PhET Simulations Promoting Educational Reforms in Kenya
Kenya’s education system is currently on a reform trajectory, a move geared towards a fundamental shift from a content-based to a competency-based education that empowers every learner to achieve their full potential.
To prepare teachers for this pedagogical paradigm shift, the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), the body that is mandated to manage teachers in the country, is currently retooling Junior secondary teachers to ensure that they meet expected standards of effectively handling the new curriculum. Although this and other significant initiatives are being made, Kaberia Mberia, a 2023 PhET Fellow* who is a teacher trainer at Meru Teachers College and a Trainer of Trainers (TOT) in the retooling program notes that still, there are various challenges facing teachers especially those teaching Integrated Science. The major challenges noted are lack of sufficient resources and teachers’ lack of pedagogical competencies for shifting learning from teacher to learner-centric approaches.
Most of the teachers teaching integrated science at junior secondary level in Kenya are not trained science teachers, and therefore lack adequate background in the subject content and pedagogy. Apart from the teachers not being trained science teachers, their schools lack science labs and even basic apparatus.
As an educator at one of the Ministry of Education’s model training schools, Mberia had been hearing teachers’ needs. However, he became concerned when teachers asked about how to teach science concepts theoretically, and not in more practical, hands-on ways. Mberia comments, “This really motivated me to think of a way of enabling the teachers teach science using hands on activities even in the absence of labs and materials. Luckily, PhET simulations perfectly fit in this matrix.”
In a retooling training workshop organized by the TSC from 9th — 13th October, 2023, and held at Kiriene Boarding Primary School, Meru County, a rural school located about 250Km from Nairobi, Mberia took the opportunity to introduce 108 teachers to PhET simulations and how they can use the sims to promote active learning even when facing the challenges of handling large classes and lack of resources.
In one activity, I involved the teachers in using the circuit construction kit to make simple electric circuits in parallel and series. Most teachers had confessed that they teach the concept using lecture method since their schools do not provide the required materials. The participants worked in groups and used the PhET sim to make the circuits using their smartphones. They marveled at the ability of the PhET sims to enable them construct circuits without the need of physical wires, dry cells and bulbs.
Although some simulations, like the Circuit Construction Kit, have many small digital components and are more ideal for use on a computer than a small smartphone screen, Mberia knows that teachers are resourceful. In particular, recognizing the contrast between Kenya’s rural and urban regions, one of his main missions is to help teachers get the tools they need to recognize that they can give their students as high quality an education as anywhere.
I am using PhET simulations and PhET recommended active learning pedagogies to show teachers how to design learning experiences that encourage discovery and exploration. The teachers have been so impressed by the efficacy of the simulations in enabling learners carry out scientific investigations even in the absence of science labs and apparatus. They are as well impressed by the ability of the PhET simulations to promote equality in education. The sims enable learners in less privileged schools to carry out science experiments just like those from well endowed schools.
Mberia hopes to continue to support these teachers to be able to implement in their classrooms what they learnt during the workshop. He also anticipates that the Ministry of Education will sponsor future workshops to help Kenya’s new junior secondary school science teachers carry out their mission. For now, teachers see even for themselves how these resources could have helped them when they were students, meeting Kenya’s goals to prepare STEM-competent students:
[The teachers] all agreed that the use of PhET sims in learning was fun, engaging, collaborative and enable learners to understand concepts quite easily. One teacher even said, “If I was taught science this way, I would have taken a career in science.”
*PhET Fellowship 2023 activities in Africa are in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation.
