Browsing by Author "Belete, Belay"

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    Inclusion of Cultural Elements in Primary School Curriculum: A Comparative Study of Government and Private Primary Schools in Addis Ababa
    (AAU, 2016-11) Belete, Belay; Yntiso, Gebre(PhD
    The general objective of this research was to examine the cultural elements among private and government primary school curriculum by considering two schools as cases. Qualitative content analysis was used as a method to identifo the cultural contents in environmental science textbooks. The environmental science textbooks from grades one to four from both government and private were purposefully taken as data sources. It is because environmental science is expected to incorporate cultural issues in first cycle primary school level. In relation to this, the study also examined the implementation of medium of instruction and the role of co-curricular activities in both government and private primary schools for the promotion of culture to enrich the curriculum outside the classroom. In addition to content analysis, students, teachers and school principals in government and private schools and curriculum experts of AAEB reflected their knowledge through interview and FGD. The major results of this study revealed that the government environmental science textbooks from grades one to four reflected cultural elements, i. e. the textbooks have included cultural values, cultural materials, historical heritages and role models. But the grade-four textbook was not found free from some factual errors and gender bias. When we come to the private environmental science textbooks, they do not include these cultural elements with the exception of grade four. Moreover, the collected data show that citizens of the same nation are currently made to learn curricula developed in two different languages (Amharic in government schools and English in private schools). A desirable curriculum should include co-curricular activities. The collected data show two categories of co-curricular activities: clubs and days of special celebrations. In both government and private schools the clubs have been organized based on the AAEB club manual guide. Even though these clubs have cultural elements, they did nothing practical in both schools. From days of special celebrations, the data indicate that the Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Day is prominently and commonly celebrated in both schools. However, practices that are not within the national context such as color day, crazy day, water day, and twins' day are celebrated in private school only. But such practices were not observed in a government school. Thus, both social settings are not uniform in terms of contents, medium of instruction and the ways of promoting culture (with the exception of nations and nationalities day) outside the class. Based on the findings of the study recommendations have been suggested.