Implementing outcome-based education and student-centered learning in Afghan public universities: the current practices and challenges

Rahmatullah Katawazai

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e07076

Abstract

Outcome-based Education is currently of much potential in the global educational landscape. In recent years, implementing outcome-based education and student-centered learning have also been prioritized at the policy level of the Ministry of Higher Education of Afghanistan. Thus, the current study aimed to investigate the attitudes of Afghan lecturers towards the recent paradigm shift in the educational system of Afghanistan. The researcher employed a mixed-method approach to collect both quantitative and qualitative data. The researcher used a questionnaire responded by 120 lecturers and interviewed 7 outcome-based education experts and Afghan lecturers. The quantitative findings reveal that teachers have positive attitudes towards outcome-based education, and they are ready and willing to implement the approach by mentioning some key challenges. However, the results also show that implementing this approach is currently at a low level of practice. The qualitative findings reveal that; content-based curriculum, policies of teaching, learning, and assessment, the lack of basic infrastructure and info-structure, lack of facilities, and teachers’ workload are among the key challenges towards implementing this approach. The results will help the Ministry of Higher Education and Higher Education Development Program to develop applicable policies and to emphasize this recent paradigm shift in the future within addressing the key challenges to ensure the efficacy during implementation. It will also help lecturers to have an overall picture of outcome-based education and student-centered learning. Likewise, it will open a window for researchers to investigate this potential topic in more in-depth details in the higher education system of Afghanistan.

Highlights

Afghanistan is one of the conflict-affected countries for the last four decades
The focus of the current study is to look into this recent educational trend in the Afghan context and the current study is looking to find out appropriate answers for the following research questions: 1) What are the attitudes of Afghan lecturers towards outcome-based education and student-centered learning?
More workshops and training need to be organized in order for the teachers to understand the philosophy of Outcome-Based Education and Student-centered Learning (OBE-SCL) as this is supported by the findings of Alimyar (2020), who explored the efficacy of the training workshops for the Afghan lecturers

Summary

Introduction

The country has had continuous conflicts in internal and external matters in ethnic, tribal, and religious issues internally and the interference of the neighboring, regional, and some of the global countries have further increased the violence and kept the country to be far away from the ongoing developments of 21st century in many fields, in terms of quality education. For this reason, politically, economically, and socially, the country suffered through many of the educational uncertainties as well including a very low rate of literacy and education in the country. The Ministry of Education (MoE) is committed to doing well and some of the improvements regarding the educational policies, curriculum framework for primary and secondary education and providing services about the infrastructure, the increasing number of teachers and students are among the hopeful matters MoE achieved after 2001 with the support of international donors and NGOs

Objectives

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Results

Discussion

Conclusion