Sustainable Peacebuilding and Social Justice in Times of Transition: Findings on the Role of Education in Myanmar

This chapter focuses on the challenges and possibilities of teacher education reforms, setting these against the backdrop of current developments in processes of teacher governance and accountability, and curriculum reform of basic education as well as broader political economy dynamics. A particular strength of the analysis is its rootedness in the views and perspectives of a range of stakeholders in Yangon and Mon State including teachers, teacher educators and state officials as well as concrete case studies of interventions and initiatives that highlight key issues. These include the challenges of teacher education reform; the diversity of approaches by local and international agencies; the different positioning of teachers within the formal and ethnic systems of education provision; the constraints and possibilities of addressing issues related to peacebuilding; and the dangers of an uncritical and decontextualized deployment of international models of teacher accountability and pedagogy. Introduction While focusing primarily on teacher education and reform initiatives affecting teachers, this chapter firstly locates these within the context of wider issues related to teacher governance and accountability. It highlights the legacy of centralised and authoritarian control over teachers’ work and discusses recent initiatives towards decentralising teacher governance to townships. It also spotlights continuing inequalities in the distribution of resources to schools in remote and marginalised areas, as well as between schools in the formal and parallel education systems – including the monastic sector and ethnic education systems; and the resulting challenges experienced by teachers deployed to these contexts. Secondly, it reflects on recent initiatives to enhance teacher accountability again highlighting context-specific challenges and possibilities. The third section starts out by looking at macro level systemic issues related to teacher education. It clarifies the current avenues for training and professional development available to diverse constituencies of teachers in a complex and fractured landscape of provision. It then reviews current teacher education curricula, pinpoints areas requiring reform, while also highlighting the challenging cultural political economy context that shapes and constrains the possibilities for change. Indeed, since the writing of this paper, elections in November 2015 have given the National League for Democracy a majority of seats in Parliament. The findings 1 Corresponding author: Sean Higgins, University of Amsterdam, s.higgins@uva.nl reported in this chapter, like those of other contributions to this book, are based on data gathered prior to this change during the rule of the USDP government which is referenced throughout the text. Attention to the curricula of teacher education is followed by more micro level analysis drawing from four case studies of teacher education initiatives developed by international and local actors. These highlight a diversity of entry points and approaches and provide insights for further reflections on how such interventions address the peacebuilding agency of teachers, as well as their strengths and weaknesses in relation to achieving coherence, sustainability and context-responsiveness. The fourth section discusses an ambitious project for curricula reform at primary level with important implications for reforming teaching practices. The chapter draws on the voices and viewpoints of a range of actors including teachers, teacher trainers, head teachers, international actors, education officials and community based stakeholders – in the Mon and Yangon areas of Myanmar. It also spotlights various dimensions of teacher education and its wider context including issues of governance and accountability, curricula content, as well as the cultural political economy factors (as introduced as an analytical framing in Chapter 2) conditioning and constraining reform. Bringing these various lenses and perspectives together, along with concrete references to current and ongoing interventions that illuminate key issues, it reveals the complexity, challenges and possibilities of teacher education reform in contemporary Myanmar. A Note on Methodology: Talking to Teachers in Myanmar The research consortium spoke to 115 teacher related respondents including head teachers, teachers and teacher trainers between January and April 2015. Local researchers conducted all interviews in Burmese and, where necessary, in Mon language. They were aware of the reticence of teachers to discuss their work and feelings and the consequent challenge of engaging teachers in a dialogue. This may be may be understood as a product of teachers’ experience of a centralised and authoritarian management structure, discussed below, which does not encourage teachers to express individual viewpoints. Teacher Governance and the Legacy of Centralisation In Myanmar, the historical legacy of a strongly centralised and authoritarian system of governance and control has and to a great extent still impacts on the way teachers and teacher educators are managed. This is especially true of the country’s formal education system of teacher recruitment, deployment, and training (detailed below), while in contrast the parallel education systems including the Monastic sector and the ethnic education systems seem to be more responsive to locally defined demands of communities. Some of the teacher educator interviewees expressed how the centrally controlled system by the national government undermines the ability to effectively meet the needs of a wide diversity of local communities, while at the same time paying little attention to the needs and priorities of its teacher educator force. One informant pointed out that teacher educators were moved around the country in militaristic fashion “like an army” (int. 102). With current (still minimal) shifts to more decentralised forms of governance, data from Mon state suggests that township education officers felt somewhat more ownership over the monitoring aspects of teacher’s work, feeding in to slowly changing forms of accountability. UNICEFs Township Education Improvement Plan is directly intending to support this shift, through building the capacity of township education officials in Mon state. As mentioned by one township education official, “now we are supporting the facilities for the children to have equality in education for all the children including the ethnic people and the Mon national schools” (int. 39). Nevertheless, some officers mentioned feeling rather constrained within existing centrally controlled forms of decision-making on other aspects of teacher governance (recruitment, deployment and remuneration), as it is yet unclear what authorities they can exercise with regards to teacher accountability. Furthermore, our data suggests there may be a possibility of the misuse of newly gained decision-making power by township education officers to be driven by personal whim, rather than strategic decisionmaking that supports inclusive collective needs. The Deployment of Resources and Teachers: Challenges and Inequities A related issue with regard to teacher governance, which is the perceived imbalance in the distribution of educational resources between teachers working in the state and ethnic and/or monastic systems. As further illustrated in the case studies in Chapter 8, our data shows how those educators in remote areas or otherwise marginalised positions (being part of a non-government school system) felt undermined by a lack of resources (textbooks, classroom furniture), as well as human resource matters (training, enough teacher staff etc.) (ints. 15 and 110). One informant from the monastic sector highlighted the inability of principals to meet the needs of large numbers of rural children who wish to pursue their education beyond primary level. Because of the lack of investment in middle level schools these students tend to drop out (int.15). A recent report (WCRP & HURFOM, 2015) on education provision in Mon rural communities confirms the low resource constraints, teacher shortages, and poor school infrastructure in village schools. Reinforcing the findings outlined in Chapter 6, our data also confirmed a gendered impact in terms of deployment. As many teachers are single women those interviewed attributed this position to their not wanting to take up teaching posts in conflict-affected or remote areas where they felt isolated, far removed from their families and without structures of social support (ints. 122 and 123). Others also identified this as a cause of the lack of promotion for female teachers to positions of administrative authority as they were disadvantaged compared to male colleagues who received benefits from having spent time in ‘difficult’ schools, in conflict-affected and remote areas (int. 123). In relation to the deployment mechanisms, teachers and teacher educators interviewed largely felt unprepared and unsupported to meet the challenges of being deployed by central level government in any place around the country. Firstly, it was expressed how in remote areas teachers may be expected to teach various subjects and at different levels; something for which they often are not trained. A teacher trainer pointed out that: There are some challenges for some new teachers. In some cases, if it is remote areas or faraway places, there aren't enough teachers, so they have to teach 3-4 subjects. So, if you are specializing here in biology, maybe you might have to teach history or geography if there is lack of teachers. So that is challenge. And also, you are preparing as a senior assistant teacher but there [are] no teachers at the junior secondary school classes, so you have to teach the subjects that you are not familiar with. That is another challenge. Sometimes as a new teacher, you have to listen and follow [what] the princ