Standards-Based Education Reforms and Core Competency Assessment Imperatives for Teacher Education in Anglophone West Africa

Overview & Synopsis

Education partners are focusing on competency school reforms to build resilient and quality learning systems to tackle children's global learning crisis in critical developmental milestones. However, contextual factors such as inadequate logistics, crowded classrooms, and low teacher professionalism from education colleges are reflecting collective consciousness towards children's problem-based learning and assessment didactics in sub-Saharan African nations. Therefore, this study adopted a liberal curriculum philosophy and phenomenological design approach to generate narrative data from 25 purposively drawn educators from two Anglophone countries adopting standards-based education at the pre-tertiary levels. Data were analysed using NVivo version 12 with nodes graphed for summary, reporting, and discussion. The findings showed that content standard assessment was prioritised over authentic measures for children's global competencies. While a standards-based curriculum strives on creative facilitation, authentic assessment, and digital integration, teachers' professional learning communities mentorship focuses on textbook-based instruction with crowded school schedules from multiple subjects' introduction. Essentially, facilitators transposed objective-based assessment that emerged from their previous curriculum practices with minimal evaluation of children's global skills. The study concludes that education reforms focusing on deep learning goals, including critical thinking and problem-solving, personal development and global citizenship, are required in sub-Saharan Africa. Until global skills and inclusive learning outcomes are integrated into formal classroom pedagogy using digital tools, Africa's education reforms are adversely impacting children's learning, education quality and poverty reduction. This study discusses recommendations for policy advocacy to strengthen teacher pedagogic qualification, competency-based reform, and authentic assessment for resilient education systems in sub-Saharan Africa.