Ask, don’t tell – problem-based learning for competence-driven education in Zambia

The economy of Zambia was growing fast in the first decade of the millennium. With its GDP per capita soaring from 400 USD to more than 1800 USD, only to equally fast decline to nearly half of its peak value by 2020. Zambia seems to be struggling to keep up with the African trend of continuing economic growth in this millennium, a phenomenon known as “Africa rising” (World Bank, 2024).

Zambia is trying to reduce its dependence on the copper industry and develop other industries, such as agriculture and tourism. On the other hand, the demand for copper is expected to tenfold by 2027 due to the shift from combustion engines to electric vehicles (The Copper Alliance, 2017).  Agriculture is currently the backbone of the Zambian economy, and as a sector, it can support inclusive structural transformation, poverty reduction, and diversification of the economy away from copper (World Bank, 2018).

We, five students and a lecturer from Häme University of Applied Sciences, participated in a student challenge in Zambia as a part of the AgriSCALE project. Travelling through Zambia, we engaged in a conversation with our driver. Talking about Zambia’s economic situation he expressed a wish that the Zambian economy would have better leadership. This was repeated in a conversation with a Zambian student who said: “Zambia is not poor, it is mismanaged”. These comments set us on exploring the potential and importance of the youth for sustainable development, especially among the agricultural and food sector students we had the pleasure of working with for two weeks in the Mpima dairy cooperative project.

 Whatever lines of industry Zambia chooses to follow, there is a demand for educated and skilled people running the operations and the economy. The vision is already there, described in the African Union Commissions Agenda 2063 (2015): “A future with healthy, well-educated people living in robust and developed economies. Indeed, this is a progressive march towards the ‘Africa we want’”.

Agro-entrepreneurial education in Zambia

What Zambia will look like in the future is greatly affected by the education and attitude the young people who will build it receive. Trend analysis from 2018 estimated that around 70% of total jobs in Zambia will be in food systems by 2025 (World Bank, 2018).

Zambia’s education system has been established after gaining independence just 60 years ago and is still evolving. The government has been dedicated to developing the educational system and has demonstrated commitment to free and quality basic education with the Free Basic Education Policy of 2002 (Reich et al., 2013).

Dominant pedagogy in African cultures is transmissive (Ojok et al., 2022), where the teacher’s role in teaching is merely to forward knowledge and the student’s task is passively to absorb the knowledge without any critical thinking or analytical process. The tendency to transmissive teaching and pedagogy is driven by population growth and large classes, but it should be seen beyond. It should be acknowledged how transformative and metacognitive teaching and learning could provide the youth of Zambia with better skills and competencies in a complex and changing world. Especially Problem-based learning (PBL) can help students become more confident and able to solve complex problems (Mulonda et al., 2022).

According to a meta-analysis by Freeman et al. (2014), students sitting in lectures and going through traditional teaching are 1.5 times more likely to fail the course than students in classes with participatory and activating teaching and learning methods. This especially stands for students in bioscience and technological disciplines. Evidence suggests that a more constructivist teaching approach where the teacher is supposed to “ask, don’t tell” (Freeman et al., 2014) supports increased student contribution and success in graduation and passing the courses. In this setting, students are not given ready-made answers through lectures. Still, instead, teachers are in the role of facilitators to guide the students towards relevant and reliable data and knowledge building by proposing questions to the students and making them thus active in the process of thinking and learning and finding the causalities and constructive and cognitive skills. At the same time they simultaneously develop the skills appreciated by the world of work. World Economic Forum (2023) has listed the 21st-century skills as a list of skills required from workers in the next five years. On this list, emphasis has been put on the skills of creative and analytical thinking, individual curiosity, and a tendency to lifelong learning. As well as to one’s capability to be flexible and agile, and to grasp bigger contexts in terms of systems thinking. Hard to imagine these skills could be enhanced pedagogically simply by keeping up the traditional way of teaching and having the classroom just teacher-centred and lecture-based.

A flipped learning workshop environment is a student-centered approach. In a flipped classroom, skills of individual self-management, focusing, and participation, but also skills in group work and being able to be constructive and collaborative in project work can enhance the performance of the students (Ang et al. 2021). PBL-based Student Challenges also indicate that the participatory elements of the challenges give students a feeling of belonging and meaningfulness, which was very well observed among the students participating in the Mpima Dairy challenge.

International Cooperation

Working on a Problem Based Learning project with the students from Zambian universities we were impressed with the enthusiasm and dedication the students show. We worked long days, but our energy and motivation stayed at high levels. While we engaged in resolving the problem presented by the local dairy cooperative, we searched for ways to conduct our root cause analysis. The Finnish students showed the fishbone diagram model and the whole group was energized. A new fascinating way of working!

During the whole student challenge, we learned from each other and broadened our way of thinking. Finnish students lean toward very analytical and straightforward problem-solving at a quick pace, whereas Zambian students like to proceed with less haste and explore possibilities and ideas their Finnish counterparts didn’t even think about. Somehow a middle way was found surprisingly easily, combining the goal-orientated and more explorative approaches.

Multicultural exchange in teaching methods and tools is one of the results of a student challenge week. Skills in teamwork and project management are being transformed by students from both cultures, not to forget the communicational skills. Differences in accents, words, and phrases make us all focus on listening and paying attention to our peers and what they have to say. Empathy and active listening are also on the list of the 21st-century skills (World Economic Forum 2023), thus showing us that communication is not only about talking and presenting but also about creating cohesion and reaching for shared team goals. Listening and empathy are to be practiced and according to our experiences, PBL and Student Challenge can provide a great learning platform for these skills to be practiced.

Potential in youth

53,9% of Zambia’s population is under 20 years old, which is expected to double to 40 million people in the next 30 years (PopulationPyramid.net, 2023). There is an abundance of bright and eager young people who want to learn and develop themselves. The development of the Zambian economy is heavily reliant on these young minds to explore new possibilities and start new enterprises and business models, many of which will be in the field of agriculture. This development relies also on institutes providing education as well as institutions with access to land and capital to enable the youth to become “true agropreneurs” as suggested by Girard (2023).

Problem-based learning can leverage this potential of young minds and offer a path for developing the problem-solving, group work, and networking skills needed for agro-entrepreneurial growth.

Conclusions

Zambia is entitled to its share of the global wealth. The Zambian economy needs the potential of the youth to be utilized to be able to create sustainable growth and a thriving economy. Education is the key in this process and the development of the Zambian educational system plays a big role in the development of the whole country.

Problem-based learning can offer an engaging and effective learning method complementing or, at least partially, replacing conventional lecture-based and teacher-centered education. A generation of critical and creative thinkers and analysers is needed to support the resilience and self-sufficiency of Zambia. This generation can be enhanced by asking, not telling, or giving them digested and ready-made solutions or answers. Once the skills of critical thinking and creativity, among other 21^st-century skills, are practiced already in the university and student-centered teaching and learning, graduates have great competence and potential to become agropreneurs and catalysts to take the future of Zambia into their own hands.