Quality Teaching
Quality Education Driven by Quality Teaching
The Quality Teaching Focus Area develops confident and competent communities of teachers committed to quality teaching and ongoing professional development.
Our team teaches Cambodian teachers the school curriculum, and best practice teaching methodologies. In order to improve their skills, however, teachers need more than just workshops. They need ongoing support to ensure that they are putting their learning into practice. SeeBeyondBorders is the only organisation in Cambodia that trains existing teachers to become mentors, so that they can guide fellow teachers to improve their performance.
Our Quality Teaching Focus Area hinges on two factors:
- Firstly, our ability to train: We train teachers, train mentors, train mentors to become senior mentors and train senior mentors to train mentors, not forgetting training our own staff. Training is central.
- Secondly, the quality of our resources: We produce quality teaching resources in the form of reference material for teachers including activity books for different maths strands, daily guides in literacy, as well as maths and literacy classroom resources. We also provide training guides and associated materials.
Core
Program
We implement the Quality Teaching Program, running workshops and mentoring to support teachers.
Transition
Program
We select Senior Mentors from within schools, and they are trained to start running the Quality Teaching Program themselves.
Maintenance
Program
We hand over responsibility to the school staff and local community who are now capable of providing in service support for their teachers wthout the aid of SeeBeyondBorders.
Literacy
In 2017 The Cambodian Ministry of Education carried out Early Grade Reading Assessments. The results were startling with “half of Cambodian children in grades 1 and 2 unable to read a single familiar word”.
The teaching of reading in Cambodian schools typically focuses on memorising vast numbers of letter combinations and words in isolation rather than in context. We want to ensure that every child leaves school with the ability to read and write in their own language. The goal of SeeBeyondBorders’ Literacy Program is to improve the professional knowledge, practice and engagement of teachers teaching literacy. It incorporates reading, writing, listening and speaking. We have introduced teaching techniques used in other phonologically based writing systems and adapted them to suit the unique Khmer context. This approach has the potential to revolutionise Khmer literacy teaching so that students can learn in a more intuitive and engaging way, reading for meaning and with enjoyment. The Literacy Program has been operational in 5 schools in Ek Phnom District since 2017. Our overall aim is to effect systemic change in the Cambodian education system, adding literacy to both our maths and mentoring programs.
Our pilot year was highly successful, with 92% of students receiving a score of 50% or higher in the Observational Survey. In the control school not a single student received a score of 50% or above.