Psychology of Learning and Its Implications for Curriculum Design in Nigerian Basic Schools

This study examines the alignment between contemporary learning psychology principles and the design of the Nigerian basic education curriculum, identifying gaps and proposing theoretically grounded improvements. Psychology of learning, drawing on constructivist, cognitive, social learning, and neuroscientific traditions, provides a rich evidence base for curriculum design decisions regarding content sequencing, active learning provisions, metacognitive skill development, and assessment integration. The Nigerian basic education curriculum, last comprehensively revised in 2013, has not been systematically evaluated against contemporary learning psychology standards. This study adopts a qualitative document analysis design, reviewing the current Basic Education Curriculum Framework against a learning psychology assessment rubric derived from key contemporary theories including Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development, Bloom's revised taxonomy, and Bransford's How People Learn framework. Analysis is enriched by 20 expert interviews with curriculum specialists and educational psychologists from five Nigerian universities. Thematic content analysis is applied. Results reveal significant misalignments, particularly in the limited provision for active learning, weak metacognitive skill development across subjects, and insufficient spiral curriculum progression in mathematics and science. The curriculum's theoretical foundations are not explicitly stated, creating implementation inconsistency. The study concludes that the Nigerian basic education curriculum requires a learning psychology-informed revision. It recommends that the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council commission a systematic curriculum alignment review guided by contemporary learning science principles and establish an ongoing curriculum review cycle of every five years.

Keywords: psychology of learning, curriculum design, basic education, Nigeria, NERDC.