Developing a Comparative Literature Curriculum Framework for Secondary Schools in North West Nigeria

Secondary school literature curricula in North West Nigeria are overwhelmingly oriented toward canonical British and Nigerian texts, with little systematic attention to comparative reading across African, Asian, Latin American, and European traditions. This study developed a practical curriculum framework for introducing comparative literature principles into senior secondary school English and Literature in English teaching in Kano and Sokoto States. A curriculum development methodology was employed, combining analysis of the current NERDC literature syllabi, structured interviews with 15 senior secondary literature teachers, and stakeholder consultations with four state education ministry curriculum officers. The curriculum analysis revealed that comparative reading was attempted by fewer than 20 percent of teachers in surveyed schools, primarily through student-led comparison activities rather than structured comparative frameworks. The developed curriculum framework introduces four comparative units for SS2 and SS3: African texts in dialogue with world literature, oral and written literature traditions, resistance literature across cultures, and feminist voices from Africa and elsewhere. Each unit includes teacher guides, discussion questions, essay prompts, and culturally contextualised background materials in simplified prose. Materials are designed to be usable without specialist university-level Comparative Literature training. Expert review by six literature educators and two curriculum specialists confirmed the framework's pedagogical accessibility. The study recommends the framework be piloted in ten schools across Kano and Sokoto States, with formal teacher feedback evaluation at the end of the first academic year of implementation, before state-level adoption consideration.

Keywords: comparative literature curriculum, secondary school, North West Nigeria, literature education, curriculum development