A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Conversations of Kenya’s Competence Based Curriculum

Since the inception of Kenya’s new education system named the Kenya Competence Based Curriculum (KCBC) in 2017, there have been several debates and conversations about it from scholars and stakeholders in the country. The present paper’s aim is to unearth the perceptions and challenges of Kenya’s new education system that are revealed from the conversations of the education stakeholders in Kenya. The researcher relies on the tenets of van Dijk’s Ideological Square, an approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), in the qualitative analysis of the data obtained from the talk show conversations of selected media stations in Kenya; two private owned and one government owned. The conversations were obtained from YouTube channels of the three media stations. The panelists from the selected stations comprised of legislators, educationists, private school owners and a representative of the teachers’ unions. The findings reveal that whereas the new curriculum is greatly celebrated by some stakeholders, fundamental questions regarding its origin, design and implementation remain a puzzle to others, who view it as an expensive venture that catalyzes the exacerbation of class, power and identity struggles in the country.