ພາສາລາວ
Literature and research around the world state that the quality of a teacher has a direct impact on student learning outcomes. To improve the learning outcomes of children in primary schools in Laos, it is important to act at the beginning of the learning-teaching journey by improving both the quality and relevance of the primary teacher training curriculum and the training of the teacher educators to deliver that curriculum. This is the rationale behind the BEQUAL-supported Professional Development Program (PDP).
The PDP program is organised around bi-annual intensive workshops when key teacher educators from the eight Teacher Training Colleges (TTC) gather for two weeks. The first PDP workshop organised in August 2017 in Luang Prabang Province was followed by a second one in early February 2018, in Savannakhet Province.
For most of the workshops, the teacher educators are divided into subjects and each group goes in depth into the specificities of their subject, both in terms of subject content and pedagogical knowledge. Between the two workshops, the key teacher educators disseminate their new learning to their subject colleagues in the TTC and organize activities around classroom observations, lesson study and study groups, explains Mr Keth Phanhlack, Acting Director General, Department of Teacher Education, MoES.
Learning from classroom observations is central to this approach. “We brought the teacher educators into primary schools to conduct classroom observations to get a better understanding of real situations in classrooms in primary schools and to build their own experience of teaching young children and the challenges faced by the teachers in a classroom”, points out Mrs Khamkhuane Vannasouk, the BEQUAL Education Coordinator working closely with the Department of Teacher Education. Results from the teacher educator training needs analysis carried out from September 2015 to January 2016 informed this approach. It highlighted that the majority of TTC lecturers have little experience in teaching in primary classrooms and that a strong focus on the practice of teaching in the primary classroom was essential to the PDP.
Mr Sonekeo Thipphavanh, Deputy Head of Acedemic Affairs at Khang Khai TTC and teacher educator for Lao language and literature, is one of the participants in the PDP program. “When I came back to Khang Khai TTC, I organised four classroom observations with my colleagues teaching Lao language. We listed the key findings from our observations and picked the issues we wanted to focus on in our study group. For example, how could we train the teacher to help the children struggling with spelling?”