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For the Methodological Issues of Teaching Mongolian
Civic Education as a Subject
Bayasgalan Oyuntsetseg*I. BackgroundIn the past, the teacher who delivered the content of the textbook precisely have been
considered as a superior educator and memorizing or parrot-fashion approach of learning
was dominant. Nevertheless, by the new trend, the priority is given to teacher as a guide whoassists in students obtaining the knowledge and enabling them applying the knowledge asskills. According to the present principle, guided self study serves as a foundation to nurturingprospective, skilled and creative citizens. Education outcomes are measured by the citizen’scapability to leading active life in a society. In particular, learning outcomes should be nurturing
in children the creative learning that would enable them obtaining knowledge and skills rather
than earning good marks reproducing the information learned by heart.
The paper will discuss teaching methodology of Mongolian Education and focus on theﬁndings of the class observation and interaction between teacher and students.

II. Trainings Have Been Implementing on Teaching Methodology in Mongolia
In regard to the changes in requirements for education methods and technology andstakeholder responsibility modiﬁcation and participating in the education process, there is a needfor clariﬁcation of teacher’s responsibility for identifying new a paradigm on training trainedteachers and developing in-service and out service trainings for the teachers. Accordingly,
state funding and donor investment for supporting professional re-training programs for local
educators provided by different level institution of Mongolia has been increasing. As a result
number educators involved in the central and regional trainings increased moderately. Moreover,a big number of school administrators and teachers participated in numerous education
project implementations. Projects and initiatives implemented by different organizations suchas Education Development Program, Soros Foundation or Open Society Forum, Mongolia,UNICEF, JICA and DANIDA contributed signiﬁcantly to train the teachers. The training schemeof the primary and secondary education teachers designed to ensure sustainability and diversein terms of variety such as national, regional, in-service, out service and independent learning
to better address the needs of the teachers. An opportunity for accessing distance and informal
training is increasing and getting feasible.
*Mongolian National University

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Reform of methodology of teaching or didactics principles intensified at the major
universities and colleges including Education University, Teacher’s College that prepare trainedteachers. Moreover, consistently with the requirements above colleges some of actions are taken.
Some part of the grants of Fast Track Initiatives foundation, Development of learners’ study
skills initiative, JICA and Education development program was used for strengthening colleges
specialized in teacher training. Consequently, some key changes have resulted in teaching
attitude due to interventions. For instance, Metropolitan Education Department organized thefollowing workshops in the ﬁrst half of the 2011 for teachers of History, Social Science Studies
and Civilization, Geography as well as for the primary school teachers.
Table 1. Workshops in the ﬁrst half of the 2011
Principle

TopicsRights accessing education

Content
Human rights to accessing the education
Guidance on using the training handouts

History,Social& CivicStudies,
Geography

Issues on reform of history
education

Challenges in Mongolian history
Issues on historical phase of the world

Training courses for newteachers

Methodology of teaching History and Social ScienceStudies and Geography

Reform of curriculum ofGeography

Content of geography in interdisciplinary science
courseTheoretical aspects of theprofessionalism

Aspects of Basic and Complete Secondary school
reformMethodology of Analyzing
students knowledge

Course evaluation methodology

Improving learning outcome of a Planning a subject and content of civic education andper subject I
activities on supporting creativity of teachers
Primary
education

Improving learning outcome ofper subject II

Content of a subject and evaluation method

Co-operation of teacher andstudents

Application of prospective methods motivating
students and selecting effective methods of teaching

Source: “Schedule for workshops in the ﬁrst half of the 2011” 2011 Metropolitan Education Department

Despite these workshops numerous trainings focusing different aspects including the waysof improving efﬁciency of learning outcomes, methodology of motivating student’s interests tolearning, learning teaching or better delivery methods, psychological diagnostic approaches via
topics, designing and application of teaching facilities, encouraging creativity of learners andevaluation of learners’ knowledge& skills and capability. Moreover, the trainings covered issues
on establishing professional team and sharing best experiences on organizing methodologicalunit to teach the subjects by special topics.
Some of the workshops discussed issues on promoting education policy and legal
environment for educators, teacher development including preparation of teacher document set,
improvement of curriculum content to enable to encourage efﬁcient learning, and analyzing thecurriculum for further improvement.

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In the training section on impact of learning environment discussed policy documents
for conducting the key education programs of the Secondary School Education, curriculum &programs. Moreover, reform of teacher development scheme and speciﬁcs of communicationand practice to achieving best results were in the agenda. During the session on methodology ofdeveloping a subject curriculum and content there was a discussion on piloting and sharing bestexperiences of leading educators who achieved in developing learning skills of the students.

III. Analyzing Teaching Methods Based on the Experience
In recent year in Mongolia, the changes on methodology of teaching took a place andreplaced out of dated passive mannered teaching with the state of the art approaches such asindividual thinking, creativity and intensiveness and consideration of individuality of learners,
We conducted a study observing teaching of two subjects Civilization and Health which revealed
that the teacher mainly delivered the knowledge and provided instructions, and made thestudents memorize, but the students passively executed tasks and copied by design. Lack of free
discussion with the teacher, student’s motivation to creative learning & study observed during
the study. Despite these weaknesses some of novel approaches were used by teacher such asteam work, role play and debate.
Within the framework of the study, we observed “Time for morality” subject taught in aJapanese school. According to the Japanese education standard the subject was designed fortouching children’s emotionality, developing decision-making ability and encouraging them todemonstrate good wills. It was observed that involvement of students based on their interests
results in a positive results and attractive facilities and teaching aids attract them as well as
delighted learning environment immediately lead to learning process. The teaching methods
reﬂect on internal factors of learners such as student’s beneﬁt, affection, ambition, feelings andconﬁdence. Furthermore we observed the textbook of the subject and revealed that the textbook
hero was created in the way that learners could feel the characters and touch them with stories
described in the book. The following features are observed from “Time for morality” taught inJapan:
1. Pay attention on respecting other’s position and sharing experiences through mutual
understanding. The teacher did not directly explain opinion of characters in the textbook
rather guided them to guess and reﬂect on that via directing questions “how did he perceive
about it” or “how did he feel about it” encouraging open discussion to get feedback.
2. Time is given to the students after giving the question. Judgmental responses from teacher orfear of for being incorrect or blaming for disability to respond to the questions had no placein the classroom. Every response regarded and accepted by teacher and the current situation
could create open, free discussion among the students.
3. Mainly give priority to the students in summarizing and evaluation. The approach is
beneﬁcial for consolidation of obtained knowledge and make own decision and reﬂection on
the particular issue. “Subject evaluation form” and “note taking sheet” were widely used.
Sheet distributed during the class had special space for note taking that students used forsharing their reﬂections on content of the topics and their opinions to share with classmatesand for teacher it was useful to understand closely his/her students.

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4. Teacher could behave like as a ‘friend’ and approach to the question with the same position
as the students and embrace the same opinions. Teacher prefers sharing his/her experiences
and past stories rather the asking questions given in the textbook. Teacher often used phrases
such as “I don’t know all’, “ When I was a child…”, “ I don’t know exactly..”, ‘Let’s thinktogether..”, ‘Can you tell me or can teach me..” to convenience and persuade the students thatthey were learning together through the topic. In this case hesitation, fear to communicate
with the teacher, nervousness, poor self-conﬁdence had no place in the classroom. Creationof safe, open and joyful environment in the classroom improved student’s participation in theclass.
The above example shows how team learning with a teacher can make the creative
team learning rather being passive and obedient executor. The foundation for the positive
pedagogical relationship is mutual understanding, respect, creative co-operation and teachers’
professionalism. Such relationship identiﬁes entire teaching and learning content, teaching style
but not only ethics related subjects. Teacher’s behavior is the major impact on learners. The
success of the teaching is not measured by knowledge and expertise of the teacher, rather hiscapability to influence the students. Teacher’s personal character, behavior, voice are mucheffective than phrases and presentations of the particular topic. During the class we participatedfor observation, teacher used memories, jokes, games frequently. Teacher presented the narrativein artistic manner.
Compared to the above study the following approaches used in Secondary Schools ofMongolia:
1. Although the textbook contains tasks “discuss and reﬂect”, the discussion is conducted in
the way where teacher asks questions, the students respond them. The current discussion
is one sided and communication is maintained vertically from teacher to students. The new
approach such as team work is introduced in the teaching but the student feel uncomfortable
having free discussions and facing difﬁculty asking questions from each other, thus it is hard
to compare responses and point views provided by the students. In other words, informationexchange is possible by the method, however exchanging opinions, viewing diverse attitude
and disagreement or reaching agreement are ignored or limited.
2. Questions given in the textbook more similar to the question that designed to review theexternal opinions than to receive the students reflection or feedback. Number of teachers
immediately starts their classes telling the students name of topic to be discussed andpage number of the textbook. The topic of the class is provided on the board and starts
reading deﬁnition and makes the students memorize and transfer a big amount of processed
information at once. Clearly, the textbook and methodology of teaching is designed in theway to transfer information, but not developing and fostering students’ reasoning skills
3. Except textbook, there is no additional sources used for teaching. The teacher uses thetextbook extensively all the time and let the student to read and answer the questions or
assign the tasks. In reality, the teacher is just delivering the materials given in the textbook.
There were teacher with extensive teaching skills and experiences, but they were still heavily
depended on using textbooks too and it enabled only one-sided communication. It can beconcluded that there is a sharp need for shifting from being an information transmitter tocreative teaching that enables the real learning. Furthermore, supporting children’s curiosityand energy to crave for the new skills and encouraging self-conﬁdence and volunteerism forFor the Methodological Issues of Teaching Mongolian Civic Education as a Subject

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participating in the class discussion and recognizing the achievements of students to better
motivate them to future learning seemed essential to change the existing situation.
4. The textbook usually contains new cases and exercises and encourage the students toproblem solving and reasoning, however teachers often tell the pages of the textbook and thestudents work on the tasks individually in a quite environment. Upon completion of the tasks
and exercises the students give their work to the teacher for marking and the session ends.
The students have limited opportunity listening to the other student’s opinion.
5. Quite big number of teachers speak in autocrat manner, therefore majority of students tend tobehave as “passive receivers”. While some of the teachers walk in the classroom to monitor
students written work others spend their time near the board or some remain sitting at theirdesks. The distance between teacher and students is visible. Students are good listeners andcomplete assigned tasks properly, but they unenthusiastic raising their hands and expressing
their opinions unless the teacher calls their names.

IV. Conclusion
Based on the above mentioned learning experiences, there a need for teachers to learn more
about how to avoid transferring processed information and give directions to easy solutions, andlearn comprehensively the methods of teaching that enable students learn individually referring
his ability to resolve the problems, find solutions to the assignment using their previously
obtained skills within the giving topics. Working individually to answer the question and ﬁndsolutions more efficient for the students and considering the current situation for teachers it
is getting crucial creating learning environment that will motivate to the dynamic learning.
Moreover, the classes should be designed in the way which would attracts children meeting theirinterests and needs, but not obligatory process.

References• Standard for Primary and Secondary Education• “Curriculum and Evaluation “Ministry of Education, Sciences and Culture, 2011
• Education Law of Mongolia 2002
• ‘Master Plan of Developing Education in Mongolia in 2006−2015’, 2006
• “Mongolian Education Study in 15 years: Experiences and Lessons learnt” 2006