Curriculum reform challenges in Cameroon secondary education: Perspectives of history teachers
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This research investigates the challenges of educational and curriculum reforms in Cameroon, a bilingual country with two colonially inherited educational systems (Anglophone and Francophone). Despite the reunification of both territories in 1961, the country still runs on two colonially inherited curricula (British and French). All educational reform efforts aimed mainly at harmonizing the two subsystems continue to pose significant challenges. While the Francophone majority subsystem is perceived as attempting to dominate or replace the Anglophone minority subsystem, the minority Anglophone subsystem is perceived to be resistant to embracing curriculum reforms aimed at harmonizing the curriculum in the country. In light of this impasse, there has been no focus on decolonizing both colonially inherited curricula and inclusively constructing a decolonized Cameroon-centric curriculum that is Cameroonian in content and addresses Cameroonian needs, realities and challenges. The challenges described above have resulted in other problems of national unity, peace, marginalization, unemployment, inequalities, social injustice, and non-inclusive governance.Building on theories of decolonization, historical consciousness, discourse theory and employing drawing as a Participatory Visual Methodology (PVM), this study investigates the impact of the presence of two colonially- inherited curricula in Cameroon on the ongoing curriculum reform efforts and the resultant challenges to dealing with two colonially inherited curricula through the perspectives of 25 male and female history teachers from both subsystems. The main objective of this study is to gain insights and prospects for a vision of creating a decolonized Cameroon-centric history/citizenship curriculum. Further to this, the participants and the researcher explore the potential changes that a common decolonized Cameroon-centric history/citizenship curriculum could make in Cameroon. Finally, this research also explores the strategies of history teaching that are feasible in the classroom to promote a decolonized mindset that potentially fosters Cameroon's educational needs and addresses the challenges that result from using two colonially oriented curriculums in the same country. Participants in this research were twenty-five history/citizenship education teachers, men and women recruited from both the Francophone and Anglophone subsystems of education in Cameroon. The participatory research workshops were held in Buea and Douala in Cameroon in March/April 2024The findings of this research reveal that running on two colonially inherited curricula in Cameroon comes with significant challenges. Having a common decolonized, Cameroon-centric curriculum presents fewer challenges and greater benefits for Cameroon. This research also devises strategies for history teaching that are feasible in the classroom to promote a decolonized mindset, potentially addressing Cameroon's educational needs, challenges, or problems
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.020 | 0.007 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".