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CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT PRACTICES IN ETHIOPIA: THE CASE OF PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHER EDUCATION IN OROMIA REGIONAL STATE &PROTOTYPING LEARNER-CENTERED CURRICULUM FOR GRADE THREE MATHEMATICS IN ETHIOPIA [Abstract ID: 0403-02]
This project is aimed at prototyping a mathematics curriculum for grade 3 students by analyzing the scope, alignment, mathematical technology, integration, learner-centeredness and higher order thinking of the existing curriculum. To address the aim of this project a developmental research approach (Freudenthal, 1991) was chosen as the most suitable approach to investigate the development of a prototypical product. The data were gathered from secondary sources and analyzed by using both quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The methods used in analyzing the data are both descriptive and inferential statistics. The finding of the project depicts that grade three mathematics content includes long and overloaded topics to be covered, and the educational expectations of the Education and Training policy (ETP), Curriculum Framework (CF) and Mathematics Goals (MG) reflect Higher Order Thinking (HOT) that helps students to be better problem solvers in the mathematics subject. The result also shows that the alignment of the educational expectations of ETP, CF and MG with assessments is fragmented and poorly in agreement. Yet, the expectations of mathematics objectives and assessments are fairly aligned with the Lower Order Thinking (LOT) level that marginalizes students from HOT such as critical thinking, problem solving, decision making and creative thinking that show the level of the quality of mathematics curriculum. The integration of the mathematics teaching and learning across other curricula in promoting children’s mathematical understanding is found to be minimal (12%) with no mathematical technology. Moreover, 80.7% of teaching and learning activities were categorized under the LOT level, which inhibit learners from constructing their own meaning (learner-centeredness) so as to solve real-world problems or explore questions with multiple possible outcomes. Thus, based on the findings, the newly developed student-centered mathematics curriculum for grade three was developed and suggested as an alternative prototype form.