Assessing the design of integrated curriculum at the upper-basic schools in South-East, Nigeria

Abstract

The design of an integrated curriculum is a careful, sensitive and deliberate act, that requires expertise, because an improperly designed curriculum, will have so many negative ripple effects, with multifaceted problems, for the learners and the immediate society at large. This study assesses the design of integrated curriculum at the upperbasic schools in South-East, Nigeria. Three research questions were raised and two
hypotheses tested. The study adopted a descriptive survey design, in which 300 participants comprising of 240teachers and 60 Ministry of Education workers were drawn from 120 Upper Basic Schools and 3 Ministries of Education. Data were collected using questionnaire and interview schedule and were analyzed using simple percentage and standard deviation, while the hypotheses were tested using chi-square and Pearson’s correlation at 0.05 level of significance. The results show that the designers did not follow the core principles of designing an integrated curriculum in developing the integrated curriculum design; Integrated curriculum design has no significant effect on workload reduction in Upper Basic Schools, and that the level of teachers’ competence for the implementation of the integrated curriculum design were very low. The study concluded that to ensure quality in every curriculum design,
there is great need to follow the right principles. The study made the following recommendations: effort should be made by stakeholders to ensure that experts are involved in every curriculum design of the curriculum; in-service training of teachers and other forms of support should be given pride of place by stakeholders.