Teacher is the determinant
"No matter how good the new Early Childhood Education Curriculum is, the key actors, who guarantee the quality of curriculum implementation, are preschool teachers". Assoc. Dr. Nguyen Ba Minh - Director of the Department of Early Childhood Education, Ministry of Education and Training shared at the seminar "Development of a new Early Childhood Education program.” In support of this statement, VVOB has implemented the BAMI project to develop capacity for preschool teachers in the Quang Nam, Quang Ngai, and Kontum provinces for the last 5 years.
The BaMi project has conducted the “Effective school-based teacher professional development, to improve capacity for school leaders and teachers” approach on the topics: process-oriented monitoring, learning through play, gender-responsive pedagogy, language-rich learning environment, and safe school environments. For an effective in-service teacher professional capacity development, the approach does not only focus on transferring new TPD content, but importantly, it provides knowledge to preschool leaders on how to create an enabling learning environment for teachers.
Ms. Bui Thi Hoa – Official of Nam Giang district’s Bureau of Education and Training, in Quang Nam noted that “Professional development for teachers includes not only implementing the school’s professional plans, but also understanding teachers’ needs and organizing professional meetings that meet those needs. During the development process, teachers are at a high well-being level and can feel that they are owning their development process.”
With that approach, VVOB and Departments of Education and Training have successfully carried out numerous professional development activities for teachers. Those activities have been delivered in different forms and formats, such as trainings, workshops to share experiences and good practices, exposure visits among districts, coaching, and professional meetings. When participating in these capacity development activities, the school leaders and teachers have an opportunity to discuss and share ideas and relate to reality in schools and classes.
Positive changes
In-service teacher professional development activities in provinces have shown positive changes.
“School leaders have started to adjust their traditional way in approaching the TPD activities at school to the new one: organizing activities to help teachers adopt a new TPD mindset, and create an enabling environment for their teachers, to experiment with new initiatives and to share experiences,” Ms. Nguyen Thi Nhu Quynh – Deputy Head of ECE-Primary department, Department of Education and Training, Kon Tum province said.
According to Ms. Do Thi Cam Nhung – Deputy Head of Tra Bong district’s Bureau of Education and Training “School leaders have adapted the new in-service TPD approach, in which teachers are facilitators of discussion. This helps the in-service TPD activities in preschools match the needs of teachers, therefore, teachers’ capacity has been improved accordingly.”
The obvious result for improving teachers’ capacity is that positive changes have happened in the classroom, for example, class activities are more attractive to children. Some of the notable techniques that teachers have been starting to use in the classroom are: asking open questions to stimulate children’s thinking, observing and reflecting on children’s well-being and involvement level, and taking necessary interventions for children who have a low level of well-being.
This article was aired on vietnamnet.vn. Click here to read this the original Vietnamese version.
