Curricular innovations in a small island state. Developing intercultural competence in pursuit of holistic growth.

Autor/inn/en	Ankiah-Gangadeen, Aruna; Nadal, Pascal
Titel	Curricular innovations in a small island state. Developing intercultural competence in pursuit of holistic growth.
Quelle	Aus: Fomunyam, Kehdinga George (Hrsg.); Khoza, Simon Bheki (Hrsg.): Curriculum theory, curriculum theorising, and the theoriser. The African theorising perspective. Leiden: Brill Sense (2021) S. 73-91 PDF als Volltext (1); PDF als Volltext (2) Link als defekt meldenVerfügbarkeit
Beigaben	Illustration 1; Literaturangaben S. 89-91
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	online; gedruckt; Sammelwerksbeitrag
ISBN	978-90-04-44792-9; 978-90-04-44793-6; 978-90-04-44794-3
DOI	10.1163/9789004447943
Schlagwörter	Bildungsforschung; Bildungsreform; Curriculum; Curriculumentwicklung; Afrika; Mauritius
Abstract	Curriculum development can be a daunting enterprise for any nation, the educational curriculum being a far-sighted document that charts the route for the aspirations of the country. Typically, the inspiration for curriculum developers comes from the 'more advanced' Western world which can offer tried and tested experiences. Such is the case for the postcolonial small island developing state (SIDS), Mauritius. The educational curriculum that was first produced about a decade ago was largely inspired by 'established' countries like the UK, Australia, and the city-state of Singapore. Despite the recent review in the context of an educational reform, and aspirations towards education for sustainable living and the development of 21st century skills in learners, the underlying mindset has remained predominantly conventional. Traditional and 'career-oriented' subjects are still viewed as being more important than those aiming at holistic growth. As the island recently made its way to becoming a high-income country (Serajuddin & Hamadeh, 2020), creating a niche in the competitive global world, one cannot help but question the way in which lip service is paid to value-laden subjects, despite the eroding values in the social sphere. We argue that financial prosperity cannot be achieved without moral and critical discernment, and that the curriculum must be responsive to the realities of both the local and international contexts in order to engineer an education system aligned with the needs of the country. In this chapter, we foreground how one educational service provider in Mauritius, namely, the Diocesan Service of Catholic Education (DSCE), took the lead to introduce the subject Intercultural Education, which features as an underpinning element of the national curriculum reform. Indeed, while the current national educational reform advocates that all teachers promote interculturalism transversally through their subjects, this is hardly ever done. Multiple reasons are offered for this, the most prominent ones being the loaded syllabus, and inadequate teacher empowerment. With this innovation, learners at primary and secondary levels study interculturalism as a subject on the weekly timetable. In so doing, the DSCE is showing the way to implementing UNESCO's recommendations and conventions: that education worldwide develop intercultural competences for peaceful living and conflict resolution. This chapter will demonstrate how curriculum developers - by pursuing agendas that are altogether internal, national and international - produced a model of intercultural education specific to the complex socio-ethnic fabric of the country as an African SIDS. As such, the model does not seek to replicate known discourses about interculturalism as an imported 'Northern' phenomenon. Based on a proper interplay between resource contextualisation, pedagogical adaptation and professional development, this model aims at departing from the complacent and dated notion of multiculturalism, paving the way to the more desirable but more taxing challenge of transculturalism.
Erfasst von	Leibniz-Institut für Bildungsmedien \| Georg-Eckert-Institut (GEI), Braunschweig
Update	2024/1