Education plays a very important role for people all over the world. There are a lot of strategies to develop education quality. One way to do that, is strengthening the quality of the teacher. VVOB Cambodia cooperates with Ministry of Education Youth and Sport (MoEYS), particularly Teacher Training Department, to enhance the teacher trainers on effective feedback.
How to become a teacher in Cambodia?
To become a teacher at a primary school or lower secondary school the candidate has to pass the entrance examination and attend a two-year course of training at targeted TTCs. In the whole country, there are 18 PTTCs and 6 RTTCs. Currently there are 540 teacher trainers at PTTCs and 320 teacher trainers at RTTCs with the total student teachers 1500 both PTTCs and RTTCs. During the two years training course student teachers have to complete the subjects such as Khmer, Mathematics, Science, Social studies, ICT, and foreign language with two times of teaching practicum in the first year and in the second year.
The student teacher teaches, the teacher trainer takes notes
All very impressive, but there is just one problem. When student teachers apply their teaching skills they’ve learnt in a classroom full of pupils, it is difficult to do it perfectly. This is logical, because they are new and fresh teachers. Student teachers need support from teacher trainers, and this is where VVOB and MoEYS come in. While the new teacher is teaching, the teacher trainer takes notes and points out the strong points and what can still be improved. Afterwards, the student teacher and the teacher trainer have a short meeting with each other to discuss the achievements.
A feedback challenge
According to the baseline data, collected by VVOB, most of the teacher trainers have a lack of feedback skills. In order to improve the quality of feedback, VVOB and MoEYS organise two activities regularly, to overthrow this problem. First of all, VVOB and MoEYS provide training on qualitative teaching practicum and feedback session. Secondly,VVOB and MoEYS organise follow-up visits by Teacher Trainers.
From theory to practice
During the training on qualitative teaching and feedback, MoEYS and VVOB conducted 17 nationwide training to 1200 participants from 18 PTTCs and 6 RTTCs. There are three main reasons, why these trainings are organised. First of all, we want participants to gain more knowledge on the importance of feedback and feedback tools. These tools include active listening, mirroring and involved confronting. We want participants to understand the organisational aspects that are required for qualitative mentoring and we intent to apply those to enhance the quality of teaching practicum. Last but not least, we want participants to practice their mentoring skills and we want them to learn how to build up a mentoring session.
Teacher Trainers are trained on how to give a qualitative feedback to student teachers. During the three days’ sessions, participants are actively involved and share their prior knowledge and skills in giving feedbacks. Eventually, participants practise giving feedbacks to student teachers at demonstration schools.
Why follow-up visits?
VVOB and its partners had already done two follow up visits. The first follow-up was conducted in March 2015 and the second in June 2015.
Follow-up visits are organised to achieve three goals. First of all, we observe mentoring sessions done by teacher trainers to student teachers during teaching practice. Why? To see if teacher trainers give the right feedback to the student teachers, so they know what can be improved or what is already perfect. Secondly, we want to support teacher trainers to apply effective feedback session during the mentoring sessions. Last but not least, we want to collect feedbacks from teacher trainers related to mentoring and feedback, so we can evaluate the results we achieved.
Was it worth it? Yes!
According to the above follow-up visits we found that teacher trainers had applied their skill in the right way. Most of them impressed that the mentoring session is very important and new for them. We will definitely go on with the feedback sessions.
In conclusion, feedback skill is a significant method to improve the education quality. The nationwide training on feedback skill, plus the gentle pressure put on the mentors through the follow up visit is the appropriate way of capacity development activities. Because of the feedback training and follow up visit, 70% of teacher trainers of all PTTCs had strengthened their skill for effective feedback during teaching practicum.
