Case Study One: Morocco (Led by the Moroccan Ministry of Education):

• In Event: The Role of Pre-Service Education in Producing and Perpetuating (In)Equalities: The Case of Early Grade Reading Part TWO

Proposal

The facilitator will describe Morocco’s recent efforts to integrate primary and secondary teacher certification under one institution (known as a CRMEF), as a way of creating a unified system that will deliver professional certifications for teaching. The facilitator will elaborate upon the status of early grade reading instruction in initial teacher training; currently it is only considered within the series of training activities aimed at learning four skills: planning, management, assessment, and educational research. The facilitator will discuss the lack of knowledge among CRMEF professors of any primary-level teaching experience or any early grade reading instructional principles. The facilitator will also discuss options that the Ministry has considered to address some of these challenges, including: a) selecting student teachers among highly motivated high school graduates, b) increasing training duration from 1 to 4 years, c) creating a university specialization in primary school teaching, including reading instruction as a main subject, d) mentoring teacher trainees, e) creating reading laboratories to address reading problems through an action-research approach. Participants will advance ideas and discuss which principles, practices, lessons learned, and ideas from the presentations in part I might apply to accelerating Morocco’s progress towards having a pre-service training system that could effectively prepare teachers to teach early grade reading.

Author

• Mariam Britel-Swift, US Agency for International Development (USAID)