Competence-based vocational agriculture education for sustainability in Burundi: perspectives from different educational stakeholders

One of the most important goals for vocational agriculture education in Burundi (ITAB) is to develop the sustainable agriculture competencies of students. Competence-based education (CBE) is the current official approach for ITAB curriculum design. The present study aimed to examine to what extent the ITAB curriculum addresses sustainable agriculture competencies and fulfils CBE educational design principles from the perspectives of educational stakeholders. Survey data from a sample of 224 respondents, including teachers (N = 115), students (N = 96), and curriculum advisors (N = 13), were collected and analysed. Respondents felt that the ITAB curriculum does not sufficiently foster sustainable agriculture competencies from the curriculum content view, and that study programmes are only partially competence based in terms of educational design. These educational limitations were experienced much more by teachers and students, while for advisors, the current curriculum was already largely competence based. These findings have implications in terms of curriculum re-design. More concretely, study programmes should be regularly updated to reflect the changing dynamics of sustainable agriculture and to truly promote students’ sustainability competencies. Furthermore, and crucially, attitudinal aspects of competencies should be emphasised to enable behavioural changes in students with regards to their preparedness to constitute a pool of motivated sustainability change-agents.