Introducing my new book
Curriculum Coverage At This Time of Covid-19: A concern and a suggestion.
It is simply unimaginable that since March 2020, due to the outbreak of Covid-19, many students have not had the privilege of seeing the four walls of the classroom nor to learn virtually like their counterparts in the Western world ! Worse still, the ASUU strike in Nigeria added to the Covid factor by multiplying the number of weeks many students had to stay at home. This article is simply to advise teachers to avoid the worst possible scenario that Covid-19 and the ASUU strike could orchestrate.
2020 has been a disastrous year for students and educational institutions across many nations, especially in developing countries. Covid-19 with all its restrictions that led to the closure of many institutions of higher learning has been a major setback to many universities due to their inability to implement virtual learning and to complete basic curriculum requirements. This is on one hand, due to inadequate preparation and on the other hand due to inadequate technological infrastructure.
At this point in Jan 2021, as many universities resume again, amid the fear of a second lockdown due to the resurge of the Covid-19 and it’s recently found variant, many teachers are worrying about curriculum decisions given all that was not covered during the lockdown. Two possible options come to mind as a solution to this. One is to ignore what was not covered and implement a new curriculum. The second is to crash the programs in a few weeks and move on to a new curriculum. Neither of these solutions is a preferred possible solution. The first option will create a half-baked knowledge that is more deadly than the coronavirus. This is because courses are designed in a step-by-step format to facilitate comprehension and learning. This implies that a student has to first learn the principles before their application. Skipping the principles to go into the application will result in a wrong application. The second option,which is to crash the course might seem plausible, but in the long run, it will have the same resultant effect as the first, since many students cannot learn under a marathon approach. I seriously dislike crashing programs, particularly when you are being launched into a new course for which you don’t already have the fundamentals. Teachers should avoid a mechanical approach to teaching solely to cover the curriculum.
It is lamentable that in the bid to salvage time, many council exams and school certificate exams in Nigeria were conducted in 2020 without covering the basic curriculum and without preparing students adequately for the exams. The candidates sat for these exams after months of being at home without lectures due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Examination malpractice, unfortunately, was greatly encouraged because of the circumstance of inadequate preparation. This kind of situation must never be allowed to reoccur if we value the integrity of the Nigerian educational system.
Basic curriculum decision is an area into which curriculum reviewers should take a deep look because Covid-19 has exposed inadequacies in many educational systems. Many institutions’ curricula were not designed to be implemented via a virtual learning medium. Therefore, a serious need to critically revisit most university and secondary curricula, as well as how to cover a curriculum must be addressed. The trajectory of Covid-19 offers no hope, as yet, of complete eradication in the foreseeable future.
In the context of Covid-19, Labby Ramrathan (2020) asks this question which is based on a fundamental Spencerian curriculum (Spencer 1984). “What knowledge is most worthwhile?” Ramrathan recommends a move beyond the notion of education for all and to strive for education that is relevant at both local and global levels. This further leads to the questions of what needs to be taught and what needs to be learned within a changed Covid-19 context?. Jansen (2020) suggested seven steps to be taken and this included “scrapping the academic year even if the curriculum is trimmed down”. His suggestion does imply a review of the curriculum, but also a mechanistic reduction of the content of the curriculum that can be covered within the remaining part of the academic year. Another of his suggestions includes promoting students in all grades (1-11) to the next class for organizational reasons. He also suggests that universities start weeks earlier to bridge the gap, since the lockdown has already trimmed the curriculum to be completed during the past academic year. Another Jansen idea is to “abandon all continuous assessment marks”, as he believes that these are “not continuous” in nature. I do not subscribe to this idea because assessments are necessary for evaluating the competence of each student and the eligibility for promotion to new classes. A suggestion from Jansen with which I am in strong agreement is to eliminate June and September holidays and to provide psychological support to students and teachers. Also I found his following suggestion very insightful as a way of covering the curriculum without leaving out any important area in the curriculum to be taught. Here teachers must adjust the curriculum to teach what is needed to be taught. Then whatever might not be essential, students can be asked to cover outside of class on their own. These can be graded or ungraded assignments.
Skipping most holidays and breaks will be very helpful because timing is crucial in educational institutions and many might suffer financial problems if they don’t meet deadlines, such as admissions’ deadlines. This is why it is necessary at this time to make adjustments in curricula while preserving the integrity of learning. The benefits of this last suggestion outweigh whatever negative consequences it might pose. It is advisable to teach and learn under stable conditions rather than to skip or crash courses. Lecturers should avoid rushing and teach diligently to give the best to their students. Learning is an exercise that engages the mind and the entire person. When the emphasis is put on finishing or covering the curriculum without paying attention to the actual learning process and learning outcomes, then the teacher ends up graduating half-baked students with insufficient technical or theoretical grounding in the subject.
Important questions that must be addressed at this juncture are, how is the Ministry of Education developing a plan to recover the missed school months? What measures and infrastructures are being put into place to transition to virtual learning as Covid-19 is still here with us? There is a need for well planned interventions that aim at countering the threat of not adequately covering the curriculum due to the time lost. On this issue, Labby Ramrathan points out, “The recovery plan should be core and responsive, and located within a curriculum space with the focus on relevant learning that allows for a progression into the next grade level of schooling and core learning that should emanate from the opportunities of being exposed to the Covid-19 pandemic.” It is urgently needed to shift the focus on school education from “education for all” to “education for relevance.”
References
Jansen, J. (2020, April 9). Let’s face the facts, the 2020 school year is lost. So what to do?
Ramrathan, L. School curriculum in South Africa in the Covid-19 context: An opportunity for education for relevance. Prospects (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-020-09490-1
Spencer, H. (1884). What knowledge is of most worth? New York, NY: John B. Alden.
