Basic education reform in Mozambique : the policy of curriculum change and the practices at Marrere teachers college

Abstract

Mozambique embarked on major curriculum reforms of basic education at the start of the 21st century. This study focuses on the implementation of these education policies at Marrere Teachers’ Training College. It is guided by the following questions: How has Marrere Teachers’ Training College as an institution responded to the new government initiatives? What has changed and what has remained the same at Marrere? Why? What are the perceptions, beliefs and attitudes of lecturers and administrators regarding the new policies? What teaching strategies and practices are used in classrooms? How do lecturers teach? How are students assessed? What are the educational challenges facing the College? How can its practices be improved? I have chosen a qualitative case study design in order to build a holistic picture of teaching and learning in a natural setting. Marrere College was chosen because it was among the first teacher training institutions to introduce the reforms and because a special programme, the Osuwela Project, introduced prior to the introduction of the new curriculum, included several of the reform’s innovations. Marrere College has been experimenting with the implementation of curriculum change for longer than most of the other colleges in the country. Among the emerging findings is that lecturers have a superficial understanding of interdisciplinary pedagogies, especially in the social sciences, and few of them have applied these pedagogies in classrooms. On the other hand, the reforms seem to have had a deeper impact on their advocacy of learner-centred teaching strategies, although question-and-answer practices continue to be widely used. The College has also gone a long way in changing the organisation of subjects and in implementing new methods of assessment. While there has been in-service training of lecturers, there are inadequate resources and follow-up support by the Ministry of Education. The literature that informs this study is the scholarship on educational change, particularly the relationship between policy and practice. There are many international studies that have attempted to understand these problems over the last thirty years, but no such studies on teacher training in Mozambique. This study seeks to contribute to our understanding of the modalities of educational change in resource-poor contexts. It also hopes to make a contribution to the implementation of the basic education policies by the Mozambican Ministry of Education and to the practices of lecturers and administrators at Marrere and other colleges.