Inquiry is an inborn trait- While providing much more freedom and potential, a genuine inquiry process naturally demands high involvement of the individuals. Some believe that since people possess different skills, intelligences and interests, learning through inquiry might exhaust, rather than motivate, learners with little interest in problem solving and critical thinking. However, personally, I have different viewpoint upon it. Starting from the time of birth, babies do inquiry by looking around and observing, holding the things and turning toward voices. They were not trained by anyone to explore their environment, yet the motivation comes from within. With or without the guidance of adults, the babies gather the information of the world around them through five senses which might not make any sense to them at the beginning. Only because of the discouragement from the traditional classroom setting, the children became less prone to ask questions. Nurturing the practices of inquiry in students will allow them to discover, develop and enjoy more of the learning process, I believe. The roles of the teachers will become how to adapt themselves as the facilitators and allow the students a very positive learning environment.
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During my GIST travel, the more I tried to look into understanding how we can enable a student-centric learning environment, the more I saw the importance of empowering the teachers and the community around the students. Without considering the unmet needs of the systems and community, the policies and ideology will find it difficult to turn into reality. The blended learning approach in Thailand did not occur to bring positive impact in student’s learning due to their focus on material supply rather than capacity building to the teachers in relevance with the new learning environment. Vietnam government emphasized on teacher development and provided training opportunities, yet the need of clear instructions and guidance brought extra burden to the teachers especially when the expectations became higher than ever. Philippines has been one of the last countries in Asia shifting into new K-12 education from old K-10 system. In addition to lengthening the school time, the new system aimed to address the different learning abilities and interests. The students can pursue one of the four learning pathways in senior high school (Grade 11-12) in addition to the core curriculum. The schools have started to operate the senior high school education with specialized learning pathways in relevant with the resources they can provide. The performance standards were set to allow a school to become eligible to go for a particular track. Starting from 2011, the education system was reviewed from kindergarten to Grade 12. To maximize the coverage, the mother tongue languages in the regions were applied, as the school language in kindergarten, and then English and Filipino were introduced during Grade 1-3. Starting from Grade 4, all the instructions were done in Filipino and English. Although it’s still in inception stage, all the findings and discussions I had made me impressed of the education in Philippines, in general. There are still a lot of to be done, but I found the teachers and the students were pretty knowledgeable and energetic which made me explore more about their best practices.
During last February, I interviewed Mr. Thomas Brittner, the head of Higher Education Department from Child’s Dream. During the conversation, I happened to share what I had been passionate to do for the education in my country. I told him that I expected to be working on something that would allow the students to get the exposure to the diverse professional fields and understand the 21st century skills that would be necessary to open the doors for them. Then, he replied me that there’s an organization in Mae Sot named “Youth Connect Foundation”, working on providing the essential life skills to the students and youths outside the schools. Looking at a glance at Mae Sot, there were growing youth population who struggled to have employment and on the other hand, the local businesses also strived to get the skilled labor. “Youth Connect Foundation” focused on addressing the needs of these two target groups by
The program takes minimum of 10 months during which the youths go through
Besides working as employees in local businesses, the students started a number of social enterprises, one of which is “The Pciturebook Guesthouse” which becomes a top tourist destination in Mae Sot now. It offered a unique place decorated with the artsy decorations and the fact that the whole building including the furniture and the decorations were created by the students themselves. As well as a hub for students’ employment, the guesthouse acted as a training site for upcoming apprentices in the hospitality industry. You can visit the following website to take a tour of the Picturebook Guesthouse. http://picturebookthailand.org/ Being aware of the unique context in the region, I found the program being implemented by Youth Connect really impressive since it offered a truly inspiring opportunity to all those youths to become motivated to learn and have the confidence to take the initial steps required to establish a start-up. Acknowledging the challenges and limited options for the migrant youths, Youth Connect offered essential life skills and actually connected them to the future opportunities. “Why do we go to schools?” That’s the question that has always bothered me for a long time. I’ve grown up in a country where the students were expected to outsmart others by getting good grades in high schools since it’s the only way to let them eligible for a handful of professional fields like Medicine and Engineering which were believed to offer you a secure job. Education, itself, means nothing else but accreditation to make a living, yet even those careers cannot guarantee an employment or fair revenue, and university graduates had to hunt any sort of job opportunities, which might reflect neither their academic background nor their inspirations. During my first semester in APLP, I have been really amazed by the design of six different learning pathways for secondary students according to their different interests and talents in Waipahu High School and how the students had a vision towards which they were trying to achieve. Personal Action Planning module in APLP also helped me see the importance of having a desired future and taking the necessary steps to pursue our dreams. All of such good practices have never occurred to the education that I’ve got in Myanmar. And, that would bring a huge difference if the intrinsic motivation to learning can open the new possibilities in the students for their future career rather than finishing schools and receiving certificates. The migrant schools and learning centers in Mae Sot surprised me very much. Like the government schools, the students have to commit full time in classes from kindergarten to Grade 12. Unlike the recognized schools, the migrant schools cannot provide accreditation to the students graduated from their schools, and the students still have to take exams from Myanmar or Thailand to be recognized as a high school graduate and to become eligible for college education. Still, almost all the school-age children go to schools and majority of them try to continue the study till the end of Grade 12. Without the capacity to provide an accreditation, the impact of the education in essence itself has been able to make a change in their lives and that has been the motivation for the migrant people to pursue the education in these schools. And, that’s also the future that I desire to see. It all started by a newborn It started by a newborn abandoned in front of the house where Min Min and his friend stayed in one fine evening in 2000. The two single men became the caregivers of this poor little baby and the inspiration grew while nurturing this young child led the two of them to work for the orphans and street children in Mae Sot, a town in Thailand near Myanmar border. Without neither strong financial background nor experience in managing an organization, it was the pure inspiration that drove them to create a housing for the orphanage and abandoned children. The early days were really rough, unsurprisingly, without any financial support or grant provided to them, they tried to take care of the children on their own when the vegetables they grew were their food in everyday plate. It has been really tough to take care of increased number of underprivileged children until the donors who became aware of and inspired by their work supported them and disseminated the information. All of their altruistic and bold initiatives made them to establish a well-known organization named “Social Action for Women” (SAW) extending the humanitarian services to the victims of gender violence and child abuse, people living with HIV and street children. Mae Sot- home of stateless people Mae Sot, a town where over 100,000 migrants and refugees from Myanmar inhabit, showcased a community that have been struggling to survive and thrive around diverse challenges and issues including poverty, infectious diseases, human trafficking, child abuse, violence and identity crisis. Burmese and Karen people migrated to this area to make a living or to flee from the civil wars and conflicts. They were not considered as Thai citizens and could not go back to Myanmar becoming the ‘stateless people’ who were rejected the privileges of recognized citizenship. Zooming in through the lens of education, being unrecognized by both countries, the migrant schools in Mae Sot primarily aim to genuinely educate the people to become ready for their survival rather than delivering accreditation or degrees. Some students from the migrant schools went to Myawaddy ( a Myanmar town close to Thai border) to take the exams from Myanmar while some others took GED tests to continue their study in Thailand . However, most of the students work for a living in the town after finishing the migrant education. Therefore, basically, there are two basic categories of migrant schools- one preparing for the Thailand Education and another one preparing for Myanmar education although there are still a lot of challenges in helping their students to become graduated, to gain the citizenship and to be eligible to continue their study or to look for the employment opportunities. What SAW has been doing Started with care upon one child, Social Action for Women (SAW) has been coordinating six safe houses for specific beneficiaries majority of which are vulnerable women and children. There are 93 orphans in their orphanage safe house and SAW has been providing them shelter, healthcare, proper nutrition and education. They have built a school from kindergarten to Grade 6 (K-6) and planning to extend to secondary education. Moreover, the children and youth who were once on the streets and grown up with drug dealing and crimes joined the safe house in SAW for their education and tried for taking the exams from Thailand or Myanmar. What really touched me was during my first visit to the orphanage housing that there were a lot of children coming out and trying to touch me. For them, even the human contact seemed very rare and how they quietly holding my hands and sitting on my thighs proved how much they were longing for love and care. Min Min then told me the stories of these children, which were very sad, in fact, and how he had been trying to provide them proper care, education and support till they became adults. I also visited to the place where HIV-infected women and children stayed and witnessed how these people were strong enough to stand on their own feet and supported each others. It's encouraging to see the lovely clothes and handicrafts they had been making and chatting to each other in laughter in stead of giving up their hopes and dwelling in melancholy. I visited to SAW twice during my stay in Mae Sot and the unique experience of the visit will probably be how the bold actions have allowed them to make an impact in their community. They did not have any resource or plan to run a non-profit organization, yet their passion and genuine concern for others let them make it happen and it really moved me since I had been dwelling in excuses rather than following my dream. During Asia Education Summit, I’ve learned a number of innovative projects being implemented all around Asia and it’s been a huge plus for me to see the ones working in Myanmar as well. One of them is "Myanmar Mobile Education Project (MyME)" which has been providing education opportunity to over 750 child laborers in Yangon and Mandalay. The culture of teashop is widespread throughout the country and there are thousands in number within in a single city, Yangon. They are small road- or alley-side restaurants where local people come regularly for daily tea, coffee and snacks. Almost all of them are “manned” by children who have been forced into servitude with extremely low wages. Although child labor is illegal and unacceptable, it’s unfair to blame the families for putting the children to work without considering the existing challenges that played as the root causes. And, it cannot be solved by doing legal action without providing alternative solution. For example, one policeman requested the people not to ask to take action to those child labor cases and they had no other choice but to put these children into jail. while they knew that it would never stop or solve the problem, they have no other choice. MyME has been the first mobile education project in Myanmar bringing the classroom to the child laborers. They’ve used the old school buses as the mobile classrooms that came to the teashops and the buses equipped with the internet and the empowered teachers have been the beginning step for the learning opportunity for those children. The project empowered the teashop owners and the teashops themselves became converted the classrooms after working hours. To me, it’s an inspiring project, since they acknowledged the existing challenges of the context and tried to build the gap rather than following the traditional approaches. Empowering the community should come up with the understanding of the community at first and acknowledging the existing challenges. With the poor economy of the country which led the families to struggle for a living, child labor is an inevitable by-product which cannot be solved by means of child rights alone, and all the measures and actions in the livelihood, education and social security need to be considered, I believe.
"There’s no greater violence than to deny the dreams of the children.” (Kailash Satyarthi) It’s a statement made by the Nobel Peace Prize winner who has devoted his life in advocating for the rights and protection of the children. It’s also the core of the 3-day summit that I’ve bee privileged to attend: " Asian Education Summit: Flexible Learning Strategies for Out-of-School Children” in which more than 550 development workers, government officials, educational practitioners and social entrepreneurs from 22 Asian countries gathered and shared the innovative strategies in reaching the out-of-school children around Asia. There are approximately 17.3 million out-of-school children in Asia-Pacific which includes the some of the most marginalized groups: girls in societies with extreme gender inequality, children infected with HIV, children with disabilities, children in remote areas unserved by schools, migrant and nomadic people and ethnic and linguistic minorities. The summit is an extension of the project “Strengthening Education Systems for Out-of-School Children”, organized by UNESCO Bangkok with the funding and support of Educate A Child (EAC). The project targets nine Southeast Asian countries where the challenges around out-of-school children are particularly acute: the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Vietnam, Indonesia, Myanmar, Malaysia, and Timor-Leste. The project aims to address their educational needs regardless of their nationality or ethnicity through flexible learning strategies. There are four areas of focus in the project: research and knowledge sharing, regional policy advocacy, regional capacity building, and promoting flexible learning strategies. The project has been expanded to include all Asian sub-regions to spur greater collaboration in flexible learning strategies for young learners. It has been really special to me that I’ve been able to have a glance and learn the different models, approaches and strategies that have been being used in initiatives to reach the children who have been denied to access to basic education. It has become an undeniable fact that school enrollment alone does not necessarily reflect the education status of a country and we need to consider the patterns of enrollment and drop-out, quality of teaching in schools and all the other factors that affect the quality of education being provided. "We need more than just a league table on learning” One of the biggest lessons from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is the critical role of benchmarking the progress. The indicators are inspiring and daunting and helped as the first step of a monitoring framework. But, benchmarking alone is not helpful and sometimes even harmful. It can demotivate the low ranking countries and lead them to superficial copying of high performer’s practice. It’s all about “context” which has already been complex by nature and it became more obvious when we have a look at how education has been addressed in Sustainable Development Goals in comparison with the MDGs. During last week, I had an opportunity to visit and interview with the faculty members from Assumption University and one of the highlights has been the conversation with Dr. Derek Pornsima who is retired from the Ministry of Education and currently working as one of the senior instructors of the Assumption University.
Looking at the history of more than one decade of service as the Director of Education Reform at the Ministry of Education, Dr. Derek has played a pivotal role in the education reform of Thailand. While this made me difficult in addressing the failure of Thailand Education reform as I saw it, to my surprise, he frankly mentioned, “It failed.” Thailand National Education Act was established in August of 1999, but it became effective only after July 7, 2003, the first day of implementation. During the four-year interval, the Ministry of Education took the time to introduce the new Education Act to become adopted by the teachers and accepted by the parents. The public awareness programs were done through radio, television, wall posters, handbooks and several other forms of media and communication channels. Considering the well-descripted Education Act followed by proper induction to the teachers, the positive impact of it upon the Thailand Education has been not so encouraging. What went wrong with this promising policy followed by proper capacity building to the teachers? What’s the blind spot that has been missing? The first reason has been the role of veterans and authority figures in the faculties and institutions. The awareness of the teachers and the public, especially the parents has been largely considered and properly promoted. However, shifting the widely established teacher-centered pedagogies into student-centered one was not so welcomed and readily accepted or adopted by the professors, school administrators and faculty members who were in charge in the schools and institutions. Even being the president of the teacher council, Dr. Derek experienced huge resistance in driving the reform. Secondly, the teachers, themselves, had already received short-termed trainings and workshops, but expecting them to develop the brand new curricula with student-centered facilitation practices is way too overwhelming especially when they were not provided enough autonomy and support. He pointed out this fact by comparing with how Vietnam government supported their teachers. Vietnam government spent the budget to send 300 young and energetic teachers to Singapore as interns in the schools. These teachers had a great deal of experience witnessing how day-to-day classroom management had been done, how the curricula, activities and exams were designed to maximize the individual student’s potential. The impact of such great experience became that the Vietnamese students ranked 15th in the worldwide PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) test in 2012, above countries like New Zealand, Norway, United Kingdom and United States. This promising result motivated Vietnam to send 30,000 teachers to Singapore in 2014. Dr. Derek proposed the similar teacher development program to the Minister of Education, but it has not been approved due to the budget constraints, especially after the terminated “One tablet per child” policy. As of 2014, Thailand government has already spent 21% of budget in education sector for over 3700 schools in which more than 600,000 teachers across the country and they didn’t see the strong political view to spend more in education. The culture, while it sounds complete abstract, has been playing a critical role in every community and in education, the deeply enrooted notions and values shaped the practice in the schools and institution. As for example, one has been the power distance between teacher and students that discourage the students to step up in learning process and another has been the perspective upon critical thinking. Unless it has been clearly understood that the core of critical thinking is to challenge the ‘idea’, not to the ‘person’, the inquiries, questions and voices from the students would not be appreciated. Dr. Derek proposed MOE to put new standards in recruiting the new teachers while keeping the old teachers untouched, but it was not approved, either. It has become more obvious to me that changing the practice of the teachers across the country cannot be expected to achieve immediately after short-termed trainings or programs. It’s a long-term effort and one argument has been the teachers, themselves, had already had too much in their hands to settle and they haven’t got enough time to develop new culture on their own against all odds. On the other hand, the design of student-centered classrooms itself allows to share some of the tasks from the teacher to the students. Change cannot be expected to happen in fortnight, especially when it challenges the cultural values. But, still, it’s not impossible and it's only a matter of time and effort, I believe. “Education shall be based on the principal that all learners are capable of learning and self-development, and are regarded as being most important. The teaching-learning process shall aim at enabling the learners to develop themselves at their own pace and the best to their potentiality.”
This is what has been written in the Section (22) of the Thailand Education Act (1999). While it clearly mentioned the emphasis of student-centered learning to maximize the potential of individual students, there are still a lot of challenges in implementing the vision into practice. I haven’t got a chance to actually witness how the teaching and facilitation take place in classrooms and to what extent the students are treated as unique individuals and their talents and interests have been acknowledged. But, from the interviews that I’ve had so far, I understood that except some innovative private schools, the Thailand Education as a whole is still teacher-centered and huge power difference between teachers and students. Considering the encouraging national Education Act and the respectable spending in education (21% compared to 11.5% in Myanmar), I was curious why there had been little shift or impact in the Thailand education during last 16 years. One of the government’s most popular policies, “One Tablet Per Child” has been terminated in 2014, and I found that apart from poor quality devices and corruption, the lack of sufficient teacher development training in accordance with the newly adopted blended learning strategies led the failure of a famous policy that even Google’s Eric Schmidt once praised. This fact has been stated and emphasized also by Dr. Derek Pornsima who had worked as the Director of Education Reform in the Ministry of Thailand for more than a decade. I will upload a separate post about the interview with him. During last few weeks, the questions that I would like to be exploring throughout my exploratory journey have been- How can we allow the individual students to explore their needs and areas of interests? How can we create a supportive environment that will enable them to grow to their full potential? How can the education equip the students with the necessary skills in today labor market? I had an opportunity to meet with Dr. Arisara Leksansern who is the Program Director of Educational Management Program from Mahidol University and learn about the Thailand Education, which has been established upon the National Education Act (1999). And, I visited to the Phatamnak school, founded by Princess Chakri Sirindhorn. It’s a popular school, and an initiative act to help underprivileged children. The school adopted the core curriculum from the Ministry of Education and tried to adapt it with the local content. They are trying to reduce classroom hours and emphasize more on extracurricular activities, but regarding the process of inquiry, it’s still teacher-centered as far as I found out. I was not permitted to reach to the classrooms and see the students. Hopefully, I will be able to make it in the future which will allow me better understanding of the real life classroom. |
AuthorHtet is a medical doctor from Myanmar working at the development sector with strong passion in education sector Archives
April 2016
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