The
African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Kenya Government recently signed a $43
million loan agreement. The funds will go towards improving the quality and
relevance in engineering education at the university level. The ultimate goal
is to train a critical number of qualified and skilled engineers to drive the
key sectors of Kenya’s Vision 2030.
This
loan agreement is both laudable and critical. However, I am not sure that
investing in university engineering faculties is sufficient to stimulate a deep
and sustain a culture of scientific and engineering innovation. I have argued
in this column that Kenya’s education system, especially the teaching and
learning of science and math, is having a catastrophic effect on how and what
our children learn.
As
a scientist and educator I have been deeply engaged in our education system at
all levels. The archetypal approach to science is to “learn about science”,
rather than to “learn to be scientists”. Hence, science is arduous and
excruciating. Science and math are presented as collection of fusty facts or
formulae or principles, which students must remember and regurgitate to be
memorized and regurgitated for high-stakes standardized national exams.
Our
curriculum, especially in science and math promotes superficial coverage, affording little opportunity for in-depth learning. For the most part
the curriculum is an inch deep and a mile wide. Consequently, learning is
skin-deep and retention is fleeting. The fact-laden school textbooks are an
onerous catalogue of out of context and often-outdated stuff.
Science
is not about facts. Science, the centerpiece of engineering and innovation is a
process of inquiry and investigation. Science is a way of understanding and
evaluating the world. Ultimately science must be applied to solve problems in
the real world outside the classroom. Surprisingly, the vast majority of
primary and high school teachers only think of science as the collection of
facts they have to teach and the set of tricks or rules or relationships students
have to master.
The
situation is not different at the university. As a young undergraduate the
sloppy teaching of some of my professors dejected me. One of my professors once
asked why I was not taking the notes he was dictating. Without hesitation, I
told him that I knew the book he had copied his notes from. To make him feel
better, I reassured him that I would write down everything that seemed like his
own ideas or reflections on the stuff he had plagiarized.
As
an undergraduate I also watched in disbelief as my friends taking technology
and engineering courses labored to commit stuff to memory. I was always
mystified by how little time they spent designing or making or dismantling thing.
My engineering friends took lots of courses and spent long hours in lectures,
not in discussion groups debating engineering solutions to basic societal
problems such design principles for low-tech water purification devices.
In
Kenya, professors have two primary obligations: to generate odious personal
income from consultancies and to educate students. The incentive system heavily
weight efforts toward consultancies at the expense of teaching. Moreover, a
majority of professors hardly think of themselves as teachers or educator. Few
university professors understand education theory or read education research.
University
teaching has not changed in correspondence with advances in science, math and
engineering research. Consequently, how students acculturated into science,
technology, engineering and math (STEM) is antiquated and undermines curiosity,
experimentation, discovery, collaboration and the evidence-based culture of
science.
The
AfDB investment presents an opportunity to implement systemic changes in the
teaching and learning of STEM to improve the quality of undergraduates and
enhance their capacity to catalyze the scientific and technology innovation
necessary to drive the key sectors of Kenya’s vision 2030.
Laboratories
and equipment are critical but this is how I would invest part of the $43
million:
1.
Establish a national STEM teaching and learning institute to
equip faculty with modern teaching skills that promote active learning and
techniques for evaluating student learning and teaching effectiveness.
2.
Engage chairs, deans and vice chancellors in creating a culture
that values and promotes excellence in teaching as key requirement for
promotion. We need agreement on the broad goals of STEM education and establish
a rubric for evaluating how professors meeting these goals. Teaching must be
treated as a scholarly activity;
3.
Define and institutionalize the full range of pedagogical skills
and strategies that best describe best practices in the evaluation of teaching
effectiveness, particularly approaches that encourage inquiry, experimentation,
discovery, reflection and peer learning and collaboration;
4.
Develop a lean set of flexible core competencies or standards in
the major fields of STEM.
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