Exploring the priorities of leading teachers in promoting classroom reform in the Maldives: Monitoring performance or mentoring teachers?

• In Event: Professionalization and accreditation for quality education: issues in South Asia

Proposal

The aim of this qualitative study was to investigate the role of leading teachers in promoting education reform in the Maldives, a small island developing state (SIDS). The need to improve the quality of education was highlighted by The World Bank (Aturupane & Shojo, 2012), noting that due to its geographic and demographic features the Maldives faces complex challenges in the provision of education across the country. Within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), SIDS are given specific mention, referring to their unique characteristics and sustainability challenges related to climate change and other environmental threats.
Education plays a key role in action for sustainable development, by promoting a transformative approach to education that embraces interactive, learner-centred teaching and learning (UNESCO, 2017). Such an approach embraces strategies in fostering high quality and lifelong learning that empowers learners to be creative and responsible global citizens. This focus on student learning necessitates a shift away from the predominance of rote learning approaches. Change is a complex and lengthy process in any context, but in the Maldives with a small, but highly dispersed population, education reform presents a unique set of challenges for this small island developing state due to its small size, isolated schools and narrow resource base.
Despite these challenges and spread of islands, the country has made great progress in the provision of education on each inhabited local island. In 2000 universal primary enrolment was achieved. Local priorities in improving the quality of education have been linked with the Child Friendly schools’ project and with the implementation of a new national curriculum. Both initiatives promote new approaches to planning and teaching which have proven challenging for teachers to implement.
The need for continuing professional development for teachers has been recognised as critical to transforming classroom practices to promote learner-centred education. Yet the dispersity of island schools makes the provision of professional development opportunities logistically difficult and expensive. In 2009 a new professional development policy was implemented. It was intended to make professional development activities more meaningful and useful to teachers so that schools could become better learning organisations and reduce their reliance on external facilitators (A. Shareef, 2011). The introduction of this policy was a significant change that heightened the importance of the leadership in supporting teachers’ professional development given the island school context. Leading teachers, as part of the school leadership team who oversee teachers’ practice, hold a critical role in having the opportunity to provide guidance and mentoring to teachers to support their classroom practices. Yet it has been reported they often assume an administrative approach to their role (K. Shareef, 2008).
This paper explores the different approaches of leading teachers across three island schools. It reports from a larger study using design-based research seeking to identify the enabling conditions for sustaining pedagogical reform promoting learner-centred education. The participants were eight leading teachers across the three sites. Through immersion in the school settings and drawing on interviews and participant observations, this study explored how the leading teacher role is enacted in each of the schools and the extent to which teachers are monitored or mentored by leading teachers. The factors influencing how the role is perceived and enacted in each setting is investigated as well as the priorities of each of the leading teachers.
A key finding is the way in which the leading teacher role is influenced by centrally driven accountability and reporting responsibilities. This fosters attention on the ongoing the monitoring of teachers leading to a focus on systematic and regular reporting tasks. The extent to which leading teachers are able to undertake mentoring activities to provide instructional leadership for teachers was explored. The emphasis on monitoring teachers was perceived as taking priority over possibilities for mentoring or classroom-based support in two schools. In the third school, the leading teachers had taken an active role in providing classroom focused support to promote pedagogical innovation. Whilst the findings indicate variance across schools, they also highlight different approaches by individual leading teachers within schools. The findings highlight various ways in which, within the same policy environment, the leading teacher role can be enacted in very different ways.
For classroom reform to be sustainable over time, the role of leading teachers has the potential to foster ongoing school-based professional development that supports teacher innovation in classroom practices. This makes the context for change the classroom itself, not an off-site venue where professional development workshops are typically held which has been shown to have limited impact on teachers’ practice (Schwille & Dembélé, 2007). In order to provide classroom-based support leading teachers are required to re-envision their role and move beyond a singular focus on accountability measures. In doing so they need to value teachers as learners who need to be scaffolded to learn new practices and necessitates a recognition of the need to mentor teachers not just monitor their performance. Such school-based support has greater potential to sustain pedagogical innovation over time.

Author

• Rhonda Di Biase, University of Melbourne