Impacting Education in Africa

Ball State Associate Professor Dr. Michael T. Ndemanu’s initiatives extend to Africa, where new centers focus on enhancing practical and analytical skills in education

It’s not enough for students to acquire knowledge. They must be able to apply that knowledge in real-life situations by employing critical thinking and analytical skills. Those abilities are among the skillsets and approaches needed to remain competitive for jobs, careers, and business ownership opportunities—especially when the ability for employees to work from anywhere around the globe drives up competition levels.

Restructuring curricula so teachers can help students develop, apply, and maximize those skillsets has been a hallmark of the work of Dr. Michael T. Ndemanu, associate professor of multicultural education and social foundations at Ball State University’s Teachers College. Dr. Ndemanu developed the Center for Transformative Education in collaboration with postsecondary educators at two institutions.

“With the transformative education centers, we help current schoolteachers, pre-service teachers, and professors learn how to design curricula that emphasize the competencies of learners versus merely retaining facts,” Dr. Ndemanu said. “Those competencies involve critical thinking, analytical thinking, creative problem-solving, and relating the learned knowledge to application in the real-world context.”

Civic engagement, social responsibility, and social entrepreneurship are also key elements of the educational practices shared in the center. In social entrepreneurship, the business, group, or individual aims to develop, fund, and/or implement solutions to community or societal problems.

Ball State’s Teachers College has a solid reputation as a top-notch “educator of educators” in Indiana and the United States. What may not be as well-known is how Ball State positively affects education in other parts of the world.

Impacting Education Abroad

Building on the foundational work at home, Dr. Ndemanu has extended his efforts globally by establishing a Center of Transformative Education in two African countries: Cameroon and Ghana.

The center in Cameroon was established in 2023 at the University of Ngaoundéré, a public institution in the Adamawa Region. Two Fulbright Scholar awards funded the establishment of this center.

In late 2023, Ball State was awarded a grant from the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Embassy in Cameroon to enhance competency-based approaches to university pedagogies in Cameroon.

The project, led by Dr. Ndemanu, has focused on learner-centered education, place-based, problem-based, and project-based learning, experiential learning, deeper learning, service learning, and civic engagement—building upon the work of the Center for Transformative Education established there. The vision for this project is to continue positioning higher education as the linchpin for sustainable socio-economic development in Cameroon and beyond. As part of the project, innovative in-person workshops for faculty members in Cameroon were provided.

The center in Ghana was established in the Summer of 2024 at the University of Cape Coast (UCC), which is recognized as the top university in West Africa and ranks fourth across the continent, distinguishing itself among hundreds of institutions. Dr. Ndemanu spent two months at UCC, working with local faculty and students to develop the center.

This work was funded by the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship (CADFP), offered by the Institute of International Education. Funded by a Carnegie Corporation of New York grant, the CADFP fosters ties among African academics and universities in Africa, the United States, and Canada to advance educational and research excellence.

Benefiting Generations to Come

In numerous African nations, the transmissive pedagogic approach in school systems, which started during the long periods of colonialism, remained long after those African nations gained their independence, Dr. Ndemanu explained. This conventional education approach focuses on memorizing facts, formulas, and theories and recalling them for exams. That approach to teaching can shortchange students, particularly later in their lives, when they compete with others globally for jobs, careers, and business opportunities.

“Through the Center for Transformative Education, we want to show educators how they can apply critical thinking, problem-solving skills, creativity, and innovative approaches to designing curricula for their students,” said Dr. Ndemanu, who was born and raised in Cameroon. “We’re working with teachers and school leaders to design learning outcomes which go beyond what students should know by the end of the course to what they should be able to do with what they know.

“Education is designed to transform human lives and societies. It is unfathomable for countries with rising college graduation rates to still rank low on the human development index,” Dr. Ndemanu added. “It means students are not being taught transferable skills. That has to change.”

Each Center for Transformative Education represents a significant catalyst for such change, serving as a hub for pedagogical research and development that offers cutting-edge resources and training for educators. The centers symbolize a step forward in establishing more engaging, inclusive, and effective learning environments and are models for international cooperation in academic advancement.