2.1 Introduction

This chapter offers a descriptive analysis of the MIITEP curriculum strategy - the aims, content, pedagogy, teaching/learning resources and assessment -, using both the documents and some of the findings from the field. While the length and structure of the curriculum have changed, scrutiny of curriculum documents from various courses since 1990 show that these seemed to have remained in many ways quite similar. However, there is some indication in some of the MIITEP documents that the new course was intended to train teachers in new styles of teaching/learning more in keeping with the aims of the revised primary school curriculum, which advocates more active and participatory learning methods. Indeed, two different strands of thinking can be traced within the course, which we have labelled for convenience ‘traditional’ and ‘progressive’. The ‘traditional’ strand is teacher-centred, based on behavioural assumptions, has a closed view of knowledge, and sees the teacher as a technician; the ‘progressive’ strand contains some elements of interactive and constructivist thinking, is more learner-centred, less authoritarian, and expects more of the teacher. These are broad tendencies only, and should be understood as relative terms in the Malawian context.