{"id":98492,"date":"2020-01-31T15:34:22","date_gmt":"2020-01-31T22:34:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=98492"},"modified":"2020-01-31T15:34:22","modified_gmt":"2020-01-31T22:34:22","slug":"curriculum-and-teaching-reforms-essential-to-sri-lanka-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/01\/31\/curriculum-and-teaching-reforms-essential-to-sri-lanka-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"CURRICULUM AND TEACHING REFORMS ESSENTIAL TO SRI LANKA PART 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

UNESCO\ndefined curriculum is an organized education plan and curriculum in education\nin Sri Lanka has not become an education plan that leads kids to achieve future\nsuccess and the national curriculum documents have not organized as an\neducation plan. The weakness in curriculum in schools in Sri Lanka is that\neducational curriculum in all contexts has not carefully designed plan with\neducation of students. When I was in secondary context, I found that some\nschools ignored teaching certain topics and the methods used were primitive\nthan requirement of the era. A plan should have broader aims, objectives,\nspecific objectives and the assessment to reflect the achievement of outcomes,\nhowever, it is not successfully working in the education system of Sri Lanka. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\nis difficult to observe curriculum in schools, TVET systems and universities\nhave organized accordance the definition of UNESCO, and presented in terms of\nan accepted way as a national curriculum document, which clearly expresses the\naccepted concept such as outcome-based or cognitive strategies.  Curriculum developers may have selected the\nnecessary area of contents, but the curriculum has not developed organizing the\nprograms with essential characteristics and the way of teachers to adapt to the\nmethod and to assess students in support of the method. In this environment,\nteachers have a predicament using appropriate teaching strategies and student\nassessment.  In this background tuition\nmasters, who never obtained proper teaching and training qualifications have\nbecome heroes of students and parents must spend large sum of money for tuition\nmasters while the government paying salaries and other benefits to teachers who\ndo not play the role expected by stakeholders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nphilosophy of president Rajapaksa on education and training has already\npresented and adapting to the philosophy in the country has many impediments\nand substages as many people including school teachers, tertiary educators,\ntuition masters and, politicians directly or indirectly work against the\nphilosophy and resist the reforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Curriculum\nand relevant teaching methods need to be changed according to aims of the\nchanges, inventions, practices in the world. It needs wider consultation and\ncontinuous debate like in the western countries and in this debate desires of\nstakeholders cannot be ignored and the outcome generation from the education of\nstudents in primary and secondary contexts should be given the priority.  When talks about outcomes generation, the\nbest place to demonstrate outcomes are the schools that should have a good\nenvironment for the purpose and some schools and teachers use the results of\ntuition masters\u2019 efforts as their achievements. \ntuition masters have good resources environment and resources; however,\nit is seen that kids are persuading tuition masters than attaching to schools\nand using the resources of schools. Why this situation created in the country?\nMany reasons contributed to this situation. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nfirst contributory factor is the department of education has not trained\nteachers to use resources and implement the curriculum in schools to achieve\neducational outcomes, and the inspection and supervision process of the\neducation department is weaker to assess the practical implementation of\ncurriculum and rate teachers and teaching from the lowest level of education,\nwhich is the classroom.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\neducation department has disappointed stakeholders without considering the\nexpectations of stakeholders and allowing the promotion of tuition outside the\nschools, which an expensive method of gaining education despite the existing\nfree education.  Tuition teachers were\ntrained and tuition places have no resources like in schools, in such an\nenvironment why students attract tuition places because curriculum has not\nfocused to generates outcomes (including theoretical, practical and\nqualitative), and schools have failed to achieve the expectation of\nstakeholders. The government spends money but the expected outcomes have not\nbeen generated by the education policy spending money.  Investigation to the problem should be a part\nof the curriculum and teaching reforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nsecond contributory factor is education assessment, which concerns on\ncurriculum and teaching and they should base on the result generation from\neducation. Outcomes are a combination of knowledge, practice, quality, values\nand many matters.  Students have a\nmisguided perception that it they achieve knowledge outcomes at the exams it\nwould be the achievement of stakeholders. It is an entirely misconception given\nto stakeholders\u2019 mind.  This wrong\nperception must be changed by curriculum and teaching reforms and the\nachievement of outcomes in a broader area should be designed to focus on\neducation results. The concentration of the achievement of outcomes will be\nsupported to achieve expected results from education and to change the society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While\nconcentrating on policy developments in education reforms in early childhood,\nprimary and secondary contexts, TVET contexts should be developed competency\nachievement of students, which relates to knowledge, skills, quality, values,\nadaptability to work environment and selected area of criteria.  Another significant point is that education\npolicy makers should concentrate teaching from primary context a half of\nsubject in Sinhala or Tamil medium and the other half in English medium, which\npromote competency in two languages. Knowledge of English has become a major\nreason to polarisation of society. Education should support to eliminate\nfallacious attitudes from the society. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

TVET\ncurriculum needs focusing on knowledge of the subject matter or trade area,\nskills in the application of trade competency, practice in the application of\nvalue and the ability to converse in Sinhala, English and any other\ninternational language such as German, French, Mandarin, Arabic, Korean or any\nother.  When organizing the curriculum\nfor a broader area of subject and training for the achievement of competencies,\nthere wouldn’t be unemployment in the country as such a trained trade personnel\nhave demand in anywhere in the world. \nHowever, curriculum and teaching in TVET context have not organized in\nthe international qualification framework and the education policy makers need\nto consider offering TVET qualifications on international framework.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Certificate\n1 and 2 level could offer to grade 10 and 12 students and if they do not\nachieve university entrance, they can continue TVET education in TVET\ninstitutions and after an advance diploma they can enter to the university and\nto obtain a degree within two years, otherwise they can engaged in workplaces\nas skilled trade personnel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\nis no doubt that education reforms in school contexts and TVET context have\nlots to do and a country with a small population reforms could be easily\nimplemented with lesser costs.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS UNESCO defined curriculum is an organized education plan and curriculum in education in Sri Lanka has not become an education plan that leads kids to achieve future success and the national curriculum documents have not organized as an education plan. The weakness in curriculum in schools in Sri Lanka is that educational […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-edward-theophilus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}