Exploring the Role of Indigenous Knowledge Systems in Igbo Language Curriculum Design: A Decolonial Perspective

This study explores the integration of indigenous knowledge systems into Igbo language curriculum design from a decolonial theoretical perspective, critically examining how current curricula engage or marginalise traditional Igbo epistemologies, pedagogical practices, and knowledge transmission frameworks. The decolonisation of African education has gathered renewed momentum in recent academic discourse, but specific decolonial curriculum work in Igbo language education remains programmatically underdeveloped. Drawing on a critical curriculum studies methodology, the research conducts a deconstruction analysis of current Igbo language curricula at junior and senior secondary levels across four South East states, mapping the presence and treatment of indigenous knowledge content. Interviews with twenty-two Igbo language educators, twelve traditional knowledge holders, and eight curriculum specialists supplement the document analysis. Findings reveal that current Igbo language curricula appropriate traditional cultural content as illustration while remaining structurally organised around Western academic knowledge taxonomies and pedagogical models. Indigenous oral epistemologies, traditional learning-by-practice methods, and Igbo communal knowledge validation processes are systematically absent from curriculum architecture. A decolonial Igbo language curriculum framework is developed as the study's primary theoretical contribution, integrating traditional Igbo ways of knowing as both content and pedagogical method. Keywords: decolonial education, Igbo curriculum, indigenous knowledge, curriculum design, South East Nigeria.