SWOT for Mathematics Curriculum for Grade 9-12, 2023

 

Strengths:

1. It is not only for the public sector but the private sector (low resource) can also benefit from it.
2. This curriculum provides a strong base for all subjects like physics, chemistry, biology, engineering and so on.
3. It gives emphasis on figuring out how to tackle problems and allows critical thinking.
4. It gives emphasis on the nature of math and connects it with real life (historical concepts and connection with philosophy/arts)
5. The proposed Mathematics curriculum promotes activity-based learning.It emphasizes comprehension rather than rote memorization.

 

Weaknesses:

1. Traditional mindset of teachers / teachers with less capacity to apply this curriculum effectively in the classroom.
2. Lashback from teachers, they will say you are simplifying our curriculum excessively, potentially diminishing its educational value.

 

Opportunities:

1. Wide stakeholders engagement like TCF/AKU/ Public Private Partnership

 

Threats:

1. Different stakeholders i.e. O/A level school systems, IB schools, low resources schools, other private schools, universities boards etc. may argue why we didn't include them in the development process.
2. Provinces might not adopt that (political reasons /18th amendment)
3. Fake propaganda / media campaigns
4. Lashback from parents, they will critique if they get the fake news from any school administration.
5. Private franchises may feel the threat that the government is also introducing advanced curriculum so who will take admissions in their elite school systems.

 

 

Strategies to overcome lashback:

1. Effective and proactive communication and media campaigns
2. Documents such as in depth curriculum guidelines available on website for everyone
3. Endorsement from mathematicians
4. Teacher Training
5. Dedicated team: not only the curriculum developers but media people to defend
6. Clear communication
7. Robust plan to support teachers in implementation of curriculum (online resources)
8. In-house model textbook development (suggestion)

 

 

Key points under consideration in developing curriculum documents:

 

From policy dialogues and IPCW on the ground the feedback has emerged that:

 

●       There is a lot of rote memorization in Mathematics which needs to become more application based. Hence the point is to make critical thinking the main focus of the curriculum and to take away the focus of the curriculum on proving theorems.

 

●       There is a need to make the curriculum more concise in terms of there should be no repetition of SLOs, if there is then that needs to be removed, recall is fine but the curriculum should not be content heavy just for the sake of it. 

 

●       The idea is also to ensure that the textbooks that are stemming from it are good quality, that there are no blurry images and that the content in the textbooks is correct, and accurate with regards to mathematical problems, and the images should be legible and visible, relating to the questions at hand. There was also feedback that there should be no incorrect questions given, and a thorough review of the textbooks should be done by reviewers before they are published.

 

●       There should also be a proper mapping of all the SLOs throughout the academic session so that teachers are able to cover them well throughout the year. There should not be rote memorization going on at the end (just to finish the curriculum), which causes issues in terms of critical thinking which we are trying to engender in our students.

 

●       There was also feedback from the ground that the Arts and Sciences group of Mathematics should be combined, there was also feedback from the provinces against this idea. So there was a need for a comparative analysis to see what were the major pros and cons in favor of this argument of combining these two curricula for Mathematics.