit1.
As stated in the curriculum and assessment policy framework (2009), the standard 4 primary science syllabus is “compartmentalised subject-based” employing teacher-dominated teaching methods. This can be observed in the learning outcomes. Similarly, the analysis of learning outcomes shows that the integrated primary curriculum Grade 4 learning outcomes are also organised into discrete subjects rather than dissolving subject boundaries (Raselimo and Mahao, 2015). They portray an observable combination of discrete elements from different subjects and some of them requesting learners to acquire knowledge rather than to produce knowledge. For example, “state the effects of natural hazards on people’s lives, identify causes of accidents at school”.
In the integrated curriculum of Grade 4, curriculum specialists, with the assistance from foreign consultants, have used action verbs that look for knowledge acquisition rather than the learner- centred epistemologies advocated by the policy framework. This is one of the threats prophesied by Raselimo and Mahao (2015 p.7) that the contradiction in the use of language may confuse curriculum developers “in designing teaching and learning programmes such that it poses a threat for successful implementation of the policy at the level of classroom practice”. This could be viewed as a weakness of the policy framework rather than the consultant’s weakness since the consultant was assisting the specialists to interpret and implement the policy.