Disaster Risk Reduction in School Curricula: Case Studies ... - Unicef

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Section 10.
Case 13:
The Case Studies
Lesotho
Overview
Lesotho offers a noteworthy example of
the fertile potential for DRR that is released
when a national curriculum is reconfigured
away from a primarily academic model
to a model primarily based on skills and
dispositions development. Curriculum
developers have opened exciting new
possibilities for the integration of DRR,
more directly addressing values, attitudes
and skills, once they are freed from the
culture, expectations and constraints
of traditional curricular organization.
The implementation and impact of the
new curriculum, with its intricately woven
DRR themes, will be worth monitoring.
Introduction
In October 2009 UNDP and the National Disaster Management
Authority (NDMA) of Lesotho hosted a two-day workshop
on mainstreaming disaster risk reduction for members of the
National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC), with the
aim of creating awareness of the need to integrate DRR into
school curricula. By the end of the workshop a roadmap for
integrating DRR into the school curriculum of grades 1 through
10 had been developed. NCDC, NDMA and UNDP committed
to supporting the initiative which, they believed, ‘presented the
best opportunity for Lesotho to be among the first few African
countries to integrate DRR in national school curricula’ (UNDP/
NDMA, 2009, 1).
Curriculum Development/Integration
The commitment to embedding DRR in the curriculum coincided
with the development of a new curriculum framework for
Lesotho under a Curriculum and Assessment Policy (MoET,
2009). Dispensing with a subject-based model, it was decided
to opt for a curriculum directed at usable skills development
and composed of five curriculum aspects within each of which
there would be a focus on five learning areas. The curriculum
aspects framing the learning areas are: effective communication,
awareness of self and others, environmental adaptation and
sustainable development, health and healthy living, production
and work-related competencies. The learning areas are:
Linguistics and Literacy; Numbers and Mathematics; Personal,
Spiritual and Social; Scientific and Technological; and Creativity
and Entrepreneurial (Ibid). The new curriculum is to be
incrementally implemented from January 2012 50 .
The new curriculum framework has offered the NCDC ample
scope for the integration of DRR in its curriculum planning.
Matrices linking eight DRR modules to curriculum aspects,
learning areas and grade levels have been developed. The modules
are: (1) Village Map: Resources; (2) Village Map: Hazards;
(3) Disaster Concepts: Hazards, Vulnerability, Risks; (4)
Emergency Response; (5) Disaster Preparedness; (6) Psychosocial
Support; (7) Transforming Vulnerability into Capacity;
(8) Disaster Risk Reduction and Sustainable Development.
Each module connects with particular curriculum aspects and
learning areas and extends across a cluster of grade levels
(Kalden, 2011, 2-6).
For example, Module 3, Disaster Concepts, links to the Scientific
and Technological learning area and to the environmental
adaptation and sustainable development curriculum aspect.
Each topic in the module connects with one or more grade
levels from grades 4 to 9, allowing for curriculum reinforcement
throughout these grades. Hence, Module 3 covers: What
is hazard? (grade level 6); What is disaster? (6); Disasters in
Lesotho (4, 6); The impact of disasters (6, 7, 8, 9); What is
vulnerability? (6); What is risk? (6); Hazards and seasons (4, 7);
Community vulnerability (4, 7, 8, 9); Risk in the community (4).
Module 6, Psychosocial Support, connects with the Creativity
and Entrepreneurial learning area and health and healthy living
50
Munas Kalden, UNICEF Lesotho, to Fumiyo Kagawa, 9 November 2011
Disaster Risk Reduction in School Curricula: Case Studies from Thirty Countries