A professor who has dedicated part of his tenure to establishing a relationship between his university in the United States, and one in Kenya, his country of birth, has been awarded the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program.
Dr. David Kimori, an associate professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato, will collaborate with Dr. George Areba of Kisii University in southwestern Kenya to develop a curriculum for training teachers teaching science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in compliance with the East African country’s new competency-based curriculum (CBC).
“We are going to train trainers, that is, university faculty members, and these trainers will train and teach pre-primary and senior secondary school teachers,” Kimori said.
Kimori, whose area of specialty is in physics and chemistry education, said the Carnegie grant would enable him to develop a STEM curriculum for trainers of teachers, which he will begin implementing in the summer of 2025.
Kenya’s education system is undergoing its biggest overhaul since the 1980s, when it switched from the 7-4-2-3 to the 8-4-4 system. The former was a colonial-era system that mandated seven years of primary, four years of secondary, two years of high school, and three years of university education. It was replaced by the latter, which was simplified to eight years of primary, four years of secondary/high school, and four of undergraduate university studies. Critics of the 8-4-4 system argued that the old systems focused so little on teaching practical skills and more on teaching children to memorized information just to pass exams. In 2017, the government rolled out what it said was a competency-based curriculum to focus more on teaching practical skills. Since then, however, parents and teachers have complained that teachers did not receive adequate training to ensure there was a smooth transition.
“CBC is, a good curriculum, but I think the approach it was given is what is now causing problems and this a big challenge,” Kimori said.
He explained that it could have been less overwhelming for teachers if the government had only changed the curriculum but left the 8-4-4 education system intact. He compared what the government did to changing an office computer operating system by simultaneously introducing new software and hardware without training staff.
“And since the teachers were not well prepared on what the CBC should look like, they began passing the burden to parents, who are also now raising sentiments,” Kimori said. “That is why we are embarking on giving teachers the tools and creating a training module which the trainers can use to train teachers to feel much more competent in the classroom.
Speaking by phone from Kenya, Areba said Kisii University, in collaboration with Kimori at Mankato, is trying to fix the problem by developing curricular for training teachers for the new system.
“We are solving a pedagogical problem in the competency-based curriculum, especially on STEM education,” Areba said. “We are aiming to do capacity building on how to approach the teaching of STEM education and competency-based curriculum for the purpose of empowering teachers with skills, knowledge, and competencies on how to teach the same.”
Although Kenya’s education system is centralized, with the Ministry of Education controlling what is taught in K-12 level, Areba said universities and other institutions that train teachers have the freedom to design their own curricula. The Carnegie grant, he said, gave Kisii University the opportunity not only to establish itself as the place where current primary and secondary school teachers go for training on how to effectively teach STEM, but also a resource for professors from other universities in Kenya.
“There is an escalation which is going to take place after developing the training,” said Areba, who specializes in education administration, management, and teaching. “We are going to recommend this training to other universities, especially those that are training the teachers who are going to teach.”
Areba said collaboration with institutions like Minnesota State University, Mankato, which have extensive experience in teaching in areas such as STEM, would be important as Kisii University and others in Kenya seek to build capacity for their staff and students.
The latest collaboration between Kisii University and Minnesota State University, Mankato, isn’t the first one. In 2019, the two universities signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to collaborate in the field of education. But Kimori, who was instrumental in establishing the relationship, said the two institutions couldn’t do much with the MOU because the coronavirus pandemic began later that year. In 2021, Prof. John Akama, who at the time was the vice chancellor of Kisii University, traveled to Mankato to sign a partnership agreement to strengthen the relationship between the two universities. The agreement sought to expand the relationship to include “exchange of students, faculty, and ideas as well as curricular connections.”
“We value our partnership and seek to identify additional areas of potential collaboration to fulfill our mutual mission of bringing opportunity for social mobility, access to educational excellence, and betterment for communities,” said Dr. Brain Martensen, who at the time was the interim provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Mankato.
Now in its eleventh year, the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program is funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and is designed to strengthen ties and develop long-term, mutually beneficial collaborations between universities in Canada and the United States and their counterparts in Africa.
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About Edwin Okong'o - Mshale Contributing Editor
Edwin Okong'o is a Mshale Contributing Editor. Formerly he was the newspaper's editor.
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