Journal of
African Studies and Development

  • Abbreviation: J. Afr. Stud. Dev
  • Language: English
  • ISSN: 2141-2189
  • DOI: 10.5897/JASD
  • Start Year: 2009
  • Published Articles: 238

Full Length Research Paper

Curriculum reform in Zimbabwe: An analysis of early childhood development centers’ state of readiness to embrace the new curriculum

Thelma Dhlomo
  • Thelma Dhlomo
  • Department of Educational Foundations, Faculty of Education, Great Zimbabwe University, Zimbabwe.
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Phylis Mawere
  • Phylis Mawere
  • Early Childhood Department, Faculty of Education and Social Sciences, Reformed Church University, Zimbabwe.
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  •  Received: 28 December 2019
  •  Accepted: 05 February 2020
  •  Published: 31 July 2020

Abstract

The study sought to investigate the readiness of mainstream early childhood development centres to actualize the updated preschool curriculum in Zimbabwe. The curriculum is one of the basic and central components of powerful educating and learning. Curriculum change assumes a significant role in rebranding instructive practices to make them receptive to contemporary national and individual needs. Keeping that in mind, a curriculum review process in Zimbabwe that was initiated in November 2014 culminated in another curriculum whose implementation started in January 2017. In this examination, a subjective structure was utilized. School heads and early childhood development (ECD) teachers who were interviewed were purposively sampled from four centres in mainstream primary schools. Discoveries from the study uncovered that school heads and teachers were putting forth deliberate attempts to concentrate on the new dispensation. Notwithstanding, discoveries additionally uncovered that the ECD teachers and school heads needed satisfactory conceptualisation of the updated curriculum, and resources like textbooks and other fundamental materials explicit to the new curriculum which were not yet set up. The investigation prescribed increasingly decentralized and comprehensive dissemination workshops to explain the origin, segments, and substance of the updated curriculum; as well as progressively vigorous resources activation procedures to address the content of the updated curriculum. 
 
Key words: Updated curriculum, dissemination, implementation, early childhood development, centres, resources.