Identification of Needs of Community Schools of Kavre, Nepal for Educational Improvement

Authors

Roshani Rajbanshi, Kathmandu UniversityFollow
Parbati Dhungana, Kathmandu University School of EducationFollow
Bal Luitel, Kathmandu University School of EducationFollow

Abstract

Needs assessment is a method to find out the current needs of the school that can be considered for providing quality education to the students. This paper presents the needs of five community schools intending to bring changes in the school community. Thus, this paper aims to identify the needs of the five community schools of Kavre, Nepal, and recommend possible interventions. In-depth interviews, observations, and focus group discussions with different stakeholders provided rich data for this study. School-specific needs were identified from the data based on which recommendations are made for intervention, which are: Teacher professional development, contextualized curriculum, use of technology, and development of school gardening and urine diverting toilet, which would ultimately help to improve education fulfilling the fourth goal of sustainable development.

Keywords

needs assessment, professional development, contextual curriculum

Author Bio(s)

Roshani Rajbanshi, Ph.D. is a post-doctoral fellow under NORHED fellowship, Rupantaran, at Kathmandu University School of Education, Hattiban, Lalitpur, Nepal. She earned her PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from New Mexico State University with major in Educational Learning Technology and minor in Biology. Her areas of interest are teacher professional development, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education; inquiry-based science teaching, and afterschool program. Please direct correspondence to roshani@kusoed.edu.np or roshaniraj@gmail.com.

Parbati Dhungana is a visiting faculty at the STEAM Department of Kathmandu University, School of Education. She has been doing her PhD study on Teachers’ Professional Development. She co-authored many textbooks including Grade 9 and 10 English, published by Sano Thimi Bhaktapur. She published a couple of articles including journal articles. She has more than two decades of teaching experiences from Kindergarten to University level with multiple leadership responsibilities. Please direct correspondence to parbati@kusoed.edu.np.

Bal Chandra Luitel has been working with a number of Nepali STEM teachers and teacher educators to engage with a host of transformative research methods together with new analytics arising from dialectical, metaphorical, poetic and narrative thinking and representation as a means for conceiving, expressing and implementing visions of an inclusive and life-affirming STEM education in Nepal. Currently, he coordinates a transformative education project called Rupantaran that aims at engaging Master’s and Doctoral students to bring forth intimate narratives unfolded during the process of their immersion in a school transformation process of public schools in Nepal. Please direct correspondence to bcluitel@kusoed.edu.np.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank (Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation) for providing financial support, Rupantaran project and all team members of Rupantaran for their constant support and Janahit Secondary School, Saraswoti Primary School, Dapcha Secondary School, Kali Ganga Primary School and Navin Primary School for their contribution.

Publication Date

11-21-2021

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.46743/2160-3715/2021.4975

Recommended APA Citation

Rajbanshi, R., Dhungana, P., & Luitel, B. (2021). Identification of Needs of Community Schools of Kavre, Nepal for Educational Improvement. The Qualitative Report, 26(11), 3551-3562. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2021.4975

ORCID ID

0000-0002-2839-2347