The study investigated teachers of History's implementation of the competency-based teaching approaches in the teaching and learning of History in Lusaka district, Zambia. A mixed-methods approach particularly the explanatory sequential design was used in this study. The study focused on schools in Lusaka from the ten zones. The total sample size of this study was 99. A total of 80 teachers participated in this study and 10 of them were interviewed. The participants were randomly and purposively selected. A questionnaire was used to gather information from the teachers. Interview guides were also used to collect data from one Chief Curriculum Specialist, one Subject Curriculum Specialist, 2 Standard Officers, 5 Head-Teachers, 10 Heads of Sections and 20 Teachers. Classroom lesson observations and document analysis were also done. Quantitative data was analysed using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) and qualitative data was analysed thematically. The findings of the study revealed that 67% of the teachers of History did not understand the concept of the competencybased curriculum or outcome-based curriculum. It was also revealed that teachers of History were not using the competency-based or outcomesbased approaches to a large extent in the teaching and learning of History in the selected secondary schools because they did not have the knowledge and skills of the competency-based approaches. Thus, it was recommended that the Ministry of General Education (MoGE) should strengthen the in-service training and continuous professional development meetings in schools and zones for the competency-based curriculum to be successfully understood and implemented effectively in schools.

In Zambia, curriculum development for primary and secondary schools is done centrally. The Curriculum Development Centre (CDC), the institution placed with the responsibility of facilitating curriculum development, claims that the Zambian school curriculum is developed through a consultative and participatory approach through course and subject panels where teachers and other stakeholders are represented. However, there has been no empirical evidence to suggest the roles that teachers, who are the major implementers of the same curricular, are required to play in the development process. This study therefore, sought to establish perceptions of secondary school teachers on their role in the curriculum development process in Zambia. The concurrent embedded design of the mixed methods approach was employed with the qualitative approach dominating the study while the quantitative was used to add detail. Data from secondary school teachers was collected using questionnaires while interview guides were used for Head teachers. Raw data collected from interviews and questionnaires was analyzed using themes and descriptive statistics and then arranged into significant patterns so as to easily interpret and understand the essence of the data. The findings of the study clearly suggested that the majority of secondary school teachers in Lusaka were willing to participate in the curriculum development process, especially in situational analysis, in the formulation of educational objectives, in setting up the curriculum project, and in the writing of curriculum materials such as textbooks. From the study it was concluded that teachers were aware of some of the roles that they could play in the curriculum development but were not adequately involved in the development process.

This paper presents an analysis of the quality of teacher education at the University of Zambia by combining the findings of two PhD theses conducted at the University of Zambia and in secondary schools in the last two years. Using self-administered questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, both qualitative and quantitative data were collected from 191 and 200 participants respectively, comprising of students, newly qualified teachers (NQTs), heads of department (HoDs), deans, and lecturers. The findings in the two studies indicate that there are a number of institutional weaknesses in the provision of teacher education at the University of Zambia. Prominent among these weaknesses is the inadequacy of teaching practice experiences for student teachers and the mismatch between subject content offered at the University of Zambia and content taught at the secondary school level. The paper concludes that this combination of poor teacher preparation affects teacher quality, which in turn affects educational delivery by the teachers.

The aim of this study was to highlight how a combination of TVET and entrepreneurship education can be harnessed to address the problem of unemployment as well as underutilisation of human resources, in Lusaka Province, Zambia, to foster sustainable social economic development. A questionnaire was administered to TVET students. A representative sample of 480 respondents was targeted. Interview respondents included TVET instructors, TVET administrators, TVET government officers, Industry experts and parents of TVET learners. The sample was proportionately shared among the eight dis-

Zambia has the largest youthful population of below 15 and 18 years which constitute 45.5% and 52.5% of the total population respectively. This is expected to rise by 2030. However, this huge number of young persons, which should be a great resource for economic development, is mostly unemployed (UNESCO, 2016). For many years now the government of the Republic of Zambia has been running and introducing more Vocational Education and Training Institutions as a way of reducing unemployment amongst young people. Regardless of all these efforts, most youths in Zambia who have graduated from such institutions remain unemployed (TEVETA, 2015). In this study, the researchers investigated the appropriateness and adequacy of institution’s teaching and learning resources that the students were exposed to during trainings and how the industrial attachments were organized by the Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions. The mixed method research approach was used to analyze this phenomenon. Six college principals were purposively sampled while stratified and simple random sampling were used to sample sixty lecturers, ten from each of the six colleges. Findings showed that TVET institutions in Zambia were plagued with a number of challenges ranging from lack of appropriate and modern workshop equipment, lack of reading material and ineffective industrial attachment. Researchers recommend that the Ministry of Higher Education and college managements should provide a conducive learning environment in these institutions if graduates were to acquire the required technical competencies.