Teacher’s Voices Crying in the School Wilderness: Involvement of Secondary School Teachers in Curriculum Development in Zambia

Abstract

In Zambia, curriculum development for primary and secondary schools is done centrally. The Curriculum
Development Centre (CDC), the institution placed with the responsibility of facilitating curriculum development,
claims that the Zambian school curriculum is developed through a consultative and participatory approach through
course and subject panels where teachers and other stakeholders are represented. However, there has been no
empirical evidence to suggest the roles that teachers, who are the major implementers of the same curricular, are
required to play in the development process. This study therefore, sought to establish perceptions of secondary
school teachers on their role in the curriculum development process in Zambia. The concurrent embedded design of
the mixed methods approach was employed with the qualitative approach dominating the study while the quantitative
was used to add detail. Data from secondary school teachers was collected using questionnaires while interview
guides were used for Head teachers. Raw data collected from interviews and questionnaires was analyzed using
themes and descriptive statistics and then arranged into significant patterns so as to easily interpret and understand
the essence of the data. The findings of the study clearly suggested that the majority of secondary school teachers in
Lusaka were willing to participate in the curriculum development process, especially in situational analysis, in the
formulation of educational objectives, in setting up the curriculum project, and in the writing of curriculum materials
such as textbooks. From the study it was concluded that teachers were aware of some of the roles that they could
play in the curriculum development but were not adequately involved in the development process.