Curriculum Implementation Challenges Encountered by Primary School Teachers in Bulawayo Metropolitan Province, Zimbabwe

Abstract

The primary concerns of the study reported on were to establish the challenges primary school teachers encounter in implementing the new curriculum in Bulawayo Metropolitan Province (BMP), Zimbabwe as remedies are sought. The paradigm underpinning the study was interpretivism, utilising a qualitative design. The public schools–in both low and highdensity suburbs–and participants were purposively selected as the study sought depth as opposed to breadth. The data was captured using a semi-structured interview protocol through face-to-face interviews and focus groups. Professional documents were scrutinised and the availability of resources was observed using a semi-structured observation checklist. The use of multiple data sources, triangulation, an audit trail, and member checking enhanced its credibility. The major barriers to effective curriculum implementation were human, physical, material and financial resources. Attempts have been made in developing human capital through various capacity building workshops whose facilitators were not pragmatic. Encouraging though, it was found that teachers have embraced the new curriculum despite the hardships they are encountering as they view it as competencebased and self-empowering through the entrepreneurial skills learners acquire. All that is needed is a collective approach in resource mobilisation, with the government being a major funder, if the inequalities and inequities in accessing education, which Zimbabwe attempted to abolish at post-independence, are not to mushroom.