Implementing a new History curriculum: the Zimbabwean experience

Abstract

The implementation of a new Ordinary History curriculum in Zimbabwe is the government’s educational flagship to effect transformational ideas of equality, freedom, national consciousness, and improved learning outcomes. However, curriculum implementation is a complex activity fraught with uncertainty. International curriculum specialists agree that large-scale innovations such as the new History curriculum are implementation dominant, and implementation, in turn, is user dominant. Teachers as frontline users of the new History curriculum are vital to its successful implementation as teaching is a critical part of implementing a curriculum (Hunkins and Ornstein 2016, p. 223). The new History curriculum requires teachers to make a paradigm shift. Among others, teachers are required to change the way they think about the new History curriculum (beliefs), their teaching methods and materials, their way of organizing the classroom, and of assessing students. The study evaluated teacher use or delivery of the new Ordinary Level History curriculum. Four innovation profiles on each curriculum dimension (rationale, teaching strategies and classroom organization, teaching materials, and assessment) were developed. Utilizing these four innovation profiles, the actual practice of teachers were plotted leading to the development of user profiles for each teacher in each curriculum dimension. Overall, the study found out that the new Ordinary Level History curriculum is not being implemented fully as intended. Teaching strategies and classroom organization appear to present the greatest challenge for teachers. Teachers are adapting the new History curriculum to suit their traditional way of teaching and in some instances to accommodate contextual realities.