Reinventing Teaching and Learning

A digital distance-learning teacher training course will transform classrooms characterized by rote learning and violent discipline, into active participatory classrooms.

Problem: In post-conflict Timor-Leste, most teachers are not formally trained and have limited opportunities for professional development. In a country where road access is challenging, teachers can be in remote locations with limited or non-existent support. At the moment, opportunities for students to develop critical thinking skills are lacking. A rote learning process is utilized in the majority of classrooms, and violent and fear-based teaching practices keep students from engaging actively.  Learning outcomes are extremely low, even by developing country standards. In the 2009 Early Grade Reading Assessment more than 70% of students at the end of grade 1 could not read a single word of the simple text passage they were asked to read. Teachers currently lack the skills and knowledge of how to engage students in active learning to enhance their social skills, retain information and develop leadership skills. In this context, we have been working to enhance educational outcomes by providing practical participatory teaching strategies to teachers and mentoring and monitoring skills to school leaders. We have developed a participatory education teacher training toolkit over the last several years, and have recently created short films on each module so that these training tools can be scaled up to teachers lacking access to the direct training program. The teacher training toolkit includes modules on classroom management, use of games, comprehension questions, group work, brainstorming, evaluation, conflict resolution, positive discipline, inclusivity and child protection. These modules are essential because they allow teachers to employ new methods that encourage the development of students’ 21st century skills by enhancing opportunities for critical thinking, exploration, practice and feedback. The modules also promote a violence-free learning environment, encouraging student retention and participation.

Solution: Teachers, enabled with the support of school leaders and digital learning aids, can self-educate to transform their teaching practices to be more student-centred and to encourage active learning. School leaders can monitor teachers’ progress, and support them, while data is collected digitally and support offered through a light touch approach, including a digital chat forum, that allows for scalability.

Solution will change the world: This solution utilizes a teacher training toolkit, including films on each module that have proven effective with Timorese teachers and school leaders in eight schools. This project is also likely to succeed due to the fact that it capitalizes on an existing digital platform successfully being used in schools to assist school leaders in monitoring teacher performance with tablets. This has already proven to have a positive impact on student learning outcomes. Moreover, the project is not looking to change the curriculum itself, but rather to enhance teachers’ ability to engage students on the curriculum material, which means the project will work to reinforce the national education program while allowing teachers to access in-service professional development opportunities. The end goal will be that teaching practices will become more student-centered and students will participate more actively and will learn self awareness, self evaluation, critical thinking, virtues and social skills.

This project utilizes technology that Catalpa has already developed for school leaders and mentors, and a new digital platform under development that teachers will be able to access directly via their smartphones. It also builds from an existing teacher training toolkit that Ba Futuru has developed, and thus uses technology to combine teacher training tools with an existing app to create a comprehensive distance learning course for teachers. The use of technology will thus allow that initiative to scale the impact of our work significantly.

Teacher training films will be segmented and paired with digital workbooks. Data collection forms and digital assessment tools will be developed. The tablets used are fitted with a purpose-built application that will contain this new digital content, short films, and assessment tools. The application is capable of running off-line which caters for the sporadic internet access available. The application’s chat function will connect subscribers to each other and to additional support. Training for school leaders around providing constructive feedback to teachers, use of the application, leadership methods, and support for lesson planning, will empower them to implement change. 

The next step, is to utilize the teacher training toolkit and training films to create a distance learning course with professional development content that can be accessed on tablets and smart phones. This will include short films and digital workbooks for teachers to show their progress, and forms for school leaders to assess teacher performance. Then the comprehensive distance learning course will be piloted to demonstrate its potential to impact teaching modalities and student learning. The proposed intervention will allow Timor-Leste’s nascent in-service teacher training system to leap frog forward. 

The comprehensive distance learning teacher training course created through this initiative will allow for enhancing and scaling up the impact of the existing materials in order to reach thousands of additional teachers and classrooms over time. In future years, Ba Futuru envisions to do a national campaign, whereby the distance learning course, as well as mentoring and assessment of teachers, will be rolled out incrementally across all 13 municipalities of Timor-Leste. We would also like to develop, and promote, additional content to further strengthen the Timor-Leste education system. 

Teachers and school leaders are extremely grateful for the impact of our teacher training. Through engaging both teachers, and the leaders that supervise them, this will encourage continued involvement.

“Ba Futuru presence is really important; similar to gold falling on us. It is an opportunity to strengthen our knowledge on managing a class well and being friendlier. Therefore, students feel safe and we can help them to learn with more useful methods.” 

“Through this training and mentoring I learnt many new skills which helped me to prepare better my lessons and make the classes more effective and fun”.

We have provided intensive training for 142 teachers this year using our teacher training toolkit, which will be the basis of the distance learning course. These trainings reduce the use of violent discipline, and encouraged teachers to utilize participatory approaches, games, comprehension questions and praise for good behavior. Our partner organization, Catalpa, is currently working with school leaders and mentors to utilize its app in 400 schools where learning outcomes have already started to improve. The proposed initiative combines the power of Catapla's app together with our teacher training toolkit allowing us to expand the impact of our work. 

In Timor-Leste teachers come from very low-skill backgrounds and thus the learning outcomes of students suffer considerably. In 12 months, we can serve more than one thousand teachers representing 10,000s of students whose educational outcomes will be enhanced. In 3 years, we will be able to serve 10,000s of teachers and more than 100,000 students. For example, in one school we are working in this year, the percentage of teachers who know how to use participatory teaching methods tripled when they followed our teacher training program, and the number that knew how to make a lesson plan doubled.

Ba Futuru has teacher training and curriculum development staff, as well as a film production team. We will partner with Catalpa to provide the required technological expertise. Catalpa has already rolled out a program using tablets in 400 primary schools. By late 2018, the new mobile phone platform for teachers will be being trialed. Thus, in addition to including the digital teacher training course materials on the tablet interface for school leaders, teachers will also be able access the information directly via a smart phone. This foundation makes it viable to carry out this project with a limited budget.

Ba Futuru, and the work that has led to this initiative, is predominately funded through project donors, for example local government funding, bilateral aid, foundations and United Nations agency grants. Ba Futuru is applying to one of the Gates Foundation Grand Challenges and various other donor entities in order to further this initiative. Ba Futuru also funds our work through fee for service initiatives including training and film production, and through our early childhood education facility, which is a social enterprise. Catalpa's work to develop the two digital platforms that we will utilize for this initiative is funded by the Australian Government's Aid Program. They have an Innovation Grant for this work, which we are able to capitalize off for free, as they need content for their applications to be effective in creating change for the education system in Timor-Leste. At the moment their content focuses on school monitoring and the curriculum, but they lack the teacher training content that we can provide.

Solve can help to support this initiative to come to fruition. Solve will help to strengthen our vision through feedback and provide initial seed funding, which we can capitalize off of to advance our work to incorporate the use of digital technology in the education system. Teachers and school leaders will be empowered through technology to pro-actively implement change. Wide scale in-service teacher training and recording of observation of teachers’ performance will become possible. At the same time a communications campaign will draw the interest of teachers to become certified as “STAR” teachers by completing the new distance learning course.

Large donors do not often invest in initiatives of small organizations and believe that they can amplify change. However, Solve's support can add credibility and draw interest to this initiative strengthening its ability to have long term impact in Timor-Leste, one of the poorest countries in Asia. 

Timorese are just beginning to use smart phones and become comfortable with apps, which will be a challenge for the project. A Solver team can help us figure out how to best engage Timorese in the using new technologies to help their nascent education system leap forward.