Off and On All at Once: Curriculum Reform and Its Challenges in Ethiopia

Abstract

Countries view curriculum reform as an essential and vital step in preparing schools for the 21^st century and a world that is changing quickly. Many developing nations have been reforming their curricula recently in an effort to give pupils the knowledge, abilities, and competencies they will need in the future. Ethiopia is one of the countries mentioned above that totally discard former school curriculum to replace by the new one. Therefore; the aim of this study was to investigate Ethiopian School curriculum reform practice and challenges it faced during implementation. A Descriptive survey design was employed for the study. A total of 125 participants including 5 education experts and 120 school teachers were involved in the study. All participants were selected randomly. An online questionnaire procedure was followed to gather data. Analysis and interpretation was done via simple percentages and graphic representations. Findings reveal that the reform process followed was off and on in which the new curriculum discards the existing one. As everything was made from the scratch, teachers lack of readiness, unavailability of TLM, and problem related to school readiness were seen as major challenges during implementation. I recommend that curriculum reform should be progression and improvement of the existing one. If it is must to change everything in it, making all necessary things ready before the development and implementation is very important.

Keywords: Curriculum, Reform, Challenges, Discarding, Curriculum Implementation

DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/13-14-03

Publication date:August 31^st 2023