From big ideas to small practice

Competency-based curricula in low-resource, centralised education systems

Abstract

For some time now, education systems in many countries of the Global South and elsewhere have pursued competency-based curriculum reforms. The appeal of competencies in such contexts seems to lie mainly in a yearning to move away from rote-teaching towards membership of what might be called a ‘21^st century education club’, in which thinking is prioritised over recall and skills lead to employment. However, the expectations of competency-based curricula are often more ambitious than any system can cope with, let alone systems constrained by limited resources and especially where textbooks – the core of classroom activities in education systems of the Global South – have not been repurposed to support new pedagogical approaches. This paper seeks to identify the elements of what many education systems might describe as important in moving towards a competency-based curriculum and analyses the competency-based curricula of two countries, Kenya and Ghana. It finds that the subject syllabuses, the hinge-point for textbook writers, provide little guidance as to how those writers, and therefore the teachers who use the textbooks, might reflect and support new pedagogical approaches. This lack of syllabus-level signage in a textbook-driven system is therefore likely to impede pedagogical change. The paper recommends that curriculum reformers identify contextually appropriate pedagogical innovations by anticipating the needs of syllabus and textbook developers, and thereby the classroom teachers on whom the reforms depend for success.