Sub-topic: Education Leadership and priorities: responding to local,national and global agendas Capacity building for leadership in curriculum innovation for Integrated Early Childhood Education in Botswana
Early childhood care and education has rapidly developed in response to the Framework for Action following the EFA Dakar (2001) in which priorities were given to young children in disadvantage and the girl child. Countries around the world have responded to the challenge of addressing equitable access and retention in quality care and education system from a rights based aproach to programming. The effectiveness of such aproach lies on the integration of services, given the mandate to the education sector as the leading agency. In this respect, challenges to make this a reality has proven complex, especially in countries of sub-Sahara Africa where leadership in general and in education in particular, is mostly understood as the role of few in position of authority. The Botswana government has called for a consensus building on the benefits of adopting the human rights based integrated aproach to programming: Integrated Early Childhood Development (IECD). Consequently, new policy responses, in terms of an integrated curriculum framework for the care and education of young children (0-6) are being developed in conjunction to a programme to train teachers at pre-service level and to upgrade caregivers and health workers practicing in health and day care centres. This paper reports an action research project to build leadership capacity for curriculum innovation at the Botswana College of Open and Distance Learning (BOCODOL). The college aims to produce a training programme in response to local demands for IECD in line with international policy. The BOCODOL officers engaged in a systematic process of action research through a participatory learning action aproach (PLA). This abstract refers to the initial action research cycle in which 25 participants engaged in deepening understanding, auditing and planning action for leadership skills development for curriculum innovation. The programme was conducted through a series of interactive workshops in which participation; reflections and contributions were encouraged and documented through group work reports and reflective interviews. From the responses of participants several themes are emerging: (i) ownership, (ii) agency, and (iii) reflexivity for building leadership skills. The main focus of the capacity building process was that of re-addressing the issue of power balance, ownership and agency in leadership for curriculum innovation. Participants were used to receive ‘already made new programmes’ and act on its delivery. In this instance the onus was on the participants who will generate and implement the training programme. So far officers felt comfortable with this since they are all very experienced educational trainers. However, dealing with practitioners and professionals from other sectors was challenging to implement the new programme; especially the question of how would they lead and form partnerships for learning. Reflexivity constituted another important element of the process. In this respect participants expressed the lack or minimum reflection done in any process of planning and/or for adopting new courses. The method of learning conversations was adopted in which they spent time to discuss, step back and reflect on process and expected outcomes of the action research process. The first cycle concluded with a detailed action plan for implementation. This process is still under operation and is to be accomplished within a time of two months.
Maria Da Costa
国际会议
北京
英文
1-7
2008-11-11（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）