Promoting Students’ Awareness for Better Images of the Future: Examination of the Space Accorded in Secondary School Curriculum in Ethiopia
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2024-06
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Images of the future have a strong influence on the behaviors and decision-making of individuals and
groups and are a basis for their actions in the present. However, there is limited empirical research that
shows how young students imagine the future and how school curricula help students construct future
images in the Ethiopian context. This study examined secondary school students’ future-orientation and
future images in relation to personal, national, and global issues. The study also examined the extent
school textbooks contribute to shaping students' images of the future. The study was conducted in five
secondary schools in Oromia, Ethiopia. The study employed a mixed research method. Data were
collected from 443 secondary school (grades 11 and 12) students through questionnaires and content
analysis of textbooks. The quantitative data were analyzed using percentages, means, t-tests, and
ANOVAs. The qualitative data were analyzed using word narration supported by pictures and figures
extracted from the textbooks. The findings of the study show that students’ future orientations were not
well developed. The students had more optimistic future expectations for their own future lives, whereas
they had pessimistic images regarding national (Ethiopia) and global issues and problems. This shows
that students’ spatial awareness is not sufficiently developed to understand the interrelatedness and
interdependence of national and global problems with their own current and future personal lives.
Furthermore, the findings suggest that students’ personal optimistic future expectations decreased at the
critical adolescence age. In addition, the study found that the images of a good (desirable) and a bad
(undesirable) person/citizen represented in the textbooks placed more emphasis on promoting students’
images of the interdependent self (social self) awareness than of the independent self (autonomous self).
The study also revealed that there is some incongruence between images of Ethiopia presented in the
textbooks and images of Ethiopia held by the students. The textbooks mainly narrated Ethiopia as a
country that turned from a dark past, present utopia changes to a bright future, whereas most of the
students had a pessimistic orientation towards the future of Ethiopia. The study indicates that images of
Africa represented in the textbooks could have the potential to cultivate pessimistic dystopian images,
disempowerment, and afropessimistic attitudes among students. In relation to global issues and problems,
the textbooks represented mainly techno-utopian images of the world. The textbooks have limitations in
showing students the negative consequences of technological progress on human health, environmental
degradation, and global warming. The study also indicated that textbooks’ learning activities have the
potential to serve to deepen images of interdependent self (social self) awareness rather than independent
self-consciousness that have the potential to produce conformist individuals who are simply socialized to
the existing status quo rather than create critical thinkers and future change agents. Based on the
findings, it is recommended that the textbooks should be improved based on the principles of futureoriented
education in order to promote students’ desirable images of the future, and empower and
prepare them as future change agents to build a better future.
Keywords: Images of the future; Future orientation; Afropessimism; Techno-utopian;
Dystopian; Utopia; Personal issues; National issues; Global issues
Description
Keywords
Images of the future, Future orientation, Afropessimism, Techno-utopian, Dystopian, Utopia, Personal issues, National issues, Global issues