External Review of Final Draft Samoa Primary Science Curriculum

Abstract

A new Science Primary School Curriculum for the Samoa Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture has been under development for more than a year. An initial draft version was sent to external reviewers for comment and appraisal in September 2010 from which a series of recommendations was formulated as ways to improve this document. A revised final version of the Science Primary School Curriculum was produced and sent to the external reviewers in October 2011. As the external reviewers, we were asked to inspect this document and provide feedback with regards to the following general terms of reference: 1. To review and revise as necessary the accuracy of the Strands: description and conceptual schemes. 2. To confirm consistency between achievement objectives/learning outcomes for each year level and the conceptual scheme and revise as necessary where there is a mismatch. The feedback provided by external review in 2010 on the draft curriculum highlighted the need for structure and coherence in this document where the outcomes and achievement objectives were linked to clearly identified specific aims for each strand at each Year level. Also highlighted was that this document listed too many outcomes at each year level for teachers to feasibly assess as well as containing content that was too conceptually difficult for learners at the primary level. It was also stressed that the final curriculum document should be “user-friendly” for primary teachers and provide sufficient direction and guidance for teachers to be able to generate teaching programmes in science that allow all learners to succeed in learning science and learning about science. The 2010 draft curriculum document was amended and reorganised to produce the 2011 Science Primary School curriculum final draft document.