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01/04/2014

Looking back on the Science, Environmental and Agricultural Life Skills Programme in Cambodia

From 2008 to 2013 VVOB has implemented the Science, Environmental and Agricultural Life skills (SEAL) programme, in close cooperation with the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport of Cambodia. After 6 years implementation we are looking back on the fruitful impacts of our joint efforts with partners on education. In the course of this article we highlight a number of tangible outcomes and impacts and indicate how we measured these achievements. Furthermore, we present recommendations and derive the way forwards.

Why We Do What We Do

At the start of the SEAL programme there was recognition that although Cambodia had made considerable progress towards the Education for All goals, there were remaining challenges. Challenges included poor teaching, poorly qualified teachers, inappropriate teaching materials and lack of teaching materials. Other challenges were to make learning attractive for families and their children and to enhance students’ problem solving skills.
Cambodia is a country in which the majority of the population depends on agriculture. Improving life skills subjects like growing organic vegetables, raising chicken and fish, and keeping your environment clean, makes learning relevant for people’s daily lives.

Gaining problem solving skills connects theory to practice and contributes to this relevance. A specific request from the Ministry was also to upgrade content knowledge and pedagogical skills of science teacher trainers at teacher training centres for lower secondary education. When science and life skills lessons are more interactive and demand students to work together and solve problems together it keeps students motivated in their learning process.

All of this lead to the overall objective of the programme: improving the quality of education through strengthening pre-service teacher training on science subjects, environmental and agricultural life skills for primary and lower-secondary level.

Core Strategy: Technical Assistance

Teacher trainers and student teachers at teacher training institutions, as well as primary and lower secondary school teachers, were the target group of the programme. We ultimately aim at reaching the pupils at primary and lower-secondary schools.

The programme started its pilot phase at two selected teacher training institutions in 2008. We focused on capacity building of teacher trainers and development of education resources. VVOB organised input trainings for core teams of teacher trainers. Then we did follow up training workshop to try-out and fine tune our innovations in teaching methods and in developed teaching resources. The scaling up phase started in 2011 until the completion of the programme in 2013. The core team then provided input trainings to larger groups of teacher trainers from other teacher training institutions in the country. At least once a year, our core team embarked on a journey to provide follow-up support to teacher trainers at different teacher training institutions.

Besides workshops and follow-up visits, the programme invited teacher trainers and officials from relevant departments to attend international conferences in the region. During the course of the programme, we also invited expertise of education institution in Flanders such as the Artevelde University College and KU Leuven. Subject experts in physics and biology provided support in the form of inputs training workshop and technical revision of developed materials.

Outcomes and Impact

So what has changed through all these trainings, workshops, study visits and follow up activities? A survey held in July 2013 shows that 95% of all involved teacher trainers have a sufficient level of understanding on how to integrate technological, pedagogical and content knowledge in science and life skills teaching. Furthermore 95% of teacher trainers encourage student teachers to apply the student centred approach during their teaching practice.

Lesson observations showed that life skills teachers use an average of 2 or 3 different student centred approaches per lesson. Techniques demonstrated frequently are group work, demonstration and educational games. Also in science teaching, the programme measured an improved usage of teaching methodologies (see the below graph).

Graph: Improved use of Student Centred-Approaches

During the implementation, the Teacher Training Department with assistance of VVOB revised the curriculum for teacher training, which led to assigning an appropriate number of teaching hours for studying student centred approaches, environment and agriculture. Among the revised elements, references to developed teacher training materials explicitly secured a good position in the revised curriculum.

Students now grow organic vegetables in 21 out of all 24 teacher training centres (88%). As for fish and chicken raising, they are actively involved in 16 out of the 24 and segregating waste in 22 out of 24 teacher training centres (91%).

The programme also strengthened the capacity of Ministry staff in developing an online webpage for exchange and dissemination of educational resources for teachers. The website is now fully under the management of the Ministry.

Finally the programme strengthened the monitoring capacity of pre-service teacher training by MoEYS departments; in particular the Teacher Training Department.

Mr Leav Ora, director of the Teacher Training Centre in Siem Reap mentioned at the end of the programme: “Teaching quality is the most important aspect that we have to pay attention to. Within the VVOB programme, the teaching quality has improved because we have connected theory and practice.”

Monitoring and Evaluation

The Teacher Training Department, core teacher trainers and VVOB formed Trainer of Trainer teams. These so called ToT teams worked together to monitor and evaluate progress. In the early stages VVOB took up a leading role but later on the ToT teams were actively collecting data related to science and life skills teaching and learning and involved in providing feedback to teacher trainers and school directors.

The ToT teams administered a number of monitoring tools. Annually, the team used all tools in order to measure impact over the duration of the programme (see Table 3). Monitoring and evaluation can be very time consuming and taking up time that can better be spent on capacity building activities. Where possible VVOB and the Teacher Training Department tried to measure impact using existing processes like the lesson observations and lesson plans student teachers use in their teaching practicum.

To do the lesson observations the programme developed a lesson observation form. This form has now become one of the official tools for Teacher Training Centres. In the new programme VVOB will continue to support the improvement ofmonitoring and evaluation tools, following the request from the Teacher Training Department.

Lessons Learnt

The involvement of teacher trainers and the Ministry of Education Youth and Sport from early stages has benefitted the impact of the programme. Communication between the partners and VVOB is good which makes it possible to comply with their needs. The developed teaching manuals are in line with the existing curriculum.

Mr Chea Phon, vice director of the Teacher Training Department mentions: “The programme contributes to the improvement of education quality. Although the SEAL programme is phasing out, the activities will continue as they have been integrated into the curriculum already.This means that the Ministry consolidates the outcomes of the VVOB programme at all teacher training institutions annually.”

VVOB relies as much as possible on local knowledge and skills available during the capacity building processes. The programme only introduces innovations and technologies that meet the local circumstances and contexts.

Within the programme it proved to be important to prioritise the topics and scope. It is better not to be too ambitiousand have a strong impact, as opposed to organising many different activities on a wide scale of topics and not having a strong impact. It also proved to be effective to balance the number of workshops with follow-up activities such as lesson study and mentoring to build capacity.

View to the Future

The start of SEAL programme based itself in making education relevant for people’s daily lives. We have seen that life skills and science teacher trainers apply a more student centred approach in their teaching. Following this good example, student teachers intend to apply what they have learnt from their life skills and science lessons in their future schools. They have made good improvements in their pedagogical content knowledge.

We have received positive messages from student teachers. Van Youyen, a science student teacher from Prey Veng says: “I have gained a lot of knowledge especially about student-centred approaches and ICT. For example I understand the contents of melting and solidifying clearly, so I am confident that I can give an equally clear lesson.”

Ya Ying, student teacher in Siem Reap mentions: “I want pupils to protect the environment. For example, I teach them how to segregate the waste. Moreover, I want them to know how to earn a living by growing vegetable and raising animals.”

The VVOB programme did not take science teachers trainers for primary education on board yet. This will take place in the new programme 2014-2016.One intermediate result aims at strengthening pre-service teacher training for primary education in mathematics and science.

Upgrading the quality of teaching practice, as well as improving monitoring and planning of pre-service teacher training qualityby the Teacher Training Department are the other aims of the new programme.

By integrating the lessons learnt into the new VVOB programme we continue to ensure that education is relevant for all learners, and contributes to improving people’s daily lives.

You can watch interviews with key stakeholders and target groups of the VVOB Cambodia programme.

Authors: Mr Mono Keo, Ms Nget Sokhany, Ms Wanda Prins

Table 1: Target Groups reached

Institution Target group Reached value
6 RTTCs Teacher trainers 112
Management 18
Graduate student teachers/yr. 975
18 PTTCs Teacher trainers 84
Management 37
Graduate student teachers/yr. 2000
39 lower-secondary schools Teachers 312
Directors 39
54 Primary schools Teachers 330
Directors 54
Provincial Office of Education Technical staff 30
Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport Technical staff 30

Table 2: Overview educational resources

Educational resources Number Distributed copies
Manuals student centred approaches for science teaching 8 9,930
Science posters 93 16,500
DVDs science experiments 20 2,400
Interactive multimedia 208 150
Manuals student centred approaches for life skills teaching 8 24,760
Life skills posters 10 3,120
DVDs for life skills 14 1,740

Table 3: Monitoring & Evaluation tools Purpose

Monitoring and
Evaluation tools
Purpose
Observations of teacher trainers’ lessons Using the lesson observation form that was developed by VVOB and TTD. Feedback sessions after the lesson observations were helping teacher trainers to further improve their pedagogical skills.
A survey for all involved teacher trainers Measuring the use of student centred approaches, teaching aids, and remaining challenges in teaching and learning.
Asking teacher trainers to review themselves has a risk of not collecting objective information. Therefore results of the survey were crosschecked during interviews with student teachers and school directors.
Interviews with all involved school directors Asking noticeable improvements at the teacher training centres, in the teacher trainers and student teachers abilities of applying student centred approaches in science and life skills lessons.
In-depth interviews with a random selection of graduate student teachers Asking their experiences with student centred approaches applied by their teacher trainers, and their intentions to use what they have learnt in their future schools.
Focus group interviews with teacher trainers Finding out their views on the developed teaching materials and their experience with applying the new teaching methodologies. Recommendations from teacher trainers were taken on board where possible to increase the impact of the programme.
Analysis of lesson plans of student teachers from their teaching practice Using a rubric to be able to score the quality of lesson plans objectively
Logbooks on the use of ICT. Promoting the use of multimedia in lessons was a part of the SEAL programme. Logbooks accompanying the projectors present in the colleges, were the tool to measure the use of digital multimedia applications in the classroom.