Basic Education Improvement Program, BEIP-GTZ [Archives:2008/1136/Education]
The English Curriculum Specialists led by Dr Ayid Sharyan
Basic Education Improvement Program (BEIP) sponsored by the Ministry of Education (MoE) in Yemen held a Training Course on Analyzing the Curriculum & Textbooks for Yemeni Curriculum Specialists from 02-02-2008 to 18-02-2008 at the Higher Teachers' Training Institute, Sana'a. This program was financed by GTZ (the German project for basic education improvement program). The team of trainers from the University Education Development Center (UEDC), Sana'a University was led by UEDC Director, Dr Abdu Al-Mutallis. He outlined the theoretical framework for Curriculum design and analysis during the first five days. The second part (the rest of the period) was led by the respective subject specialists who highlighted the salient principles of analyzing curriculum and textbooks. The objective of this training program was to devise ways and means to combine the two textbooks or parts of every subject in one textbook instead of having two in the first and second term.
This in-service training aimed at enabling the specialists of the basic competencies to activise the curriculum and involve themselves more effectively in the curriculum development committees in the act of revising, evaluating and improving the existing curriculums. The program intended to equip them with the skill and knowledge in planning, analyzing, evaluating, and improving curriculums so as to ensure quality in the public basic education and safeguard continuous development in the context of local, regional and international changes.
The training input dealt at length with concepts, factors and organizations of curriculum, with focus on analyzing it from the perspectives of concepts, styles, producers and the ways to apply them to content analysis in public education.
Dr. Ayid Sharyan, an established author and specialist of repute distributed a questionnaire to a number of teachers of English in Sana'a and analyzed the data to use the result as an authentic input for training. Other members of the team at UEDC, namely Dr Abdu Mutallis, Dr Radman, Dr Abduallah Othman Al-Hamadi, Dr Saud Al-Saab, Dr Ahmed Al-Awami, Dr Abdulsalam Al-Salahi as well as Dr Abdulkareem Al-Nasheri the GOPA Consultant, and the German expert Lise Voss from GTZ brought to bear their experience and expertise to enrich the different training sessions.
About 30 trainees participated from different fields: Islamic Education, Arabic Studies, Social Studies, Science and Math Education, and English Language. The team of English led by Dr Ayid Sharyan consisted of the curriculum specialists such as Ali A. Alnoor, Horya Al_Khalaki, Gazem Awad Al-Qalbi, Hareth Al-Eryani who actively participated in analyzing The Crescent English Course For Yemen- the current textbooks (7, 8 and 9 grades) from the point of view of objectives, content and suggested the approach, activities, and evaluation modalities to prepare specialists for writing instructional materials. The participants focused on:
1. the relationship between the components that should be contained in the curriculum document and the ways to define the relationship between the components and the textbooks constituents, teacher's manual, and standards to evaluate the curriculum document and textbook structure according to specialization,
2. analyzing the curriculum goals across vertical and horizontal dimensions, specifying the relevance of these to the needs of the learners.
3. analyzing the curriculum components (aims, content, activities, evaluation) that are included in a textbook, identifying their relationship with each other as well as their compatibility with curriculum doc.
4. analyzing a unit of a given textbook and determine:
a. the relation of the unit content with the curriculum as a whole.
b. suitability of the unit content to the learners' needs and interest.
c. the suitability of the unit with the other units at the same level.
d. the knowledge input, attitudes, and skills (i.e. competencies) that are included in the unit content and the complimentary structure that precedes and follows the unit.
e. suitability of pictures, graphs, tables, etc to the unit content.
f. variety of assessment methods and their relationship with unit content (aims, content, activities,)
5. designing a map of concepts for a unit in a textbook.
The overall task was very demanding, particularly because it was concerned with curriculum design in a country like Yemen that has its own idiosyncratic teaching and learning situation and in the light of the fact that curriculum is a vast area with the following interlinked components:
I. Goals -what do you want learners to do?
II. Content – what are the necessary activities to achieve your aims?
III. Activities – how to organize these activities to reach your goals?
IV. Evaluation – how do you know that the goals have been achieved?
All these components are in a state of flux and change quite dramatically from time to time to meet the constant changes in developing countries like Yemen. At a point in time in the past, for example, it was enough to look at education as rote learning, recalling information in the exam and retaining whatever was needed. There was no attention given to the expected outcomes and the level of achievement on the completion of the course. The learners were supposed to study what was planned for them and put in the textbook- the only source of learning. The products of such curriculum were learners who were limited in creative and critical thinking. New experiences in life surprised them because they were not trained to adapt themselves to new situations. From this perspective, the currently outcome-based education appears to be more suitable and the need of the hour.
The new trends in curriculum involve learners in the learning process in which learning becomes an organized activity with expected outcomes at the end of the learning experience. It looks at the learner as the pivot of the learning activities where learners' needs are catered for. Curriculum allows learners to discuss, negotiate, solve problems, plan, and take an active role in the learning activity. The training program was, therefore, a laudable endeavor on the part of BEIP-GTZ under the guidance of Dr Abdu Al-Mutallis, University of Sana'a, Mr Gubari, Director of the General Directorate, Curriculum and Guidance Sector of the MoE and the team of experts who have the credentials of improving the current textbook in Yemen to meet the challenges of basic education in the age of globalization.
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