At the beginning of the programme "Schools as actors of change” in Ecuador we foresaw working with five provinces first, and later on with ten. And so it started. At the level of teacher training 17 agreements were signed with Spanish and Indigenous colleges, as well as with some universities that train teachers. A period of intense and unique cooperation followed, based on mixed work groups and priorities of teacher training institutes.
This came to a sudden end in March 2010. The Ministry of Education preferred us to support in national politics. VVOB would assist in starting up a new National University of Education and an external evaluation of all teacher training in the country. With the support of a new law on Higher Education we managed to change the external control into a kind of self-evaluation, a system for quality control. This required a complete change in attitude, however, from both the Ministry of Education, that used to direct the teacher training, and the colleges themselves. The latter were used to simply implement what they were told to do.
Because of our previous experience with teacher training, we could easily help make the transition to a different, more participatory approach. Since August 2010 a new coordination group with representatives from the Ministry, UNESCO and VVOB collaborated with the 28 pedagogical institutes to work out a system for quality control.
The result is a digital system of (self-) questioning, unique to Ecuador and the teacher training. Based on the results, improvement plans will follow. The challenge ahead is for each teacher training to lay its own accents and to have them manage the system themselves. But in the meantime a new University of Education has to be launched...
Stijn Janssen
Coordinator Teacher Education, VVOB Ecuador
