A SYSTEMATIC INVESTIGATION INTO THE CHALLENGES OF CURRICULUM IMPLEMENTATION IN NIGERIA (EDUCATION PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)
CHAPTER ONE
- INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Curriculum implementation entails putting into practice the officially prescribed courses of study, syllabuses and subjects. The process involves helping the learner to acquire knowledge or experience. It is vital to note that curriculum implementation cannot take place as the learner acquires the planned or intended experiences, knowledge, skills, ideas and attitudes that are aimed at enabling the same learner to function effectively in a society. Curriculum is the way content is designed and developed. The process includes the structure, organization, and balance of the materials. Curriculum implementation therefore refers to how the planned or officially designed course of study is translated by the teacher into syllabuses, schemes of work and lessons to be delivered to learners. It was appropriately accused of being jargon-ridden and inaccessible in its discourse. Its procedures for designing learning programmes were complex and sophisticated. This was partly due to poorly and over-hasty introduction of the new curriculum into schools, without teachers being sufficiently prepared for outcomes-based pedagogy, including continuous assessment.
Teachers went through in-service training to equip them but even this was inadequate. Because of the lack of capacity in the provinces in most schools to implement major changes as proposed, the government scaled down its plans to implement the new curriculum to Grade 1 from the outset. Because of these flaws and inadequacies, a review committee was established to look at possibilities of refining Curriculum 2005 and this led to 4 the introduction of the National Curriculum Statement (NCS), which was a refined version of outcomes-based education (Christie 1999:279). The implementation of the new curriculum did not merely involve the direct and straightforward application of plans.
It was a dynamic organizational process that was shaped over time by interactions between projects, goals and methods and the institutional setting (Gultig et al 2002:183). However, my observation as an educator is that teachers are still using the traditional method of teaching, where a teacher is regarded as the only source of information and the learners as the vessels that need to be filled with knowledge or learning material. Teachers must be willing to apply the new approach and must be able to articulate their ideas so as to make a meaningful contribution to the new curriculum implementation. Morris (2002:15) indicates that for educators to be self-motivated and committed to their objectives, the mutual relationship between teachers should be promoted, all stakeholders should be involved in planning the curriculum, and there should be opportunities for growth and more innovative and effective teaching methods. What becomes clear is the need for teacher education and for educators to grasp the challenges and opportunities to assert their power over shaping the curriculum process that will produce competent, confident teachers
