By Shine G. Williams, Contributing Writer
The purpose of this brief write-up is to stimulate discussions about lesson planning as a tool to mitigate below teacher quality output in Liberian public schools.
The saying goes, “whenever you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Some say, the WASSCE could be an outcome of the need for future planning.
According to the Liberia Education sector report, 2016-17, the challenges faced by the education sector are numerous – ranging from unqualified teachers, weak administration and oversight to unconducive learning environment. However, what is minimally spoken about is the need for an aggressive and well-coordinated lesson planning framework for prescribed curriculum that addresses quality content delivery in public and private schools.
Having taught for over 10 years, as a teacher, my experience shows that without a well-thought-out strategy with teachers about how they should plan their lessons; what resources to use and why; and what contents to focus, it might be a long journey in attaining the teaching quality needed for positive student outputs.
The common practice of lesson planning in Liberia has been left to teachers’ discretions on approach to plan their contents and submit same to the designated school administrators for review. In most cases, it becomes a ceremony than a serious review.
In my view, the challenge to quality content delivery in part has been an inadequately thought out lesson planning strategy, and lack of proper oversight:
- Teachers plan lessons without rigorous administrative review and approval;
- Teachers use different books or sources, some outdated;
- Students experience different paces of lectures from teachers, though using the same curriculum and in the same school. Some complete more topics than others, while others are selective;
- Teacher testing contents usually vary depending on textbook sources and contents, some cases unsynchronized with the curriculum;
- It seems more complex monitoring teaching contents without a standardized lesson planning decision approach and structure;
- In addition, lesson planning takes too much time and effort, especially without adequate teaching materials, and with the impatience that accompanies planning a lesson;
- In addition, there’s a need to examine the risks of teachers individually planning their lessons as compared to schools, pre-lesson planning themselves for assuring quality content delivery in the classroom.
Conclusion
With the multilevel challenges to attaining quality in the classroom – unqualified teachers, weak administration and oversight, and unconducive learning environment, it might be worthwhile that public schools begin to think about pre-lesson planning. By this, a school administration carves its own teaching contents with teachers and other educational professionals based on the approved curriculum to be used for teaching and testing purposes. In this way, while we plan for solving the above mentioned problems, we can easily monitor and measure teachers and students performances using a standardized lesson planning framework at the school level. This methodology is not a panacea to solving all of the problems related to lesson planning. However, it attempts at encouraging innovative curriculum delivery structure as a foundation that ensures a calculated endeavor that is sound and achievable. Other schools like the Soltiamon Christian School System in Liberia have succeeded with similar approach and is worth experimenting for review across public schools.
About the author:
Shine Williams is currently an independent professional consultant on good governance. He’s also a researcher, trainer, and advocate with experience working in the areas of governance, corruption, transparency, and policy development for over 10 years. His research interests focus on poverty and corruption, access to information, social accountability, anticorruption agencies, and policy making on governance and anticorruption, and qualitative research methods. Mr. Williams is an international postgraduate student reading corruption control and compliance at the International Anticorruption Academy based in Laxenburg, Austria.
Contact Email: swillcreative@outlook.com