Curriculum Design Practices of a Vocational Community College in a Developing Context: Challenges and Needs

Aligning vocational curricula with the labor market needs is a common reported challenge in developing countries. Little is known, however, about how vocational community colleges in such contexts regularly review and redesign their curricula to ensure the quality and relevance of their programs. From a curriculum design (CD) perspective, this case study investigated how the management and teachers at a community college in Yemen approached CD both as a blueprint and as a process. It also explored the CD challenges and needs of the study departments. Participants were 199 students, 46 alumni, 45 teachers, and 13 administrators. Data were collected via interviews, questionnaires, and curriculum documents. The curriculum blueprints (e.g., program and course descriptions) were found to be either missing or lacking detail and clarity, and the CD process was mostly content-driven, intuitive, highly individual, and centered around course modifications. Lack of resources, teacher characteristics, and top management support were found to be major CD challenges. It is concluded that the current CD practices are not conducive to vocational programs with internal and external consistency, and that the reported CD challenges are typically associated with developing contexts. A number of implications for practice are discussed.