Maintaining Curriculum Consistency of Technical and Vocational Educational Programs through Teacher Design Teams

Maintaining the quality and relevance of Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) curricula is a great challenge for TVET institutions in developing countries. One major challenge lies in the lack of curriculum design expertise of TVET academics. The purpose of this multiplecase study is to explore the potential of professionally supported Teacher Design Teams (TDTs), a group of department teachers working collaboratively on a curriculum (re)design task, as an institution-based strategy for improving the relevance of TVET programs to the needs of the concerned stakeholders, namely industry. The study describes how four TDTs from different TVET college departments redesigned their programs systematically and relationally to improve their internal and external consistency. The findings indicated that although the teams found the re-design task a challenge, they felt positive about the TDT experience and its outcomes. The teams also perceived the consistency of their programs to have improved. The criticality of the support offered to the teams and the variety of the teams’ design work were salient themes captured during the design process. It is concluded that professionally supported TDTs can be an efficient strategy for maintaining the consistency of the TVET curriculum