Inclusion of Cultural Elements in Primary School Curriculum: A Comparative Study of Government and Private Primary Schools in Addis Ababa
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2016-11
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
AAU
Abstract
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.