Science Education in Bhutan: Issues and challenges

Abstract

Science education in a developing country is pivotal in the developmental process. Bhutan, like other developing countries, places great importance in institutionalising a relevant and challenging science curriculum for all of its school-aged children. A number of factors have made the review of the science curriculum in Bhutan a priority including international debates about scientific literacy and the changing time and needs of Bhutanese society and its students. This article reports on the findings of a study to investigate the present status and challenges of the current science curriculum from interviews with teachers, students, and other key stakeholders such as higher education lecturers and employers. The study also draws on observations of science classes and key curriculum documents. This study was conducted as a prelude to the major science curriculum reform prioritised in the government's 10th Five Year Plan (2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012) in order to provide a research informed perspective for science curriculum development. The findings from the research are reported here and show a number of positive issues in science education including good student motivation in lower classes. Challenges are identified including issues of teacher development, resourcing, and fragmentation and discontinuity in the current curriculum. These issues and challenges are discussed in the light of literature on science education in developing countries.

Emotional climate of a pre-service science teacher education class in Bhutan

“…Ahmed Fahmi (2008) reported the major factor that affected the quality of science programs in schools and beyond was the discontinuity in the pedagogy and science curriculum from primary science to higher secondary science. For instance, in lower grades, activity-based learning is emphasized whereas the predominant mode of instruction becomes direct teaching by grade 9 (Childs, Tenzin, Johnson and Ramachandran 2012). Moreover, as science in pre-primary to grade 3 is taught in Dzongkha (the National language of Bhutan) students find it difficult as they transit to grade 4 and above where science is taught in English.…”

Framework for Reducing Teaching Challenges Relating to Improvisation of Science Education Equipment and Materials in Schools

“…Many classrooms in industrialised and less developed countries lack essential conventional hands-on SEEMs (e.g., Childs, Tenzin, Johnson, & Ramachandran, 2012;Ens, Olson, Dudley, Ross, Siddiqi, Umoh et al,, 2012;Nivalainen et al, 2010;Singh & Singh, 2012). This may be explained by the fact that even in industrialised countries such as Germany and Japan, conventional SEEMs are costly, coupled with the fact that in many industrialised and less developed countries science education budgets have decreased (Poppe, Markic, & Eilks, 2011;Schaffer & Pfeifer, 2011;Set & Kita, 2014).…”

“…In line with such calls, the use of improvised SEEMs (e.g., smallscale experiments) is an increasing trend in practical work in science classrooms in Germany (Di Fuccia et al, 2012). However, despite the willingness of some educators to improvise equipment for practical work (Childs et al, 2012), improvised SEEMs are seldom used in many ill-equipped science classrooms in secondary schools (Ezeasor et al, 2012;Sedibe, 2011;Singh & Singh, 2012). This result shows, first of all, that the improvisation of SEEMs is a strategy that can be better implemented in these classrooms.…”

Swimming with the Shoal

“…It was our job to design the questions (mostly very open) and, at the end of the process, to analyse the data and to work in collaboration with Mr Tenzin to write the final report. He also joint authored the article we published in the International Journal of Science Education (Childs, Tenzin, Johnson and Ramachandran 2012). One unintended and significant outcome of the decision by Mr Tenzin that we needed to visit schools as far east as Trashigang was that we spent many long hours in the car; it is a three day drive to Trashigang and we stopped off and visited schools in Wangdue Phodrang and Trongsa.…”

“…The key colleague that we worked with was from CAPSD was Mr Wangpo Tenzin. The process and analysis of this needs assessment has been published as Childs, Tenzin, Johnson and Ramachandran (2012).…”