Abstract
The Mozambican government has introduced reforms of basic education, notably
the introduction of interdisciplinarity, learner-centredness and new teaching
pedagogies. This is a case study of how these curriculum reforms have been
implemented at Marrere Teachers’ Training College. We conducted interviews
with lecturers, observed their teaching practices, and studied student results to
assess teaching outcomes. The study is grounded in the literatures on educational
change and globalization. The problems of policy and practice have
focused attention on bottom-up and top-down research, and hybrid approaches.
The study of globalization has highlighted the relationship between curriculum
change and the world economy. There is a paucity of research on how these
developments have affected underdeveloped countries. We found that practical
issues influence implementation. Lecturers did not understand the meaning of
interdisciplinarity. They could, however, articulate the meaning of learnercentredness.
Lesson observations showed they did not implement it. Against the
backdrop of these inter-related factors, final year students performed poorly in
examinations. These analyses show the complexities of the moving from policy
to practice, and the global to the local.