Reforming Pedagogy in Cambodia: Local Construction of Global Pedagogies (Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects, 62) 9811667497, 9789811667497

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Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects 62

Takayo Ogisu

Reforming Pedagogy in Cambodia Local Construction of Global Pedagogies

Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects Volume 62

Series Editors Rupert Maclean, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia Lorraine Pe Symaco, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China Editorial Board Bob Adamson, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China Robyn Baker, New Zealand Council for Educational Research, Wellington, New Zealand Michael Crossley, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK Shanti Jagannathan, Asian Development Bank, Manila, Philippines Yuto Kitamura, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan Colin Power, Graduate School of Education, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia Konai Helu Thaman, University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji Advisory Editors Mark Bray, UNESCO Chair, Comparative Education Research Centre, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China Yin Cheong Cheng, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China John Fien, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia Pham Lan Huong, International Educational Research Centre, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Chong-Jae Lee, Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI), Seoul, Korea (Republic of) Naing Yee Mar, GIZ, Yangon, Myanmar Geoff Masters, Australian Council for Educational Research, Melbourne, Australia Margarita Pavlova, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China Max Walsh, Secondary Education Project, Manila, Philippines Uchita de Zoysa, Global Sustainability Solutions (GLOSS), Colombo, Sri Lanka

The purpose of this Series is to meet the needs of those interested in an in-depth analysis of current developments in education and schooling in the vast and diverse Asia-Pacific Region. The Series will be invaluable for educational researchers, policy makers and practitioners, who want to better understand the major issues, concerns and prospects regarding educational developments in the Asia-Pacific region. The Series complements the Handbook of Educational Research in the Asia-Pacific Region, with the elaboration of specific topics, themes and case studies in greater breadth and depth than is possible in the Handbook. Topics to be covered in the Series include: secondary education reform; reorientation of primary education to achieve education for all; re-engineering education for change; the arts in education; evaluation and assessment; the moral curriculum and values education; technical and vocational education for the world of work; teachers and teaching in society; organisation and management of education; education in rural and remote areas; and, education of the disadvantaged. Although specifically focusing on major educational innovations for development in the Asia-Pacific region, the Series is directed at an international audience. The Series Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects, and the Handbook of Educational Research in the Asia-Pacific Region, are both publications of the Asia-Pacific Educational Research Association. Those interested in obtaining more information about the Monograph Series, or who wish to explore the possibility of contributing a manuscript, should (in the first instance) contact the publishers. Please contact Melody Zhang (e-mail: [email protected]) for submitting book proposals for this series.

More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/5888

Takayo Ogisu

Reforming Pedagogy in Cambodia Local Construction of Global Pedagogies

Takayo Ogisu Faculty of Global Studies Sophia University Tokyo, Japan

ISSN 1573-5397 ISSN 2214-9791 (electronic) Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects ISBN 978-981-16-6749-7 ISBN 978-981-16-6750-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6750-3 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

For my husband Shinya and daughter Fumino, who always believe in me and provide unconditional love and support.

Series Editor’s Introduction

This important and innovative book, by Ogisu Takayo, on Reforming Pedagogy in Cambodia, is the latest book to be published in the long-standing Springer Book Series “Education in the Asia Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects.” The first volume in this Springer series was published in 2002, this book by Ogisu Takayo being the 62nd volume to be published to date. Reforming Pedagogy in Cambodia examines the complex and important matter of what concrete action is necessary concerning effectively reforming teaching practices. This has important implications for school reform in Cambodia. The book explores the ways in which, and the extent to which, the education system in Cambodia has (and continues to) adapt over time, placing a greater emphasis on student-centered teaching and learning, in order to help meet the diverse learning needs of students. The reform of teaching pedagogy (along with curriculum reform), is a particularly important way to promote educational innovation for development in Cambodia. The book also provides a historical overview of the interrelationship between power and pedagogy in education and schooling in Cambodia, and the often contradictory messages generated by policymakers, concerning diversifying school practices. This volume of seven chapters seeks to answer the question: why is there such a persistent gap between official policy and actual practice in Cambodia with regard to the reform of pedagogy? The book explores vested interests and differing “constructions of reality” regarding education and schooling in Cambodia, which can inhibit and slow down reforms in pedagogy that aim to transform education and schooling at a system-wide level. This book will be of interest to researchers, policymakers, and practitioners concerned about exploring, and better understanding, the main ways in which teaching practices can be most effectively reformed in a developing country, such as Cambodia. Although many in Cambodia have worked diligently since the 1990s to replace teacher-centers teaching with more student-centered practices, more traditional teaching practices continue to persist. As the author points out, “the gap vii

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between policy and practice is a product of repeated negotiations and sense-making over the meaning of the pedagogical reform policy.” This book will not just be of interest to those in Cambodia, but will no doubt have an Asia-Pacific and worldwide audience amongst those interested in the tensions, stresses, and strains that occur during any process involving educational change, which, in most countries, is politically charged. In terms of the Springer Book Series in which this volume is published, the various topics dealt with in the series are wide-ranging and varied in coverage, with an emphasis on cutting-edge developments, best practices, and education innovations for development. Topics examined in the series include: environmental education and education for sustainable development; the interaction between technology and education; the reform of primary, secondary and teacher education; innovative approaches to education assessment; alternative education; most effective ways to achieve quality and highly relevant education for all; active aging through active learning; case studies of education and schooling systems in various countries in the region; cross country and cross-cultural studies of education and schooling; and the sociology of teachers as an occupational group, to mention just a few. More information about the book series is available at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/5888. All volumes in this series aim to meet the interests and priorities of a diverse education audience including researchers, policymakers, and practitioners; tertiary students; teachers at all levels within education systems; and members of the public who are interested in better understanding cutting edge developments in education and schooling in Asia-Pacific. The main reason why this series has been devoted exclusively to examining various aspects of education and schooling in the Asia-pacific region is that this is a particularly challenging region. It is renowned for its size, diversity, and complexity, whether it be geographical, socioeconomic, cultural, political, or developmental. Education and schooling in countries throughout the region impact on every aspect of people’s lives, including employment, labor force considerations, education and training, cultural orientation, and attitudes and values. Asia and the Pacific are home to some 63% of the world’s population of 7 Billion. Countries with the largest populations (China, 1.4 Billion; India, 1.3 Billion) and the most rapidly growing megacities are to be found in the region, as are countries with relatively small populations (Bhutan, 755,000; the island of Niue, 1,600). Levels of economic and sociopolitical development vary widely, with some of the richest countries (such as Japan) and some of the poorest countries on earth (such as Bangladesh). Asia contains the largest number of poor of any region in the world, the incidence of those living below the poverty line remaining as high as 40 percent in some countries in Asia. At the same time, many countries in Asia are experiencing a period of great economic growth and social development. However, inclusive growth remains elusive, as does growth that is sustainable and does not destroy the quality of the environment. The growing prominence of Asian economies and corporations, together with globalization and technological innovation, is leading to long-term changes in trade, business, and labor markets, to the sociology of populations within (and between) countries. There is a rebalancing of power, centered on Asia and

Series Editor’s Introduction

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the Pacific region, with the Asian Development Bank in Manila declaring that the twenty-first century will be ‘the Century of Asia Pacific’. We know from the feedback received from numerous education researchers, policymakers, and practitioners, worldwide, that this book series makes a useful contribution to knowledge sharing about cutting-edge developments concerning education and schooling in the Asia-Pacific. Any readers of this or other volumes in the series who have an idea for writing or co-writing their own book (or editing/co-editing a book) on any aspect of education and/or schooling, that is relevant to the region, are enthusiastically encouraged to approach the series editors either direct, or through Springer, to publish their own volume in the series, since we are always willing to assist perspective authors to shape their manuscripts in ways that make them suitable for publication. August 2021

Rupert Maclean School of Educations University of Tasmania Hobart, Australia RMIT University Melbourne, Australia

Acknowledgement

I first landed in Siem Reap, Cambodia as a student volunteer in Spring 2005. At that time, fully motivated to do something “good” to Cambodian kids, I was struck by the fact that they were very eager to learn new things and happy to be in school, even though school buildings were almost collapsing and there was no material for learning—textbooks, notebooks, or even pencils—available to them. This was a quite shocking experience for me, because what I always saw in Japan was students who lost interest in school subjects and dozed off during classes while they sit in hightech classroom with trained teachers and bunch of colored pencils. This was the time when I started realizing teaching and learning is more than just what happens in classrooms. This book is a product of my 15+ years of explorations into education in Cambodia. I got to know a lot of Cambodian people in the course, who helped me encounter their cultural values and worldviews. In particular, I cannot thank enough to 13 teachers participated in this research, who were kind enough to let me observe their classes, spare time to answer my endless questions, and even accept me as a “younger sister”. Their students also welcomed me in classrooms and sometimes corrected my Khmer accent. School principals invited me to coffees, lunch, or school events, and shared their hopes and enthusiasms for educating children. I also owe policymakers for their invaluable inputs and insights regarding the future of education in Cambodia, despite their busy schedule. I, of course, owe uncountable Cambodians other than the participants of this research their friendship and kindness. To name a few, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Ms. Sineth Khanrith, my neighbor and best friend, who always took me out for walk and coffee, and my host father Mr. Eng Phyrun, my host mother Ms. Sarapich Heng, and their beautiful children, who were always there like as my family in Cambodia. Special thanks also go to Mr. Kim Dara for his friendship and continuous support. He always gives a helping hand whenever I am in need, either as an education expert or as a friend. In the past 15 years, many people have guided me through my journey of becoming a researcher. First, and foremost, I am deeply grateful for having Dr. Jack Schwille and later Dr. Lynn Paine as my supervisors for the PhD program at Michigan State University. I still remember when I first met Jack at the Comparative and International xi

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Education Society held in New York. I ran to Jack soon after he finished his session and asked if he was interested in my research. It was this moment when I realized I wanted to pursue PhD. Lynn, through her excellent teaching and supervising, opened a door for me to the academic world. Lynn is actually the person who first introduced me to different theories of globalization in education, on which this book heavily draws. She gave a lot of invaluable comments and feedback on my dissertation drafts, and more importantly, strong encouragements even after the defense. Having Jack and Lynn in my hometown (Nagoya, Japan) and visiting a rural school together was such an honor and pleasure for me. This book would not be out without continuous support and guidance from Dr. Yuto Kitamura, currently a professor at the University of Tokyo, who is the very person who encouraged me to publish my work and actually taught me how to write a book proposal. I was so fortunate to have Yuto as my supervisor at Graduate School of International Development, Nagoya University 2007–2009, because his care and support has never ended even after both of us moved to different places. I have dreamed of working with Yuto in a research project, not as his student but as a fullfledged researcher, and now I am so excited to sit in several research projects with him. I am also grateful to Dr. Manabu Sato, Professor emeritus of the University of Tokyo, who supervised me in my undergraduate program almost 15 years ago, for his care and support. He is like my lifetime mentor. My deepest love and gratitude goes to my family. My husband Shinya has kept encouraging me by saying “you can do this” from the beginning of this book project toward the end, even during my pregnancy and maternity leave in-between. He became a wonderful dad after our daughter Fumino was born in 2018, and without his support—both physical and mental—it was impossible to write a book while being a mom of a newborn baby. Fumino, who is turning three soon, has also been very supportive by sleeping well at night and rarely catching colds! I feel bittersweet to see her always pretend to type and say, “Mom is busy now” when she plays house. The very existence of Shinya and Fumino has been a motivation for me to do a good job worth their cooperation. Finally, my parents have always believed in me and led me to do what I wanted. We had some difficult times, and they—father, in particular—may not be happy with my career choice yet, but I will keep trying my best to convince them that what I do is important to me, to the world, and to them, too. Last, but not least, I would like to express my sincere thanks to two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments and questions to the draft chapters. Their comments and questions made me clarify what I truly wanted to express in this book, realize different value of this book than I had imagined, and encounter updated information and new lines of relevant research. The manuscript of this book got English editing thanks to the funding from the Faculty of Global Studies, Sophia University.

Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Reforming Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Pedagogical Reform from a Social Constructivist Perspective . . . . 1.3 Conflict Within . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Policy Appropriation, Negotiation of Meaning, Sense-Making, and Policy Enactment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Questions to Be Explored . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.6 Research Methodologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.6.1 Vertical, Horizontal, and Transversal Comparisons . . . . . . . 1.6.2 Case: An Ongoing Pedagogical Reform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.7 Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.7.1 International Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.7.2 National Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.7.3 Local Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.7.4 Locale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.8 Data Collection and Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.8.1 Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.8.2 Participant Observation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.8.3 Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.9 Methodology of Data Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.10 Structure of This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 1 4 5 6 8 9 9 11 13 13 14 14 15 16 17 17 19 19 20 22

2 Student-Centeredness as a Global Pedagogy? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Foundations of Student-Centered Pedagogies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.1 Theoretiical Foundations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.2 Common Core of Student-Centered Pedagogies . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Globalization of Student-Centered Pedagogies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1 Transnational Frameworks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2 Intergovernmental Agencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.3 Bilateral Aid Agencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

25 25 26 27 30 31 33 36

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Adoption of Student-Centered Pedagogies in Low-Income Countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.1 World Culture Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.2 Policy Borrowing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.3 Postcolonial Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.4 Diverging Local Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Geopolitics of Cambodian Student-Centered Reform . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Power and Pedagogy in Cambodia—A Historical Overview . . . . . . . . 3.1 History of Education in Cambodia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.1 Education Before the Arrival of the French (1863) . . . . . . . 3.1.2 French Protectorate (1863–1953) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.3 From Independence to the Khmer Rouge (1953–1975) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 From the Khmer Rouge to the Paris Peace Agreement (1975–1993) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.1 Education Under the Khmer Rouge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.2 Education Under Vietnamese Occupation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.3 Education Under UNTAC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Situating Student-Centered Reform in Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.1 Policy Priorities in Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.2 Recent Policy Changes Concerned with Teachers . . . . . . . . 3.3.3 Attracting and Preparing Teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.4 Retaining Teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.5 Ensuring Professional Learning Opportunities . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Power and Pedagogy in Cambodian Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Whose Voice Got Reified . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Effective Teaching and Learning: A Written Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1.1 Effective Teaching and Learning (ETL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Tensions Arising in ETL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Negotiating Multiple Meanings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.1 Motivation for Transformation Model: The NGO Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.2 Transformation Model Contested: Exploring the Process of Political Decision-Making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.3 Two Stances Taken by Policy Actors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Education Policy-Making as a Social Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

38 39 40 41 41 42 43 47 47 48 49 54 60 60 62 63 64 65 69 69 70 70 71 72 77 78 79 83 85 85 87 89 94 96

5 Making Sense of Contradictory Policy Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 5.1 Meanings Reified in Policy Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 5.1.1 Checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 5.1.2 Helping Slow Learners Manual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

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Local Meaning Made out of Policy Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.1 Local Meaning Made from the Checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.2 Koon ot ceh: Helping Slow Learners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Policy Tools Mediate Appropriation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

108 108 112 114 115

6 A Logic that Governs Teaching and Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Unpacking the Logic that Governs Local Meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.1 Paccekteeh as a Political–Social–Cultural Logic . . . . . . . . . 6.1.2 Paccekteeh as a Means to Transmit Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Making Sense of ETL with the Logic of Paccekteeh . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Unpacking Teaching Conditions that Shape Local Meaning . . . . . . 6.3.1 Teaching Conditions as a Basis for Expectations for Teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.2 Practices in Different Teaching Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 Is Pedagogical Change Possible? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

117 118 118 119 127 128

7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 Multiple Rationales of Cambodian Pedagogical Reform . . . . . . . . . 7.1.1 Revisiting Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.2 Multiple Rationales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Revisiting Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.1 Globalization in Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.2 Gaps Between Policy and Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.3 Pedagogical Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 Revisiting Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3.1 Vertical Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3.2 Positionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4 Moving Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4.1 Implications for Future Pedagogical Reforms . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4.2 What Different Actors Can Do to Prepare Enabling Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

129 131 133 134 137 137 138 140 142 142 143 144 145 145 147 148 148 150 152

Chapter 1

Introduction

Reforming teaching practices is a challenging mission. Cambodia has worked on this tough mission since the 1990s in order to replace teacher-centered teaching with more student-centered teaching, but it has been documented that teacher-centered practices are still prevalent at the classroom level (Courtney, 2008; Wheeler, 1998). My interest, which guides this research, emerged from a simple question: Why does such a persistent gap exist between policy and practice? This book is a product of my journey to find reasonable answers to the above question. In the chapters that follow, I argue that the gap between policy and practice is a product of repeated negotiations and sense-making over the meaning of the pedagogical reform policy, which took place in a unique political circumstance—the global post-Cold War geopolitics and the national post-conflict circumstance—and in specific sociocultural contexts in Cambodia. Pedagogical reform is difficult, I argue, because it is an attempt as profound as political, social, cultural reforms. In this introductory chapter, I aim to situate my simple question in academic discourses by clarifying objectives, theoretical and conceptual frameworks, research questions, methodologies, and the scope of the research. A snapshot of the whole book is also provided.

1.1 Reforming Pedagogy Research about student-centered reforms in the context of low-income countries provides various reasons for the persistence of traditional practices, such as teachers’ misunderstanding or inability to understand the policy, limited resources, and local culture that does not go well with Western-origin pedagogies (Brodie et al., 2002; Guthrie, 1990; Pontefract & Hardman, 2005). Another explanation for the gap between policy and practice is provided by a group of researchers who claim that local actors are not passive policy implementers but actively engage in applying, interpreting, and sometimes contesting the policy (Brook Napier, 2003; Cuban, 1998), © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 T. Ogisu, Reforming Pedagogy in Cambodia, Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects 62, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6750-3_1

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2

1 Introduction

and that we cannot assume that an education policy can and must be disseminated and implemented “as is” (Anderson-Levitt & Alimasi, 2001, p. 51). Building on these existing explanations, in my previous research I tried to understand what the series of student-centered reforms are about and examined the documents related to them. I found that the series of reforms, which the Cambodian ministry of education has undertaken since 1996, involved contradictions in itself— the image of teaching and learning advocated in the reform contradicts what it requires teachers to do. Overall, this reform is informed by a participatory image of learning on the part of both teachers and students, and it is for replacing traditional, teacher-centered “chalk-and-talk” types of pedagogies with modern, studentcentered, active-learning pedagogies. Teachers are supposed to learn the set of teaching strategies through monthly meetings where teachers from nearby schools get together and help each other (Kingdom of Cambodia, 2007), but what this reform actually requires them to do is to implement highly scripted tasks, based on which their performance is checked and evaluated (Bunlay et al., 2010). The pedagogical reform is informed by a participatory, bottom-up approach to teaching and learning, but a paternalistic, top-down approach is taken to bring about such changes at the local level. Given these contradictions within reform, it is no wonder teachers interpret and practice this reform differently from its original intentions. Anderson-Levitt (2003) has already pointed out that such contradictions, or conflicts, within a single education reform can be seen in many places, but few researchers have actually explored these contradictions as a possible factor that maintains or even widens the gap between policy and practice. Even why such contradictions exist in one reform is yet to be identified. Therefore, in this research, I investigate conflicts within Cambodian pedagogical reform in order to better understand the gap between policy and practice. More specifically, I want to understand: (1) why contradictory ideas coexist in this reform, and (2) how various actors make sense of these contradictions and enact this reform within the political, social, and cultural contexts in which they work. In order to answer these questions, Cambodian pedagogical reform should be looked at from “both near and afar simultaneously” (Anderson-Levitt, 2002, p. 20). From afar, we must pay particular attention to the historical contexts that shape how current education is structured and operated in Cambodia. Such contexts have significant implications for what made Cambodia adopt student-centered pedagogies. We also cannot ignore the influence Cambodian education has received from global discourse about education, because student-centered pedagogies are the most widely circulated educational ideas across the globe (Ginsburg, 2009). Cambodian education also relies heavily on financial and technical assistance from various aid agencies (Steiner-Khamsi, 2000). Understanding the pedagogical reform from afar (both historically and geographically) would guide us to explore how and why this reform was initiated. At the same time, we cannot dismiss the importance of the political, social, and cultural world in which the current pedagogical reform is implemented, together with active roles played by various actors—national policymakers, provincial, and district education officials, school principals, and especially teachers—because they

1.1 Reforming Pedagogy

3

do not passively accept globally circulated practices (Anderson-Levitt & Alimasi, 2001). Rather, they actively engage in the construction of this reform by interpreting and enacting student-centered pedagogies.1 Exploring contradictions involved in this reform will help us deepen our understanding of the complexities involved in the process of changing local practices in a globalized world (Steiner-Khamsi, 2010). This research, therefore, aims to better understand the complexities involved in reforming teaching practices resting on an ongoing reform experience in Cambodia. This book explores how various actors from international, national, and local levels make sense of and enact a pedagogical policy reform, called Effective Teaching and Learning (ETL), by examining the contradictions involved in it. Reforming teaching practices is already a challenging task by itself. Although extensive literature on the gap between written policy and its implementation exists, little is known about the process in which conflicting ideas are absorbed in a single pedagogical reform and how various actors interpret and enact them. ETL is a great case for this purpose because it is a relatively new policy (ETL was first implemented as pilot in 2002 and then expanded throughout the country in 2007) and it is ongoing. ETL is also good as a case to situate this process within a matrix of globalization and local diversification. Understanding how various actors in Cambodian education reform make sense of ETL and how political/economic/organizational context shapes the meaning of ETL will enrich our knowledge about the dynamics that this pedagogical reform brings about. Here I need to clarify my stance as not a proponent of student-centered pedagogical reform in the context of Cambodia. To share one of the conclusions of this book here, my research findings indicate that student-centered pedagogies and their liberal democratic ideologies do not fit well into the current political, social, and cultural structures in Cambodia. For student-centered pedagogies to bring substantial changes in classrooms, radical political–social–cultural transformation must take place, which is unrealistic and probably not so desirable. The current research is, therefore, not to evaluate how far ETL is actually implemented as stated in the policy documents and provide technical solutions for the issues identified, but to understand the gap between the written policy and actual practice by focusing on why contradictions exist in this reform and how various actors interpret and enact this contradictory reform. To put it differently, this research is to make better sense of Cambodian pedagogical reform by examining its political, social, and cultural implications in the contemporary Cambodia.

1

As Kim and Rouse (2011) lamented, the active roles of teachers have been particularly sidelined in Cambodia: teachers have been treated as at “relatively low education levels,” they have “not been trusted to use their professional ability or discretion,” and thus need “further development and training” (p. 12).

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1 Introduction

1.2 Pedagogical Reform from a Social Constructivist Perspective This research draws on a social constructivist perspective to explore the Cambodian education reform experience. Conceptions of knowledge and knowing evolved in the twentieth century, and one of the biggest evolutions was a sociocentric perspective suggested by anthropologists and scholars in the sociology of knowledge (Soltis, 1981). According to Soltis (1981), from a sociocentric perspective, “knowledge must be viewed as both individual and social, personal, and public constructions designed to make sense of and provide for effective action in a reactive, malleable yet independently existing reality,” and “knowledge cannot be separated from knowers, that human beings construct different knowledge systems, and that all knowledge is imbedded in the fabric of social life” (p. 98). This social constructivist perspective informs how I understand the knowledge I am trying to produce through this research, as well as how I try to understand a pedagogical reform in Cambodia and its contradictory ideas. I conceptualize pedagogical reform as a complex social practice that is intended for pedagogical changes, in which various actors construct and reconstruct meanings of teaching and learning.2 A social constructivist perspective suggests that the meaning of a certain policy is not given, but is shaped by the interaction among written policy, people, and places (Honig, 2006). It means all actors actively construct the reform by interpreting and sometimes contesting policy ideas and enacting what they understand as its demands within the cultural, historical, social, and political contexts to which they belong (Sutton & Levinson, 2001). Pedagogical reform is thus neither monolithic nor normative. Cognitive scientists also suggest that the policy message supplements rather than supplants agents’ prior knowledge and practice (Spillane et al., 2006). Therefore, different actors make sense of and enact a policy in totally different ways, even when they all actively engage in it. Social constructivism also informs how I see the roles of various actors and their interactions in the current Cambodian pedagogical reform. As I stated earlier, social constructivism sees all individual actors actively engaging in constructing the meaning of a policy. This perspective challenges policymakers’ common understanding about Cambodian teachers, who have been referred to as instruments and obstacles to changing teaching and learning (Chae-Young & Rouse, 2011). Teaching has also been trivialized into techniques and, as a result, complexities, and uncertainties inherent in teaching have been undermined in education policies. Instead, social constructivism suggests that teachers are the key agents who hold specialized knowledge and skills based on which they construct and enact a reform. They are playing important roles together with donors, policymakers, and school administrators in constructing this reform. 2

Education policy researchers who have anthropological orientations have suggested that we should conceptualize education policy not as a normative text, but “as a complex social practice, an ongoing process of normative cultural production constituted by diverse actors across diverse social and institutional contexts” (Sutton & Levinson, 2001, p. 1).

1.2 Pedagogical Reform from a Social Constructivist Perspective

5

Moreover, this co-construction of meaning should be understood as a social and situated process (Lave & Wenger, 1991) rather than as an individualized and isolated one. Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to the meaning constructed through interactions among various actors in order to understand the process in which Cambodian pedagogical reform is interpreted and enacted. For example, donors negotiate the meaning of this reform in annual donor meetings, and ministry officials try to figure out what they want from donors and what donors want them to do in their business meetings. Cambodian teacher meetings at the cluster level are also an important mechanism to administer formal interactions among teachers specifically around this reform, aside from more informal interactions between teachers before and after classes, or during school-level meetings. These meetings and interactions among actors within and between different levels can be considered a social setting, where negotiations over the meaning of this reform could occur. This research is thus not to seek to reveal the universal truth about pedagogical reform policies per se. Rather, I want to uncover the complexities and contingencies that a specific pedagogical reform entails in a specific time, place, and population. We can better understand the complexities and possibly reveal patterns of pedagogical reform by accumulating this type of knowledge.

1.3 Conflict Within Anderson-Levit (2003) argued that education reforms are not necessarily led by coherent and uniform reform ideals. She claimed that although sociologists identify decentralization, teacher autonomy, and student-centered instruction as transnational reform ideals, anthropologists have found that there are other movements toward increasing national control, such as standardized tests, control of teachers, and content-centered instruction within the same nations (Anderson-Levitt, 2003). These conflicts are explained either as a phenomenon of conflict within a nation and a group that promotes single but inconsistent reform, or as a conflict between “opposing groups of actors who are promoting competing reforms” (Anderson-Levitt, 2003, p. 15). Conflict within suggests inconsistencies in a single reform model, whereas conflict between implies multiple models of education reform. Although this point— whether there exists a single model or multiple models of education—is at the center of the current debate about globalization, I explore only conflict within here because my focus in this research is to understand the contradictions within one pedagogical reform. Globalization literature helps us better understand conflict within with more concrete examples. Takayama (2010) extended the externalization theory by revealing the conflicting discursive groups that promote single education reform. Based on the analysis of Japanese discourse about education reform, he explained that two conflicting discursive groups, in this case progressives and conservatives, project their own political agendas on the same construct, Finnish education, as a

6

1 Introduction

means to address existing educational concerns. Finnish education became a “multivocal symbol” (p. 67) that could be used by different groups, even though they actually used this symbol with distinctive meanings and projected different agendas onto it. This construct also helps us reveal power dynamics and conflicting political agendas that are usually hidden and “naturalized” (Takayama, 2010, p. 53). Different actors can work together under the same reform even when their educational and/or political orientations are disparate, because they may construct different meanings from the same symbol, such as Finnish education (Takayama, 2010). In the current case, ETL can be a multi-vocal symbol that allows international- and national-level actors to project their political, economic, and/or educational interests and work together without really agreeing on what ETL means. Contradictions that have appeared in ETL documents can be understood as an expression of multiple voices in this reform. Therefore, in this research, I investigate what similar or different meanings ETL has for different people and how different meanings are negotiated and reified into policy tools, especially focusing on the contradictions involved in this reform. However, in order for actors at the local level to make sense of this reform, these contradictions within ETL may require them to interpret and negotiate the meanings in more apparent ways. We cannot dismiss the active involvement of local actors, most significantly teachers, in this process in order to understand the complexities of pedagogical reform.

1.4 Policy Appropriation, Negotiation of Meaning, Sense-Making, and Policy Enactment Ethnographic policy studies offer epistemological and methodological accounts for the local agencies involved in the process of policy implementation, or what Sutton and Levinson (2001) called appropriation. Contrary to the traditional notion of policy implementation, by which we assume a dichotomous relationship between policy formation and implementation, with policy appropriation, Sutton and Levinson (2001) tried to address simultaneously how a policy shapes practices and how practices shape the meaning of a policy. Policy appropriation is a construct that is particularly useful for understanding local actors not as passive implementers, but as active agents who apply, interpret, and even contest the policy in their institutional contexts (Sutton & Levinson, 2001). The idea of policy appropriation suggests the importance of contemplating how certain policy is transformed when it is implemented in different institutional contexts. Brook Napier (2003), for example, tried to understand how “outcome-based education” (OBE) was appropriated at global, national, provincial, subprovincial, and community/school levels in South Africa. By shedding light on the interface between reform as policy and reform as practice, he found that “instead of trickling down, at

1.4 Policy Appropriation, Negotiation of Meaning …

7

every level ideas can be transmitted and sometimes blocked” (Brook Napier, 2003, p. 52). In addition to these vertical comparisons,3 Anderson-Levitt and Alimasi (2001) implied the necessity of examining how certain policy is transformed horizontally. By investigating actual meanings given to the mixed method teaching by actors in multiple layers at international, national, subnational, and local levels in Guinea, they revealed that even actors within one level, such as donors or teachers, were not monolithic in terms of how much they were motivated to embrace mixed-method teaching. Variations within the same level suggest the situative and social nature of policy appropriation. For example, Braun et al. (2011) also pointed out different capacities schools have for coping with a policy, and such capacity implies different enactment of the policy in different contexts.4 Also, by exploring how teachers collectively make sense of new state policies on reading instruction and how they implement them, Coburn and Stein (2006) revealed that teachers negotiated meanings of instructional policies with pedagogical assumptions and preexisting practices shared in the multiple professional communities they participated in, such as grade-level groups, departments within schools, and study groups across schools. The process of policy appropriation, therefore, should be understood within multiple layers of context that affect how active agents make sense of policy. Given that policies are appropriated by all actors, how can we understand the process in which actors negotiate meanings and construct somewhat shared understandings about a policy? How has the meaning of ETL been negotiated among donors and ministry officials while maintaining conflicts within? Especially at the local level, when a policy involves contradictions in itself, like ETL, it is predictable that local actors understand such policy differently from policymakers’ original intentions. Also, Cambodian teachers belong to multiple groups, such as cluster-level groups, their own schools, and more informal networks. This means there is more opportunity as well as a need for teachers to negotiate meanings and construct a shared image about what ETL is and what it requires them to do. To date, only limited research has focused on the contradictions and inconsistencies within ETL. Courtney (2008) revealed that the materials used to promote and evaluate student-centered practices were inconsistent and misleading. For example, she pointed out the problems inherent in the checklist prepared by the ministry, with which school inspectors observe teachers’ practices annually. It only helps observers check which activities (group work, questioning, lecture, etc.) are implemented but does not allow them to see the quality of a lesson as a whole. Therefore, she argued, school inspectors would get only a superficial understanding of instructional practices with this checklist. This study speaks directly to the issue of reification that hinders 3

Vavrus and Bartlett (2009) criticized qualitative research in comparative education for not paying enough attention to the influence from international and national levels on local educational practices. They contended that vertical comparisons are necessary to better understand the local practices. 4 Contexts can be divided into four dimensions, according to Braun et al. (2011), including situated, professional, material, and external contexts that all affect policy enactment in different schools.

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1 Introduction

people from making sense of what this reform actually tries to do. Although her argument is persuasive, it remains unclear why these contradictions and inconsistencies exist in the documents prepared by the ministry. Another question that needs to be addressed is how local actors make sense of the contradictions within this policy. Local actors may not be aware of contradictions or may not regard them as contradictions at all. Or, they may be aware of and make use of contradictions in order to achieve their own interests. Local actors do not passively accept ETL and follow what ETL tells them to do. Rather, they negotiate the meaning of ETL or “fabricate” it (Ball, 2001). However, it is still unclear how local actors make sense of contradictions in ETL and react to them.

1.5 Questions to Be Explored This research aims to better understand the gaps between policy and practice by focusing on the conflicts within an ongoing Cambodian pedagogical reform. Because various aid agencies have significantly influenced this reform (ETL), I situate this research in axes of global–local and Cambodian history, and explore the process in which conflicting ideas are absorbed in this education reform policy at international and national levels, and how local actors appropriate this policy. My overarching research question is: How is the idea of student-centered pedagogies (ETL) constructed by local, national, and international actors engaged in education reform in Cambodia? I divided this question into two parts. I.

At the international and national levels, how are conflicting ideas put together in ETL? (a) (b) (c)

II.

How similarly or differently do donors and national policymakers interpret and rationalize ETL? How are the different meanings negotiated? How are the negotiated meanings reified in ETL-related policy tools?

At the local level, how do actors react to ETL? (a) (b) (c) (d)

How do they make sense of ETL? Do they see the conflicts within ETL as conflicts at all? How are these meanings negotiated and mediated by policy tools? How are the negotiated meanings expressed in practice? How do political/economic/organizational contexts shape the meaning of ETL?

1.6 Research Methodologies

9

1.6 Research Methodologies Methodologically speaking, this research is informed by a lot of comparative education literature. Most significantly, a book titled Critical Approaches to Comparative Education: Vertical Case Studies from Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas, edited by Frances Vavrus and Lesley Bartlett in 2009, and their more recent work (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2014, 2016) provided me with a compass with which I could see where I stood in the middle of the process. This section discusses how a vertical case study helps me answer my research questions and achieve the goals of this research. As discussed, this research aims to explore the gap between written policy and practice. There are a lot of ways and approaches to tackle this question, ranging from an empirical approach to assess how a written policy is implemented to a more explanatory approach to understand why a gap exists. Given that my interests are about the processes in which a policy– practice gap emerges and that this research is informed by social constructivist theory, I employ an explanatory approach and trace the policy from international to local levels.

1.6.1 Vertical, Horizontal, and Transversal Comparisons In the field of comparative education, understanding the dynamic interplay between macro and micro is a relatively new approach. There has been a growing concern about the validity of the nation-state/country as the sole unit of analysis in educational research, as the border between one education system and another became more blurred under globalization (Arnove & Torres, 2003; Carney, 2009; SteinerKhamsi, 2010). Identifying the countries of origin for certain education policies and practices has also become more difficult, because many of them are circulated around the globe. The enormous influences of globalization on local educational practices are now widely recognized by comparative education researchers, who have started to think that exploring only macro or micro might not be sufficient to understand either of them. In this context, Vavrus and Bartlett (2009) proposed vertical comparisons across micro- and macro-levels as an essential approach to understanding local educational practices in relation to the broader contexts. Local practices are of particular significance in this research because it explores a pedagogical reform in which teachers are the most important actors. However, as Vavrus and Bartlett (2009) warned, “there has been a tendency to take the macro for granted and focus exclusively on a single-site locality rather than carefully exploring how changes in national and international institutions, discourses, and policies are influencing social practice at the school level” (p. 9). Understanding the dynamics or tensions between macro and micro in the process of pedagogical reform provides us with a better sense of why local practices take certain shapes. Therefore, I structure my current research as a vertical case study, which is defined as “a multisited, qualitative

10

1 Introduction

case study that traces the linkages among local, national, and international forces and institutions that together shape and are shaped by education in a particular locale” (Vavrus & Bartlett, 2009, pp. 11–12). It allows me to compare vertically—international, national, and local—about an ongoing pedagogical reform in Cambodia, which in turn helps me understand how the dynamic interplay among different levels shapes local practices that are somehow different from the original intentions of this reform. It further enables me to avoid overestimating national and international forces as determinants of local practices or underestimating them merely as contexts. Rather, by shedding light on the relationship across vertical levels, I can examine the reciprocal relationships between global–local and national–local. In other words, I can go beyond examining the impact of national and global discourses and trends on local practices and think about how local educational practices shape policies and discourses. As Vavrus and Bartlett (2009) contended, a vertical case study also allows us to compare horizontally across sites through multi-sited research. Various authors have pointed out the importance of horizontal comparison. For example, a study conducted by Anderson-Levitt and Alimasi (2001) revealed that even actors within a single level, such as donors or teachers, were very differently motivated and committed to implementing a globalized pedagogy, and that such differences were a result of both personal background and social contexts. Braun et al. (2011) also emphasized the profound impacts of contexts on policy enactment. In this study, a horizontal comparison is particularly important to explore how ETL is variously understood and how such diverse meanings are negotiated within each level. The horizontal comparison should not be limited to “research through” multiple sites on a particular case, but it should be open to comparison “through the juxtaposition of cases that follow the same logic to address topics of common concern” (Vavrus & Bartlett, 2009, p. 14). My current research involves horizontal comparison across sites (such as schools) within the case of ETL, but I do not intend to compare across cases (such as other student-centered reforms). However, the case that this research develops on has a potential for future comparison through the juxtaposition of topics such as the local appropriation of globalized concepts. Another important dimension of the vertical case study is a transversal comparison that situates educational policies and practices across time and space (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2014). Tracing changes over time is particularly important in this research, as it is often the case that pedagogical changes take a long time. In this book, I am going to situate the current pedagogical reform in historical contexts with different timespans. First, the current student-centered pedagogical reform cannot be understood without referring to how different rulers in Cambodian history have attempted to reform pedagogies. So this can span centuries. Chapter 3 of this book serves for this purpose. In addition, a comprehensive examination of the changes within the recent 20 years, particularly after the actual reform was initiated around 2000, is necessary to trace changes that the concerned reform has brought to different spaces. Such “phenomenology of change” (Fullan, 2016; O’Sullivan, 2002) at different levels is documented in Chaps. 4 to 6 of this book.

1.6 Research Methodologies

11

1.6.2 Case: An Ongoing Pedagogical Reform The case I am exploring in this research is an ongoing Cambodian pedagogical reform called Effective Teaching and Learning (ETL), being implemented especially at the primary education level.5 ETL is a part of Child-Friendly School (CFS) models that are based on the student-centered principles (UNICEF, 2009c). CFS models6 are the pragmatic and comprehensive approach to address the total needs of the child as a learner, and to improve both access to and quality of education. The models were evolved based on the past experiences with its “singlefactor approach”—interventions to teacher education or supply of textbooks independently—by which only limited improvements could have been observed. They are based on the notion of education as a human right and “a child-centered ideology that regards the best interest of the child as a paramount at all times” (UNICEF, 2009d, p. 2).7 In addition to child-centeredness, “democratic participation” and “inclusiveness” are also the basic principles that underlie CFS models (UNICEF, 2009c, p. 1). These principles are further developed as key components such as pedagogy, health, gender sensitivity, community participation, inclusiveness, and protection (UNICEF, 2009c). As UNICEF (2009b) reported, CFS models have been implemented in 56 countries globally in 2007, and in 20 countries out of 28 nations under UNICEF’s East Asia and Pacific Region, including Thailand, the Philippines, Lao PDR, and Cambodia. In Thailand, CFS has been implemented in northern and northeastern provinces, which are particularly disadvantaged, since the 1990s. Although CFS is not a national policy per se and thus local governments can decide whether they apply the CFS model or not, Thailand started to accept study visits and offer training titled “ChildFriendly Schools: Theory and practice” to neighboring countries including Cambodia (UNICEF, 2009a). Thailand played a significant role to disseminate CFS models in the region. Since the early 2000s, the Philippines, Lao PDR, Cambodia, and other countries started to incorporate CFS models into their education system. For example, the Philippines started Child-Friendly Schools System (CFSS) initiative in 2001, after the regional conference on CFS environment was held in Chiang Mai, Thailand (UNICEF, 2009b). The Philippines model defines: (1) effective with children, (2) healthy for children, (3) protective of children, (4) gender-sensitive and inclusive, and (5) family and community involvement as the five dimensions of CFS. Lao PDR launched the “Schools of Quality (SoQ)” framework based on CFS models in the early 2000s, when the ministry officials were exposed to the concept of CFS through regional workshops and UNICEF-funded study visits to Thailand. Although SoQ basically 5

CFS was originally started in primary education, but it was expanded to lower secondary level in 2013. 6 UNICEF (2009d) repeatedly emphasized that CFS should be regarded as a pathway to educational quality rather than as a rigid blueprint, and described it as “models.”. 7 The child-friendly school concept was first used as an “equivalent of the ‘baby-friendly hospitals’ that contributed to quality standards in health” (UNICEF, 2009d, p. 7).

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1 Introduction

follows CFS models in Thailand, it is structured based on two guiding principles: “child-seeking school” and “child-centered school” (UNICEF, 2011). These examples indicate that there was a regional movement toward CFS and countries launched different “models” with CFS principles. Together with the perceived need to replace teaching approaches with more democratic and participatory ones, such regional CFS movement inevitably affected Cambodia as an external pressure to meet the regional (albeit not global) standards. UNICEF and other NGOs piloted CFS projects in six provinces in the early 2000s, and the CFS steering committee was established in 2002 as a mechanism to accumulate pilot experiences in order to expand CFS to many more provinces. Successes in the pilot projects reported by the committee members were, definitely, a driving force to convince the ministry about the effectiveness of the CFS framework. In 2005, when then-Minister of Education, Im Sethy, decided to make CFS a national policy,8 this committee took the authorship of policy and related manuals. What UNICEF (2009d) called “child [student]-centered ideology” is also maintained Cambodian CFS policy.9 It describes the student-centered approach not just as a teaching methodology. Rather, it is “very significant and overarching educational methodologies which are vital to all aspects of its implementation” that is characterized by. • • • • •

Teaching and learning through creative idea, Participation and cooperative learning, Research, analysis, and critical thinking, and Problem-solving. Innovation and encouragement of creative and divergent thinking (Kingdom of Cambodia, 2007, p. 8).

Through this educational methodology, the policy emphasizes developing students’ knowledge and attitudes to be able to live together (Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, 2005). It clearly reflects the desires of NGOs to build a democratic society based on the student-centered principles.10 ETL is the second dimension of the Cambodian CFS framework and has a strong inclination for transforming the society to become more peaceful and democratic (Table 1.1).11 This research particularly focuses on ETL, the second dimension of the Cambodian CFS model, because this dimension directly touches upon how teaching and learning should be conducted inside classrooms. It is not only the place a lot of researchers and practitioners have found the most difficult to change, but also where we can observe the dynamics brought by globalized student-centered principles at the local level. In the Cambodian context, the second dimension is the most important in terms of quality of education (one of the priority areas in the education sector, as I 8

Child-Friendly School Policy was signed and has been in effect since 2007. See Chap. 2 for more discussion on UNICEF’s child-centered ideology. 10 See Chap. 2 for the discussion about globalized student-centered principles. 11 From this perspective, education quality is not limited to learning achievement but it is expected to enhance both cognitive and non-cognitive development of students. 9

1.6 Research Methodologies

13

Table 1.1 Six dimensions of child-friendly school Dimension 1 All children have access to schooling (schools are inclusive) Dimension 2 Effective teaching and learning Dimension 3 Health, safety, and protection of children Dimension 4 Gender responsiveness Dimension 5 The participation of children, families, and communities in the running of their local schools Dimension 6 The national education system supports and encourages schools to become more child friendly Source Kingdom of Cambodia (2007). Child-Friendly School Policy, pp. 5–6

discuss later). At the same time, however, there is yet to be agreement on what effectiveness means and how it should be measured. Therefore, setting ETL as a case of vertical, horizontal, and transversal comparisons makes it easier to trace the linkages between and among different levels and changes over time, and thus help achieve the goal of this research, which is to better understand the complexities involved in the process of pedagogical reform.

1.7 Levels As discussed earlier, I conceptualize ETL not as an object but as a practice (Sutton & Levinson, 2001), which is socially conducted and situated in specific contexts. Therefore, I identified social settings—or communities of practice—where actors negotiate the meaning of ETL at different levels: donor communities at the international level, ministry working groups and committees at the national level, and District Training and Monitoring Team (DTMT) and cluster-level teacher meetings at the local level.12

1.7.1 International Level There are a variety of donor agencies, ranging from United Nations organizations and international NGOs to bilateral international cooperation agencies, which engage in the current pedagogical reform. Donors (or development partners, as they are called) form communities such as the Education Sector Working Group (ESWG) 12

I should note that boundaries between levels are not so clear and simple. Although not many researchers have pointed out its challenges, it is very difficult to define levels as the basis for vertical comparison because many actors move across levels. For example, there is an actor who basically belongs to the donor community but stays in schools and regularly joins teacher meetings. This kind of difficulty remained until I finished analyzing data, but as you will see in later chapters, those actors who belong to multiple social settings at different levels have hands-on experiences working in the dynamics between levels.

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1 Introduction

and EDUCAM, where they discuss a wide range of issues in the education sector and make policy recommendations to the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MoEYS). ESWG meetings are held once every three months with relatively bigger development partners (such as UN agencies, bilateral agencies, and representatives of NGOs), whereas EDUCAM meetings are held monthly with smaller partners such as NGOs. These communities work as platforms that facilitate interactions among different development partners. Although ETL is not the only topic of discussion in these two communities, these mechanisms to some extent facilitate negotiation of meaning over ETL among participants.

1.7.2 National Level At the national level, a CFS national steering committee and several working groups exist that work on the pedagogical reform. The national steering committee, led by the minister, holds meetings twice a year. Working group meetings, which are led by the director of the General Education Department, are held more frequently to discuss specific issues. Representatives from four departments mainly take part in these communities: Primary Education Department, Teacher Training Department, Curriculum Department, and Education Quality Assurance Department. These are important mechanisms for adjusting new policies like ETL to existing policies and plans. In this sense, the meaning of ETL is negotiated in these communities within the ministry.

1.7.3 Local Level The focus of this research is on the local practices that shape and are shaped by the discourses at the international and national levels. For local practices, I am particularly interested in understanding how local actors, including teachers, school principals, and district and provincial education officials negotiate the meaning of ETL and implement it. There are three subnational bodies that administer public primary schools under MoEYS. These are provincial education offices, district education offices, and school clusters (Fig. 1.1). Due to the recent movement toward decentralization, district education offices and school clusters play more and more important roles in the whole education system. Currently, around 7,000 primary schools are grouped into 1,200 school clusters across the whole country (MoEYS, 2014). Each cluster has one core school, which is usually the biggest one, and five to eight satellite schools with annex schools in some cases. Schools in a cluster share the resources, hold professional development sessions, and organize monthly teacher meetings. In the cluster, representatives of school principals and district education officers organize a DTMT, which monitors and evaluates teaching practices and school management,

1.7 Levels

15

Fig. 1.1 Administrative Structure at the Local Level. Source Developed by the author based on Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (2005)

and reports it to the province. The negotiation in these communities has a direct impact on how teachers are told about ETL and evaluated. The monthly cluster-level teacher meeting is, in principle, a platform where all teachers in the cluster get together on the last Thursday of every month. A typical meeting is organized in the following schedule: 10–30 min of information sharing with the whole group; grade-level small group meetings for 90–120 min; and 10– 30 min of wrap-up as a whole group. In the grade-level small group meetings, teachers who teach in the same grade are supposed to share their experiences and struggles with each other and jointly prepare lesson plans (MoEYS, n.d.). Under these administrative bodies, actual teaching and learning should take place at the school level.13

1.7.4 Locale Because the purpose of this research is to reveal the dynamics brought by ETL to the local level, I chose one of the six provinces where the CFS model was piloted directly by donors as a locale of this study. In particular, I selected Prey Veng province, which is located about 90 miles away from Phnom Penh, surrounded by Kampong Cham, Kandal, and Svay Rieng provinces, and Vietnam to the south (Fig. 1.2). Having nearly 950,000 people in its 1,885 square mile area, Prey Veng is one of the most populated provinces in Cambodia. Most of the population engages in agriculture and fishing on the shore of the Mekong River, and the province is a part of what is called the “great green belt” of Cambodia. The province has worked closely with UNICEF since the 2001/02 academic year, when UNICEF launched a CFS pilot project in 3 out of 12 districts in this province. It achieved 100% coverage of CFS in its public primary schools in 2009, just two years after the CFS policy was issued.

13

Although in principle a school-based meeting is also held every month, the focus of this type of meeting is more on administrative information sharing rather than discussion about teaching and learning.

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1 Introduction

Fig. 1.2 Map of Cambodia and Prey Veng Province. Source Maps Open Source, retrieved June 2014

1.8 Data Collection and Participants In order to explore the above questions, I made three trips to Cambodia to collect data during the period from November 2012 to July 2013. On these trips, I (a) conducted semi-structured interviews with teachers, school administrators, district, and provincial education officials, NGO officials, ministry officials, and donors, (b) observed cluster-level monthly teacher meetings in both of the two subclusters in the Prey Veng cluster, (d) observed classroom practices of Grade 1 and 2 teachers in the cluster, and (e) collected artifacts such as meeting minutes, policy tools, reports published by donors and NGOs, and lesson plans and teaching aids used in the classes observed. The first visit took about three weeks in November and December 2012, when I conducted a series of interviews with international actors from major donor agencies and conducted archival searches at the National Archives of Cambodia and Hun Sen library at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, where major historical and current policy documents are archived. The second visit was from January to March 2013, when I mainly interviewed ministry officials and familiarized myself with the local community in the Prey Veng province. During the second visit, I started visiting 10 schools in the cluster and interviewing school principals and teachers. After one month, I went back to Prey Veng province for more comprehensive data collection at the local level. I spent three and half months from mid-April to July 2013 and observed classes almost every day in different schools. Even when I collected data at the local level, I made several trips to Phnom Penh to interview ministry officials or informants in donor agencies.

1.8 Data Collection and Participants

17

1.8.1 Interviews Interviews are one of the important sources of data for this research. In order to explore the similarities and differences in actors’ perceptions toward ETL, I conducted semi-structured interviews with officials from major donor agencies, ministry officials, provincial and district education officers, school administrators, and teachers in the Prey Veng school cluster. I developed a set of questions to be asked of actors from all levels around the following themes: (i) their understanding about ETL and Child-Friendly School (CFS), (ii) perceived roles they play in this reform, (iii) their perceptions about conflicts within ETL, and (iv) their evaluations of ETL and CFS. I also interviewed teachers several times in order to get a deep understanding of the logic with which teachers make sense of ETL. For this purpose, I also developed an independent interview protocol that included more specific questions about eight areas of ETL and about actual teaching practices. I occasionally changed and/or added questions in the protocol. In total, I interviewed 59 participants from three levels (21, 4, and 34 from international, national, and local levels, respectively). The summary of the participants can be found in Table 1.2. I conducted most of the interviews with actors at international and national levels in English, while I used Japanese with native Japanese speakers (especially those in JICA) and Khmer with actors at local levels. On two occasions when I interviewed the director of the provincial education office, a Cambodian friend of mine from a local NGO accompanied me and helped translate some questions. But in other cases, I conducted interviews on my own.

1.8.2 Participant Observation In order to understand how various actors actually negotiate the meaning of ETL, I observed meetings where multiple actors got together and discussed issues related to ETL. Although I first planned to observe ESWG and EDUCAM meetings, it turned out to be quite difficult to arrange without special permission from the minister. Instead, I ended up collecting meeting minutes for those. However, I did observe three monthly teacher meetings in the Prey Veng cluster. Also, in order to understand how the negotiated meanings of ETL are expressed in practice as well as how practices shape the meaning of ETL at the local level, I observed Grade 1 and 2 Khmer and Math classes (at least one from each school in the cluster).14

1.8.2.1

Teacher Interactions

I conducted participant observation in cluster-level teacher meetings every month as well as school-level meetings in each school. Observing both cluster- and school-level 14

Khmer and Math classes consist of 20 h out of 25–30 h of instruction per week.

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1 Introduction

Table 1.2 Research participants Level

Category

Affiliation

#

International

Multi-lateral (3)

UNICEF

1

World Bank

2

Bi-lateral (3)

NGO (4)

Consultant

UNESCO

1

US Agency of International Development (USAID)

1

Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)

3

VVOB

1

World Education

2

Kampuchean Action for Primary Education (KAPE)

2

Save the Children

1

VSO Cambodia

1

–

2

Primary Education Department (PED)

1

Teacher Education Department (TED)

1

Total National

Ministry (4)

21

Curriculum Department (CD)

1

Education Quality Assurance Department (EQAD)

1

Provincial Education Office

2

Provincial Teacher Training Center

1

Total Local

Provincial District

District Education Office

1

District Training and Monitoring Team (DTMT)

8

School director

–

10

Teacher

–

13

Total Grand total

4

34 59

meetings allowed me to get a better sense of how teachers negotiate the meaning of ETL in multiple professional communities (Coburn & Stein, 2006). My pilot research suggested that teachers discuss different topics in these meetings—mainly about student affairs in school meetings and more about teaching and learning in general in cluster meetings—and this observation was confirmed in the current research. Therefore, I focused more on cluster meetings. In cluster meetings, when teachers were divided into grade groups, I stayed in either Grade 1 or Grade 2 groups.

1.8 Data Collection and Participants

1.8.2.2

19

Teaching Practices

In order to understand how negotiated meaning is expressed in practices, I observed the teaching practices of teachers who taught in Grades 1 and 2 in the cluster. Based on the lesson plans and ETL tasks listed in a checklist (see Chap. 4), I mainly explored: (i) how similarly or differently teachers implemented ETL tasks; (ii) what and how ETL philosophy and tasks, in general, were incorporated in their daily teaching practices; and (iii) to what extent cultural and material contexts matter in implementing ETL. I used descriptive observation instruments focusing on the eight areas represented in ETL documents (Appendix C, Observation rubric). I also conducted 5–10 min of short interviews before and/or after the class in order to ask questions about the particular lesson I observed. Because some teachers allowed me to observe their classes several times, I could observe 32 lessons taught by 13 teachers from all 10 schools in the cluster.

1.8.3 Documents In order to explore how various actors represent ETL similarly or differently, I collected written documents, such as policy papers and reports written by donor agencies, policy-related documents written in both English and Khmer, and agendas and materials prepared for/in meetings. Some official reports written by major donor agencies, such as UNICEF and USAID, are available online, but information available only in Khmer was particularly useful to better understand how the ETL and CFS framework have been translated. Also, in order to situate ETL in historical contexts, I collected a series of policy-related documents that have been published since 1996, when Cambodia first approved an education reform based on studentcentered approaches. At the local level, I collected artifacts prepared for teaching, such as lesson plans, teaching aids, posters, and so on. These documents were very useful in understanding the ways in which the meaning of ETL was “reified” through negotiation (Wenger, 1998, p. 58).

1.9 Methodology of Data Analysis The primary method of data analysis for this study is comparative and interpretive. Comparison can be a tool to understand the context rather than abstract from it (Steiner-Khamsi, 2010), and interpretive analysis allows us “to find constructs, themes, and patterns that can be used to describe and explain the phenomenon” (Gall et al., 2006, p. 466). Before analyzing the data, I transcribed all the interview data. Making transcripts was a big challenge in this study, because I used three languages—Khmer, English, and Japanese—in data collection. Because I am less fluent in Khmer, I had to first

20

1 Introduction

transcribe every single word in Khmer and check it with a native Khmer speaker, then translate everything into English in order to make it easy to handle. There are some concepts and words that cannot simply be translated, but in these cases, I just left such concepts in Khmer and used them as they are in this book. In total, it took me nearly three months just to get everything transcribed. My data analyses went through three phases—horizontal, vertical, and transversal comparisons. Using an online qualitative data analysis software, I first analyzed data from each level (international, national, and local) horizontally in order to explore similarities and differences within levels. More specifically, I compared documents and artifacts produced by different actors and interview transcripts at the same level to see how they represented ETL similarly and differently. This process was essential to understand the multiplicity at each level. Results of horizontal comparisons are mainly presented in Chaps. 4 and 6 of this book. Building on the horizontal comparison, I moved on to make sense of what ETL means at each level. I analyzed artifacts produced through interactions in order to understand how different voices are “reified” (Wenger, 1998, p. 58) in these artifacts. At this point, I devoted a lot of time and energy to understanding local meaning. I compared observation data from teacher meetings, interview data, and data from classroom observations and explored the interrelationship among these three in order to understand how negotiated meaning is expressed in practices and how practices shape the meaning of ETL. Based on the interpretations of each level, I moved on to analyze data vertically across levels to shed light on the dynamic relationship within and across levels in shaping local practices. Chaps. 4 and 5 present findings based on vertical comparisons between three levels. Finally, for transversal comparisons, I re-interpreted all the data in two different timespans: longer and shorter. For the longer one, drawing on the historical resources obtained in archival search and the extensive review of existing research, I analyzed the history of student-centered pedagogies and the history of pedagogical reforms in Cambodia, so that I could situate Cambodian ETL in longer historical contexts (Chaps. 2 and 3). For the shorter timespan, I tried to trace from the origin of ETL to its most recent impacts on actual teaching practices at the local level in the past 20 years (Chaps. 4 to 6).

1.10 Structure of This Book This book consists of seven chapters. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the whole research, explains the theoretical and conceptual framework I draw on, explores existing literature, presents the research questions to be explored, and concludes with methodologies employed with an introduction to the research site and participants. In Chap. 2, I situate Cambodian pedagogical reform on the global–local axis, drawing on the existing literature on the circulation of student-centered pedagogies in many low-income countries and local responses to it. Student-centered pedagogies got globally circulated in the post-Cold War unipolar global geopolitics and that

1.10 Structure of This Book

21

it is essentially a political—and ideological—attempt from the Western countries to disseminate their mode of thoughts. Cambodian pedagogical reform, I argue, should be understood as a product of such a global geopolitical configuration, and its political, social, and cultural implications should be addressed simultaneously. Chapter 3 discusses the historical development of the education sector in Cambodia, focusing on how different pedagogical reforms were initiated by different regimes from the Angkorian period. Persons in power have used different pedagogies, both inside and outside classrooms, to maintain their legitimacy. In these pedagogies, however, knowledge is constantly seen as personal property, and transmission of knowledge is the only legitimate way of teaching and learning. Such a notion is in clear contrast with constructivist philosophy underlying student-centered pedagogies that ETL draws on. The chapter discusses how new pedagogies have posed critical questions to the current government regarding how they could maintain legitimacy. Chapter 4 presents an analysis of the policymaking process of a Cambodian student-centered policy called ETL and explores how multiple perspectives are negotiated and reflected in this policy. Contradictions found in the policy, between radical orientation toward the transformation of knowledge and its conservative approaches based on the transmission of knowledge, were used as a scaffold to make sense of the nature of education policymaking. In-depth interviews with national and international policymakers indicated that ETL’s intended radical nature was altered to fit more closely with the existing top-down, transmission-based structure over the course of negotiation. Such contradictions, however, allowed various stakeholders to take part in pedagogical reform—not necessarily ETL per se—bringing their distinctive perspectives. Chapter 5 looks at various interpretations made of ETL by examining policy tools—checklist and manual—as well as drawing on interview data at national and local levels. In other words, this chapter examines how the policy objectives were reified as written documents and how these documents were interpreted and used by the local actors. I argue that policy tools define, to a significant extent, what meanings local actors can make about ETL while at the same time local actors’ perceived material and socio-economic contexts also significantly shape how such policy tools should be understood and worked on. These processes are exactly where the contradictory policy messages of ETL—its transformation orientation and its transmission-based implementation—are further filtered, watered down, and even twisted to minimize the substantial impacts of the policy on the local actors. In so doing, I conclude that ETL’s transformation orientation is transformed into practices that rather perpetuate the status quo. Chapter 6 then investigates the underlying “logic” that governs Cambodian pedagogy. This involves exploring how Cambodian people, especially local actors, talk about knowledge, teaching, teacher development, and teaching conditions, as well as examining actual practices. Based on the observation and interview data, this chapter argues that paccekteeh (techniques/technical) plays the central role in governing how Cambodian education should be organized and operated. It explains that the idea of paccekteeh itself hinders substantial changes in educational practices, despite local actors’ active engagement in reforming pedagogy.

22

1 Introduction

Finally, Chap. 7 presents the whole picture of Cambodian pedagogical reform by synthesizing findings presented in Chaps. 2 to 6, and discusses how the findings could further contribute to the literature that this research draws on, both theoretically and methodologically, as well as to practical pedagogical reform efforts within and beyond Cambodia.

References Anderson-Levitt, K. (2002). Teaching culture as national and transnational: A response to teachers’ work. Educational Researcher, 31(3), 19. Anderson-Levitt, K. (2003). Local meanings, global schooling: Anthropology and world culture theory. Palgrave Macmillan. Anderson-Levitt, K., & Alimasi, N.-I. (2001). Are pedagogical ideals embraced or imposed? The case of reading instruction in the Republic of Guinea. In M. Sutton & B. A. Levinson (Eds.), Policy as practice: Toward a comparative sociocultural analysis of educational policy (pp. 21–58). Ablex Publishing Corporation. Arnove, R. F., & Torres, C. A. (2003). Comparative education: The dialectic of the global and the local. Rowman & Littlefield Pub Inc. Ball, S. J. (2001). Performativities and fabrications in the education ceremony: Towards the performative society. In D. Gleeson & C. Husbands (Eds.), The performing school: Managing, teaching and learning in a performance culture (pp. 210–226). RoutledgeFalmer. Bartlett, L., & Vavrus, F. (2014). Transversing the vertical case study: A methodological approach to studies of educational policy as practice. Anthropology & amp; Education Quarterly, 45(2), 131–147. https://doi.org/10.1111/aeq.12055 Bartlett, L., & Vavrus, F. (2016). Rethinking case study research (0 ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/ 10.4324/9781315674889 Braun, A., Ball, S. J., & Maguire, M. (2011). Policy enactments in schools introduction: Towards a toolbox for theory and research. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 32(4), 581–583. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2011.601554 Brodie, K., Lelliott, A., & Davis, H. (2002). Forms and substance in learner-centered teaching: Teachers’ take-up from an in-service programme in South Africa. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(5), 541–559. Brook Napier, D. (2003). Transformations in South Africa: Policies and practices from ministry to classroom. In K. Anderson-Levitt (Ed.), Local meanings, global schooling: Anthropology and world culture theory. Palgrave Macmillan. Bunlay, N., Wayne, E. W., Sophea, H., Bredenburg, K., & Singh, M. (2010). Active-learning pedagogies as a reform initiative: The case of Cambodia. American Institute for Research. Carney, S. (2009). Negotiating policy in an age of globalization: Exploring educational “Policyscapes” in Denmark, Nepal, and China. Comparative Education Review, 53(1), 63–88. http:// www.eric.ed.gov.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/ERICWebPortal/detail?accno=EJ826650 Chae-Young, K., & Rouse, M. (2011). Reviewing the role of teachers in achieving education for all in Cambodia. Prospects. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-011-9201-y Coburn, C. E., & Stein, M. K. (2006). Chapter 2: Communities of practice theory and the role of teacher professional community in policy implementation. In M. I. Honig (Ed.), New directions in education policy implementation: Confronting complexity (pp. 25–46). State University of New York Press. Courtney, J. (2008). Do monitoring and evaluation tools, designed to measure the improvement in the quality of primary education, constrain or enhance educational development? International Journal of Educational Development, 28(5), 546–559. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2007. 07.002

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Cuban, L. (1998). How schools change reforms: Redefining reform success and failure. Teachers College Record, 99(3), 453–477. Fullan, M. (2016). The new meaning of educational change (5th edn). Routledge. Gall, M. D., Gall, J. P., & Borg, W. R. (2006). Educational Research: An Introduction (8th ed.). Pearson. Ginsburg, M. (2009). Active-learning pedagogies as a reform initiative: Synthesis of case studies. American Institutes for Research. Guthrie, G. (1990). To the defense of traditional teaching in lesser-developed countries. In V. Rust & P. Dalin (Eds.), Teachers and teaching in the developing world (Vol. 8, pp. 219–232). Garland. Honig, M. I. (2006). New directions in education policy implementation: Confronting complexity. State Univ of New York Pr. Kingdom of Cambodia. (2007). Child friendly school policy. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press. Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. (n.d.). ETL training manual. Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. (2005). Child Friendly School Framework. Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. (2014). Education statistics and indicators 2013/2014. O’Sullivan, M. (2002). Reform implementation and the realities within which teachers work: A Namibian case study. Compare: A Journal of Comparative Education, 32(2), 219–237. https:// doi.org/10.1080/03057920220143192 Pontefract, C., & Hardman, F. (2005). The discourse of classroom interaction in Kenyan primary schools. Comparative Education, 41, 87–106. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050060500073264 Soltis, J. F. (1981). Education and the concept of knowledge. In J. F. Soltis (Ed.), Philosophy and education (pp. 95–113). National Society for the Study of Education. Spillane, J. P., Reiser, B. J., & Gomez, M. L. (2006). Policy implementation and cognition: The role of human, social, and distributed cognition in framing policy implementation. In M. I. Honig (Ed.), New directions in education policy implementation: Confronting complexity (pp. 47–64). State Univ of New York Pr. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2000). Transferring education, displacing reforms. In J. Schriewer (Ed.), Discourse formations in comparative education (pp. 155–187). Lang Publishers. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2010). The politics and economics of comparison. Sutton, M., & Levinson, B. A. U. (2001). Policy as practice: Toward a comparative sociocultural analysis of educational policy (Vol. 1). Ablex Publishing Corporation. Takayama, K. (2010). Politics of externalization in reflexive times: Reinventing Japanese education reform discourses through “Finnish PISA Success.” Comparative Education Review, 54(1), 51– 75. https://doi.org/10.1086/644838 UNICEF. (2009a). Child friendly schools evaluation: Country report for Thailand. UNICEF. UNICEF. (2009b). Child friendly schools evaluation: Country report for the Phillipines. UNICEF. UNICEF. (2009c). Child friendly schools programming: Global Evaluation Report. UNICEF. (2009d). Child-friendly schools manual. UNICEF. UNICEF. (2011). Child friendly schools evaluation: Country report for Lao People’s democratic republic. UNICEF. Vavrus, F., & Bartlett, L. (2009). Critical approaches to comparative education: Vertical case studies from Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas (1st ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press. Wheeler, C. W. (1998). Rebuilding Technical Capacity in UNICEF/Sida Supported School Clusters: A Study of UNICEF’s Capacity-Building (Education) Project 01. UNICEF.

Chapter 2

Student-Centeredness as a Global Pedagogy?

…pedagogy has social, epistemological and philosophical foundations. For this reason, the pedagogy is not value-neutral. It is a view about the world, about the kind of people and society we want to create through education. However, this nature of the pedagogy is often not recognised. This is because it is often presented as if it were value-free and merely technical (Tabulawa, 2003, p. 9)

The World Conference on Education for All held in Jomtien, Thailand, in March 1990 was influential in the spread of student-centered pedagogies in low-income countries (Ginsburg, 2010). A document prepared in this conference considered the active and participatory teaching approaches as “particularly valuable in assuring learning acquisition and allowing learners to reach their fullest potential” (Interagency Commission, 1990, Article 4). Various low-income countries as well as aid agencies enthusiastically adopted student-centered pedagogies as a means to improve the quality of education. These countries include Namibia (O’Sullivan, 2002, 2004), South Africa (Brodie et al., 2002), Tanzania (Vavrus & Bartlett, 2013), Nigeria (Hardman et al., 2008), Mongolia (Steiner-Khamsi & Stolpe, 2006), and Cambodia (Bunlay et al., 2010; Kingdom of Cambodia, 2007), to list a few. The objective of this chapter is to situate Cambodian student-centered reform in a global geopolitical landscape so that I can examine it as a synchronic event rather than just as one of the random reform cases. This chapter, therefore, traces how student-centered pedagogies have become somewhat a global norm, with a focus on low-income countries, and it discusses major perspectives that shed light on different facets of the phenomenon.

2.1 Foundations of Student-Centered Pedagogies As cited above, Tabulawa (2003) contended that pedagogies are not value-neutral. Neither are student-centered pedagogies. We then should ask the question: What is the view that student-centered pedagogies draw on about the world and about the © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 T. Ogisu, Reforming Pedagogy in Cambodia, Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects 62, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6750-3_2

25

26

2 Student-Centeredness as a Global Pedagogy?

kind of people and society we want to create? Here, I make a brief reflection on the theoretical origins of student-centered pedagogies and identify their characteristics.

2.1.1 Theoretiical Foundations We can trace the origin of student-centeredness back to J. J. Rouseau (1712–1778), who presented his ideas about children and childhood in the novel Emile, or On Education (J. J. Rouseau, 1763). He suggested that adults, including parents and teachers, should try to maximize the natural growth of a child through passive interventions, wherein adults follow a child’s interests rather than tell him/her what to learn. J. H. Pestalozzi (1746–1827) developed Rouseau’s idea and proposed the concept of holistic education wherein children’s psychological, mental, and physical developments are balanced. Pestalozzi claimed that every child, regardless of family background, has the right to be educated according to the child’s interests. These thinkers challenged the divine authority and envisioned the establishment of an egalitarian and democratic society. The idea of student- or child-centeredness became popular in the 1920s when the progressive education movement flourished in the United States. Although this movement was most strongly associated with J. Dewey (1859–1952), the basic ideas of progressive education could be traced back to the work of R. W. Emerson (1803– 1882). Emerson’s claim that the nature of an individual child must be respected, influenced F. W. Parker (1837–1902), whom Dewey called the father of progressive education. Parker placed the child at the center of educational processes and attempted to weave various school subjects as an integrated curriculum so that children could learn in a naturalistic way (Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School, n.d.). According to Dewey, schools should not impose knowledge on children; schools must teach children based on the latter’s impulses and interests. He defined the new and progressive education in contrast to what it is opposed: If one attempts to formulate the philosophy of education implicit in the practices of the new education, we may, I think, discover certain common principles amid the variety of progressive schools now existing. To imposition from above is opposed expression and cultivation of individuality; to external discipline is opposed free activity; to learning from texts and teachers, learning through experience; to acquisition of isolated skills and techniques by drill is opposed acquisition of them as a means of attaining ends which make direct vital appeal; to preparation for a more or less remote future is opposed making the most of all opportunities of present life; to static aims and materials is opposed acquaintance with a changing world. (Dewey, 1938: 223 cited in Schweisfurth, 2013, pp. 9–10)

Developmental psychologists also played a significant role in preparing a scientific basis for child-centeredness. Among them, Jean Piaget (1896–1980) and Lev Vigotsky (1896–1934) presented a brand new way of understanding a child and a child’s cognitive development. Contrary to the beliefs held by many psychologists at that time, Piaget insisted that children are neither born tabula rasa nor do they develop in a linear fashion by absorbing and accumulating new concepts. His theory

2.1 Foundations of Student-Centered Pedagogies

27

was based on the idea that there are several cognitive stages that children go through as they grow, and how they interpret the world is based on the stage they are in (Bransford et al., 2005). In other words, individual children have different learning needs according to their cognitive stage. While Piaget understood learning as a psychological and therefore a personal process, Vygotsky focused on the social nature of learning. He considered learning as a social process wherein a learner communicates with others and with the world to construct and re-construct meanings based on her or his previous experiences. Preparing a learning environment, including interpersonal and physical settings, that is appropriate to a child’s zone of proximal development (i.e., the difference between what a learner can do with and without help), is one of the most important roles of teachers. Vygotsky’s notion of learning also became the basis of a new paradigm called constructivism, wherein knowledge is seen as something to be constructed and re-constructed continuously in social processes. Constructivism is an epistemology, that is, an “area of philosophy concerned with knowledge: determining what we know and how we know it and identifying the conditions to be met for something to count as knowledge” (Dupre, 2007, p. 7, as cited in Tabulawa, 2013, p. 50). Constructivist epistemology—knowledge as a social construction and learners as active players in the construction of knowledge—is what most distinctly differentiates student-centered pedagogies from other pedagogies. Knowledge cannot be detached from knowers; knowledge is a social construction; knowledge is situated and thus is tentative and uncertain. This epistemology resonates with the view of learners as active beings and of learning as a social process, which has profound implications in teaching, in the environment where learning occurs, and in the curriculum. Terhard (2003) accurately depicted teaching and learning informed by constructivist epistemology as follows: There can be no more teaching in the sense of transmitting prepared packages of knowledge divorced from concrete situations—nor such teaching be morally justified…. The task of the teacher consists of setting up, or staging, learning environments in which learning as coconstructing and restructuring in social and situated context becomes more probable. The learning environments particularly suited for this purpose are those that take into account the situation-bound and constructive character of any kind of learning in which learners can independently make their own way. (Terhart, 2003, pp. 32–33)

He further claimed the transmission of a prepared package of knowledge as morally unjustifiable and even harmful because there is no such thing as absolute knowledge and absolute truth.

2.1.2 Common Core of Student-Centered Pedagogies Student-centered pedagogies are informed by these diverse perspectives. Although they cover a range of theories and practices, several premises and dispositions have been identified by researchers. For example, McCombs and Whisler (1997) listed five premises of student-centered pedagogies, namely, (a) students are distinct and

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unique; (b) students’ unique differences must be taken into account in teaching and learning; (c) learning is a constructive process that occurs best when contents are relevant to students; (d) learning occurs best in a positive environment; and (e) learning is fundamentally a natural process (p. 10). Henson (2003) also identified six dispositions of student-centered pedagogies, as follows: (a) education should be experience based; (b) each individual student’s unique qualities and dispositions should be considered in a curriculum; (c) a curriculum should be shaped based on students’ perceptions; (d) students’ curiosity should be fed and nourished; (e) learning is best when it involves emotions; and (f) a learning environment should be free from fear (pp. 14–15). Schweisfurth’s (2013) minimum standards of a learner-centered education help us understand its “universal” components. These standards are based on the pragmatic definition of learner-centered education as a continuum of techniques, relationships, motivation, and epistemology. That is, learner-centered education is “a pedagogical approach which gives learners, and demands from them, a relatively high level of active control over the content and process of learning. What is learnt, and how, are therefore shaped by learners’ needs, capacities and interests” (Schweisfurth, 2013, p. 20). Her set of standards are as follows: • Lessons are engaging to pupils, motivating them to learn; • Atmosphere and conduct reflect mutual respect between teachers and pupils. Conduct, such as punishment, and the nature of the relationships do not violate rights; • Learning challenges build on learners’ existing knowledge; • Dialogue (and not just a one-way transfer of knowledge) is used in teaching and learning; • Curriculum is relevant to learners’ lives and perceived future needs, and learning is facilitated using a language accessible to them (i.e., mother tongue, except when it is practically impossible to be used); • Curriculum is based on skills and attitude outcomes as well as on content. Curricula should engage the learners’ critical and creative thinking skills. • The abovementioned principles are assessed by testing the learners’ skills and by taking into account individual differences. It is not purely content-driven or not purely success based only on rote learning (Schweisfurth, 2013, p. 146). As shown above, this set of standards is practice-oriented, open to local interpretations, and based on an assumption that classroom practices could change gradually from being less to being more learner-centered. Tabulawa’s (2003) list of principles is more explicit about the profound implications of epistemology on student-centered learning. He listed the following as the common principles: (a) more flexible and relevant curricula; (b) activity as the core of learning; (c) placing learners at the center of education; and (d) constructivist epistemology (p. 9). Compared with Schweisfurth, Tabulawa (2003) understood learner-centeredness as a different pedagogical paradigm from teacher-centeredness, which is based on what he calls objectivist epistemology. In objectivist epistemology, knowledge is viewed as fixed, static, and unchanging, and its philosophical tradition

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originates from rationalism. This epistemology informs teacher-centered pedagogies, which involve “an unproblematic authoritative transference of portions of knowledge from the teacher to the student” (p. 52). A teacher is viewed as an expert, whereas students are seen as passive recipients of knowledge, a paradigm described by Freire (1972) as banking education. Student-centered pedagogies, therefore, emerged as the antitheses to teacher-centered pedagogies not only in terms of teaching methods and styles but also more profoundly in terms of worldview. In this sense, Tabulawa (2013) rejected the notion that teacher- and studentcentered pedagogies form a continuum and instead took a dualistic stance. To him, putting teacher- and student-centered pedagogies on the same continuum is “an unconscious adherence to a technicist approach to pedagogy” (p. 7), wherein pedagogical changes are seen only as a technical matter and that its epistemological and thus political nature is ignored. By contrast, Schweisfurth (2013) defined learnercentered education using continua because learner-centered education in its most radical form has never been practiced beyond isolated classrooms and schools. To her, what seems practically possible is to aim for a more learner-centered education rather than to aim for the most radical one (Schweisfurth, 2013). A similar stance was taken by other researchers, such as Barrett (2007), O’Sullivan (2004), and Vavrus (2009), whose research works are based on the Global South contexts. As is clear already, constructivist epistemology (and the student-centered pedagogies that it informs) cannot be separated from the pursuit of democracy. Starting from the democratic relationships in classrooms,1 constructivist epistemology promotes particular learners’ traits, which are the necessary attributes of the citizens of a democratic society. Among these traits are creativity, innovativeness, critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and teamwork. Student-centered pedagogies are not only more democratic as they are less authoritarian than the teacher-centered pedagogies, but they, from the outset, promote particular “modes of thought” among learners (Tabulawa, 2003, p. 10). In other words, “while the curricular frameworks for learnercentered education (LCE) are less stringent and prescriptive, the lack of state-dictated content does not mean that LCE is free of ideology or of the quest for social engineering;” “it is just that [its] ideology and end goals are very different” from those of teacher-centered education (Schweisfurth, 2013, p. 10). While Schweisfurth’s (2013) representation of the pedagogical continuum is practically helpful in figuring out how to render education more student-centered, I take a stance similar to that of Tabulawa (2013) and focus on the epistemological and thus political grounds of the student-centered reform in Cambodia. What I will do 1

As all practicing teachers know, this is far difficult than said. Many will agree to the following depiction by Schweisfurth (2013): Functioning democratic classrooms, just like functioning democratic states, require rules, discipline and shared purpose—but these need to be negotiated rather than imposed. This takes time, skill and effort. Permissive or weak authoritarian teachers, on the other hand, are also on the opposite end of the continuum from authoritarian teachers, but without the framework of responsibilities set out in democratic classrooms, learners can abuse power, and purposeful learning is likely to be lost in ensuing chaos (p. 12).

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in this book is to problematize the ways in which student-centered pedagogies are constructed both globally and locally as well as examine how these pedagogies are put into policy and practice. In other words, I am not a proponent of student-centered pedagogies, particularly in the Cambodian context. To put it more clearly, this book is not intended to provide technical guidance on how to make student-centered reforms successful, but it rather aims to portray Cambodian student-centered reform as a political project that is destined to fail in the current circumstances.

2.2 Globalization of Student-Centered Pedagogies Pedagogies can never be value-neutral, and they never exist in a social vacuum. If this is the case, logically speaking, there cannot be any pedagogy that is universal or global. However, naming student-centered teaching gives practice “an aura of legitimacy” (Schweisfurth, 2013, p. 18). Student-centered pedagogies are so widely adopted in pedagogical policies across the globe and eventually regarded as global or even universal pedagogies. Therefore, unpacking the growing interest in studentcentered pedagogies among aid agencies in the past 30 years and low-income countries is particularly important in answering the following question: How has studentcenteredness come to be regarded as universal or global pedagogies and on what political and ideological grounds? In what follows, I treat this question as discursive rather than as a question of the actual implementation or of the impact of student-centered pedagogies, because discourses on student-centered pedagogies are normative rather than empirical and evidence-based.2 Before exploring the discourses around student-centered pedagogies, we need to understand the historical contexts from which such discourses emerged. Tabulawa (2013) described the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union as the key turning point for the globalization of student-centered pedagogies. Although the West had preferred student-centered pedagogies since well before 1989, international aid agencies in the West were constrained to express their preference for particular pedagogies (and their connotation of particular political and economic ideologies) due to the bipolar, global geopolitical configuration. Such a situation dramatically changed under the unipolar world order that was established soon after the end of the Cold War. As a result, supranational frameworks that promote a participatory type of education came into being, and intergovernmental organizations as well as bilateral aid agencies began to make their political grounds clear to the developing world. These political and economic circumstances prepared the context in which student-centered pedagogies received explicit support.

2

To date, international evidence shows mixed findings on whether student-centered pedagogies improve pupil attainment. Research in the US has found that African–American pupils do not benefit from active and participatory teaching methods as much as white pupils due to differences in “culture of power” (Delpit, 1988, p. 281).

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2.2.1 Transnational Frameworks The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (adopted in 1989 and enforced in 1990) is the most influential policy that was ratified by 198 governments to date. The Convention promotes education that is directed to the preparation of children to lead a responsible life in a free society (Article 29). Having access to “modern teaching methods”—active, participatory, and student-centered—is declared as a right of every child, and it encourages international cooperation to uphold such a right in the developing world: Article 28 3. State Parties shall promote and encourage international cooperation in matters relating to education, in particular with a view to contributing to the elimination of ignorance and illiteracy throughout the world and facilitating access to scientific and technical knowledge and modern teaching methods. In this regard, particular account shall be taken of the needs of low-income countries. (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 1990 [emphasis added])

By asserting children’s right to express their opinions (Article 13), to have freedom of thoughts (Article 14), and to enjoy the freedom of association (Article 15), the Convention indeed advocates for free and democratic relationships in schools and classrooms as well as in society. The Education for All (EFA) movement is another supranational framework that accelerated the promotion of student-centered pedagogies in the Global South. Article 1 of the World Declaration on Education for All: Meeting Basic Learning Needs reaffirms the importance of meeting the basic learning needs of every child, youth, and adult. Although EFA put too much emphasis on expanding access that resulted in the suppression of the quality of education in the 1990s, the declaration acknowledged individual learners and their distinct learning needs and advocated for creatively exploiting the new possibilities brought about by information and communication technologies to meet the basic learning needs of all. It also placed problemsolving—one of the skills student-centered pedagogies are supposed to nurture—as one of the essential learning tools, along with literacy and numeracy, to enable human beings to live functionally in society: Every person—child, youth and adult—shall be able to benefit from educational opportunities designed to meet their basic learning needs. These needs comprise both essential learning tools (such as literacy, oral expression, numeracy, and problem solving) and the basic learning content (such as knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes) required by human beings to be able to survive, to develop their full capacities, to live and work in dignity, to participate fully in development, to improve the quality of their lives, to make informed decisions, and to continue learning. (Interagency Commission, 1990 [emphasis added])

It then calls for attention to the quality of education in Article 4—Focusing on Learning. This is where the declaration’s favor for student-centered pedagogies is most obvious: Whether or not expanded educational opportunities will translate into meaningful development—for an individual or for society—depends ultimately on whether people actually

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2 Student-Centeredness as a Global Pedagogy? learn as a result of those opportunities, i.e., whether they incorporate useful knowledge, reasoning ability, skills, and values…. Active and participatory approaches are particularly valuable in assuring learning acquisition and allowing learners to reach their fullest potential. (Interagency Commission, 1990, [emphasis added])

Being adopted by 155 countries, 33 governmental organizations, and 125 nongovernmental organizations, EFA became the largest international movement in education throughout the 1990s. The Dakar Framework for Action, which was produced following the World Education Forum in 2000, reaffirms the importance of EFA as a global educational agenda and adopts a more concrete set of actions to be taken by the year 2015. These actions reaffirm the preference for active and participatory approaches. For example, a view on the quality of education is stated in Paragraph 44 as follows: Successful education programmes require: (1) healthy, well-nourished and motivated students; (2) well-trained teachers and active learning techniques; (3) adequate facilities and learning materials; (4) a relevant curriculum that can be taught and learned in a local language and builds upon the knowledge and experience of the teachers and learners; (5) an environment that not only encourages learning but is welcoming, gender-sensitive, healthy and safe; (6) a clear definition and accurate assessment of learning outcomes, including knowledge, skills, attitudes and values; (7) participatory governance and management; and (8) respect for and engagement with local communities and cultures. (The World Education Forum, 2000 [emphasis added])

Active learning techniques, relevant curricula, and participatory governance, all of which have a strong connotation with student-centered pedagogies, are directly linked to quality education. Also, the term “participatory” being used repeatedly throughout the Dakar Framework for Action implies the legitimacy of such an approach both in classroom practices and in the educational development practice. Such a stand on pedagogies was handed over to the post-2015 agenda. Education 2030, later adopted as Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4), took a step forward to actually consider learner-centered approaches as a necessary element of quality education: “Education institutions and programmes should be adequately and equitably resourced, with … sufficient numbers of teachers and educators of quality using learner-centred, active and collaborative pedagogical approaches” (The World Education Forum 2015, 2016, p. 33 [emphasis added]). Such educational processes, it claims, foster knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values necessary for individuals to become global citizens: Quality education fosters creativity and knowledge, and [it] ensures the acquisition of the foundational skills of literacy and numeracy as well as [of] analytical, problem-solving and other high-level cognitive, interpersonal and social skills. It also develops the skills, values and attitudes that enable citizens to lead healthy and fulfilled lives, make informed decisions, and respond to local and global challenges through education for sustainable development (ESD) and global citizenship education (GCED). (The World Education Forum 2015, 2016, p. 8)

Mainstreaming GCED and ESD in national curricula is included in the seventh target under SDG4. The Education 2030–SDG4 emphasizes behavioral change (particularly toward the environment) as one of the important elements of learning

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outcomes, and the learner-centered approaches are expected to be effective given their transformative effects. Revisiting the past and current supranational frameworks makes it clear that student-centered pedagogies have been reaffirmed again and again as effective and desirable. Although the desirability of modern teaching methods or active and participatory learning approaches were only briefly mentioned in early frameworks, more recently, such as in Education 2030–SDG4, such pedagogies became linked directly to and treated as a necessary component of quality education. The rhetoric used to support student-centeredness also shifted from the one that emphasizes its effectiveness in enhancing the learning of literacy and numeracy to the one that values its affinity to transformation. Such changes in the international discourse on education have paved the way to the legitimization of student-centered pedagogies gradually but globally.

2.2.2 Intergovernmental Agencies Under these supranational frameworks, intergovernmental agencies also made a big push toward spreading student-centered pedagogies in low-income countries. In what follows, I revisited how three intergovernmental agencies, namely, UNICEF, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the World Bank, promoted student-centered pedagogies, and then I examined their rationales for doing so.

2.2.2.1

UNICEF

Being one of the major multilateral aid agencies in the education sector, UNICEF played a key role in making an inclination to a particular pedagogy less political. As early as 1995, they invented the fancier term “child-friendliness,” which was borrowed from the health sector—“baby-friendly hospitals,” for instance—as an overarching concept that high-quality education must encompass. UNICEF started to apply this comprehensive model by early 2000. The child-friendly school (CFS) model is founded on the principles of children’s rights of the1990 Convention on the Rights of the Child as well as on other international declarations on education. This model has three interlinked principles: childcenteredness, democratic participation, and inclusiveness, as UNICEF proudly puts it (UNICEF, 2009). These principles are packaged into comprehensive “dimensions,” including school environment and atmosphere, teaching and learning, and school management. Democracy in education is what UNICEF regarded as one of the keys to achieving quality, and democratic participation must come hand in hand with child-centeredness because “child-centered pedagogy is more likely to produce ‘independent thinkers’ who can make constructive contributions to a participatory democracy and adapt to changing circumstances” (UNICEF, 2009, Chap. 1, p. 10).

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This is quite a stance taken by intergovernmental organizations like UNICEF, but by using the word “child-friendliness,” which no one can dare to oppose, UNICEF successfully—and even beautifully—depoliticized their work in education. In the 2000s, the CFS models became UNICEF’s flagship program and spread in more than 56 countries across the globe as of 2007 (UNICEF, 2009). The Cambodian pedagogical reform is also a part of this global CFS movement, as discussed in Chap. 3.

2.2.2.2

UNESCO

Compared with UNICEF’s rights-based approach, UNESCO, being the only UN agency specialized in education, has taken a rather radical and somewhat ideological approach to education and pedagogies. For UNESCO, education is a key not only to human development but most fundamentally to peace and social cohesion. Its famous constitution reads: “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed” (UNESCO, 1946). UNESCO considers its work on education as a fundamental human right because education has an emancipatory power for both individuals and societies. This view is particularly clear especially that UNESCO has advocated for adult literacy (and lifelong learning) programs rooted in Paulo Freire’s theories of democratization in education and liberation of the oppressed (Ouane, 1989). UNESCO’s support for student-centered pedagogies stems from the very idea of education for liberation and emancipation. As early as 1950, Maria Montessori, who was the leading advocate and practitioner of a radical version of child-centered education for the poor and children with disabilities, was invited to join the UNESCO Institute of Education (currently known as the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning) as a founding member (UNESCO, 2018). The pedagogy that UNESCO advocated is based, therefore, more on critical and radical epistemology rather than on constructivism.3 Such an ideological nature of UNESCO’s work was very controversial, particularly during the Cold War, and it resulted in the withdrawal of the US and the United Kingdom (UK) in 1984 and 1985, respectively.4 The global movement toward achieving EFA gave UNESCO a chance to overcome the criticisms it received (especially for its “politicized” and “biased” policies). Being charged to lead the movement, UNESCO served as an EFA coordinator, and thus, its radical orientation was not as open as before. Rather, UNESCO became an “agenda setter and leader of ideas” in the 1990s (Smith et al., 2007, p. 232). Its 1996 publication Learning: The treasure within, which was prepared by Jacques Delors, the chairperson of the International Commission for Education for the 21st Century, 3

This radical epistemology has gradually been accepted in the international community and has finally been incorporated in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and SDG4, but this has happened only recently. 4 The US and UK regained membership in 2003 and 1997, respectively, but US quitted again in 2018 together with Israel due to the admission of Palestine.

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very well presented UNESCO’s role as a leader of ideas. The report placed a renewed emphasis on the moral and cultural dimensions of education based on the observation of the post-Cold War political circumstances: … whereas democracy has conquered new territory in lands formerly in the grip of totalitarianism and despotic rule, it is showing signs of languishing in countries which have had democratic institutions for many decades, as if there were a constant need for new beginnings and as if everything has to be renewed or reinvented. (Delors et al., 1996, p. 14)

The Delors’ Commission, therefore, stressed the importance of education as “one of the principal means available to foster a deeper and more harmonious form of human development and thereby to reduce poverty, exclusion, ignorance, oppression and war” (Delors et al., 1996, p. 11). The report illustrated such a humanistic—rather than functional—notion of education (Smith et al., 2007), which consists of four pillars: learning to know, learning to do, learning to be, and learning to live together. Although the report itself did not proclaim a preference for any specific pedagogical approach, it clearly stressed the importance of democratic participation both as a learning content and as a learning process.

2.2.2.3

World Bank

The World Bank, which became the leading actor in the education sector in the 1990s, also supports the student-centered pedagogies but with an objective that is quite different from those of UNICEF and UNESCO. The World Bank has never been enthusiastic about a rights-based approach to education, much less about an emancipatory approach to education; what is important for the bank is how education affects economic growth (Klees et al., 2012). Understandably, it considered learnercentered pedagogies as more effective in terms of equipping learners with a set of knowledge and competencies required to “operate successfully in the knowledge economy” (The World Bank, 2003, p. 21). I may be able to call their approach to education a functional one. Although, as Heneveld and Craig (1996) pointed out, the bank’s actual interventions in pedagogical issues remained minimal during the 1990s, its pro-knowledge economy education policies demanded new pedagogies: “Providing people with the tools they need to function in the knowledge economy requires adoption of a new pedagogical model” (The World Bank, 2003, p. 28); this statement can be found in the bank’s working paper on life-long learning. The same working paper characterized the learner-centeredness as one of the traits of an effective learning environment; the bank even stated that “learner-centered learning allows new knowledge to become available for use in new situations—that is, it allows knowledge transfer to take place” (p. 32). Again, the World Bank’s major concern was about the pedagogy’s possible impacts on human capital and economic growth, and its actual interventions in teaching and learning processes remained limited until recently. By now, it is clear that intergovernmental agencies promote student-centered pedagogies with different rationales: rights-based, emancipatory, and functional

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approaches to education.5 These approaches are not necessarily exclusive of each other, though. UNESCO’s emancipatory approach, for example, is also rights-based, and UNESCO does not disagree that student-centered pedagogies are effective in terms of preparing students for a knowledge-based economy. However, it is most probable that each agency has its own version of studentcenteredness rather than pointing to the same thing. Actually, this is the very reason why I keep using the plural student-centered pedagogies rather than implying as if there is an agreed set of rules and understandings about student-centeredness. As will be discussed in later chapters, this lack of shared understandings is actually a key to involving diverse stakeholders and actors in the process of circulating studentcentered pedagogies while, at the same time, constraining pedagogical changes at the classroom level.

2.2.3 Bilateral Aid Agencies Apart from international organizations, bilateral aid agencies in the Western block, such as those in the US, the UK, and Japan, also expressed their preference for studentcentered pedagogies. This, again, is not unrelated to their battle against communism during the Cold War as well as during the fall of the Berlin Wall.

2.2.3.1

US

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) admitted that they played a leading role in planning and implementing programs after the end of the Cold War: “USAID programs helped establish functioning democracies with open, marketoriented economic systems and responsive social safety nets” (USAID, 2019). Its basic education policy issued in 2000, for example, clarifies the rationale in investing in basic education, as follows: Broadly shared basic education provides a powerful source of support to democracy by helping ensure that fundamental social values are widely shared among the nation’s populace. In so doing, basic education helps promote adherence to the core rules and standards of conduct necessary to the maintenance of civil society. (USAID, 2000, p. 9)

The same document presents the USAID’s approaches to educational assistance to achieve quality education; one of those approaches deals with the improvement 5

Similarly, Schweisfurth (2013) identified three justificatory narratives, namely, cognition, emancipation, and preparation narratives. Research findings in cognitive psychology certainly shape a narrative that students learn better in active, participatory, and motivating methods of teaching and learning. Emancipatory narrative in Schweisfurth’s categorization includes both rights-based and more radical liberation discourses. I distinguish these two because their political orientations are quite different. Finally, preparation for knowledge-based economy is another powerful narrative that justifies student-centered pedagogies.

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of educational practices at the classroom level. It includes the following bullet point: “Promoting the adoption of teaching methods that involve students in the learning process, both to facilitate learning and—especially in the transition countries—as a means to introduce democratic concepts into the classroom” (USAID, 2000, p. 14). Their preference for participatory, student-centered pedagogies was quite obvious.

2.2.3.2

UK

As cited by Tabulawa (2013), the Overseas Development Administration of the UK took the following stance regarding the relationship between education and political processes: Citizens who have been exposed to learning styles which require the questioning of assumptions, empirical styles of studying and the exploration of alternatives are seen as likely to have more chance of participating fruitfully in a pluralistic political process than those who have not. (Overseas Development Administration, 1994, p. 3, as cited in Tabulawa, 2013, p. 21)

This statement clarifies the UK’s support for “a pluralistic political process,” which was associated with the West during the Cold War, and toward the notion that education must be provided in particular ways in order to produce citizens who participate fruitfully in such a political process. What it proclaimed is that they provide aid for education only to countries that have or at least plan to have pluralistic political processes.

2.2.3.3

Japan

Japan’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) Charter 1992 acknowledged “each recipient country’s request [and] its socioeconomic conditions,” but it also declared in the same document that ODA would be provided based on the principle of promotion of democracy and on the introduction of a market-oriented economy: “Full attention should be paid to efforts for promoting democratization and introduction of a marketoriented economy, and the situation regarding the securing of basic human rights and freedoms in the recipient country” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, 1992). In the field of education, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) launched a technical assistance project in Kenya in 1998 to improve the quality of mathematics and science education by introducing student-centered teaching and learning methods (Matachi & Kosaka, 2017). The approach developed in this project, or what they call inquiry-based learning,6 has been taken over to other JICA projects throughout Africa and in other regions. 6

According to JICA, this is “a form of learning in which children are not force-fed with scientific knowledge in a systematic way, but are enabled to pursue inquiries in the manner of scientists” (Japan International Cooperation Agency, 2004, p. 14).

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A brief review of policy papers has clearly shown that bilateral aid agencies also took their part in legitimizing and circulating student-centered pedagogies in the post-Cold War context. These agencies were very clear as regards their political stance, that is, pro-democracy and pro-marketization, to which they expect studentcenteredness to contribute. This obvious politics–economy–pedagogy link, however, completely faded during the 2010s. USAID, for example, dramatically changed its stance toward its education aid in the 2011 Education Sector Strategy, particularly after it started to stress the importance of basic literacy and numeracy in early grades. In its latest Education Policy 2018, for example, no statement was made on particular pedagogies/instructional approaches although they kept democracy as a priority. Meanwhile, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) issued its education policy Get Children Learning in 2018, and it made no mention of democracy at all. It also emphasized the effectiveness of pedagogies over that of political orientations in teaching: “We will support teachers to use teaching strategies proven to work well for poor and marginalised children” (DFID, 2018, p. 4). JICA’s education position papers in 2010 and 2015 similarly focused heavily on “quality learning” but did not specify what constitutes such learning. In the post-Cold War period, pedagogy was so strongly linked to the political and economic reconstruction wherein the chance that governments would reject aid money was very little. Also, it was during this special circumstance that student-centered pedagogies were widely circulated across the globe.

2.3 Adoption of Student-Centered Pedagogies in Low-Income Countries Aside from the global and international contexts where student-centered pedagogies were legitimized and promoted, governments of low-income countries also have reasons to adopt them. Schweisfurth (2013) pointed out two major circumstances where governments tend to promote student-centered pedagogies. These are: (i) a regime change from authoritarian government to democracy (such as in South Africa and Russia) and (ii) a post-conflict situation where student-centered pedagogies’ peacebuilding and reconstruction potentials are emphasized (such as in Rwanda and Cambodia). As many low-income countries have experienced one or both circumstances, it is understandable that newly established governments try to promote student-centered pedagogies with an impulse to stabilize the society and therefore gain legitimacy. Researchers have pointed out a more pragmatic reason for the governments of lowincome countries to adopt student-centered pedagogies: money (Steiner-Khamsi, 2004). As we have seen above, unipolar global geopolitics after the fall of the Berlin Wall have placed governments of low-income countries under strong pressure to adopt pedagogies that are in line with democratic political processes and marketoriented economies. Failure to do so may risk the aid money for education. Such a

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pressure was real because there were countless international conferences and regional workshops on student-centered pedagogies during the 1990s wherein officials of education ministries from low-income countries were invited. There exist multiple perspectives that help us understand the phenomena wherein student-centered pedagogies became recognized globally. Some call such phenomena “policy borrowing” (Phillips, 1989; Phillips & Ochs, 2003, 2004), others call it “traveling reforms” (Steiner-Khamsi & Stolpe, 2006), yet still other researchers critically see this as a neocolonial attempt. This section explores these perspectives and examines what each perspective can add to our understanding of these phenomena.

2.3.1 World Culture Theory As in other aspects of our social, cultural, and economic lives, globalization has brought many similarities in education across nations. World culture theory, or neo-institutionalist theory, perceives globalization as a process in which principles, methods, goals, motives, and values become more pervasive, intense, and viscous worldwide (Boli, 1985). From this perspective, these world-cultural elements “are woven into the taken-for-granted fabric of everyday life, thereby becoming invisible” (Boli, 1985, p. 385), ultimately homogenizing the world. Based on this perspective, the proliferation of student-centered reforms can be understood as a process in which student-centered pedagogies became an element of world culture. In their comparative analysis of mathematics instructions in three countries, David Baker and Gerald LeTendre boldly asserted that “we should expect to see continued standardization of core teaching practices,” including pedagogy, and that national differences may no longer be relevant, except for the tasks that are not closely linked to classroom instruction (Baker & LeTendre, 2005, p. 115). Although world culture theory helps us capture the process of globalization in education, it fails to explain why certain ideas and practices, such as student-centered pedagogies, are legitimized and circulated more than others. In contrast to world culture theory, externalization theory is more careful about the semantic construction of the process of globalization from the local perspectives. Its focus is on a discursive space where transnational educational knowledge is filtered for the selection, channeling, and transformation into a nationally significant structure (Schriewer, 2003). Externalization is a reasoning characteristic in education literature, and Schriewer and Martinez (2004) identified two forms of externalization, namely, “externalization to world education” and “externalization to tradition” (p. 31), to which people refer to as foreign education and history/tradition, respectively, as filters in legitimizing or reinterpreting urgent educational concerns. From the perspective of externalization theory, student-centered pedagogies are a sort of transnational educational knowledge that connotes quality education. Such connotation—whether or not scientifically true—provides a rational ground for the governments of low-income countries, which are deeply concerned about improving

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the quality of education under the EFA, to adopt student-centered pedagogies out of the many other pedagogical approaches. Such externalization discourse like “the quality of our education is low because our classroom is not student-centered” is commonly found in policy documents on pedagogical reforms in the 1990s and 2000s.

2.3.2 Policy Borrowing There is an extensive body of research that addresses the more deliberate act of adopting education policies from abroad, or “policy borrowing” as Phillips and Ochs (2004) called. This type of research focuses on the causes, consequences, and process of policy borrowing by exploring the different stages involved. Phillips and Ochs (2003) conceptualized it as a cyclical process, as shown in Fig. 2.1. This process consists of four stages: cross-national attraction, decision, implementation, and internalization/indigenization. In cross-national attraction, various factors, such as dissatisfaction on the part of stakeholders, negative external evaluation (e.g., results of international achievement tests), new configurations (e.g., EFA and SDGs), and political turnaround as seen in the changes in government, form the impulses of policy borrowing. These impulses affect the second stage—decision—where a government and other agencies try to initiate a change. Here, decisions can be theoretical, realistic/practical, quick fix, and/or phony. This stage is followed by the implementation stage, wherein a foreign model is adapted to the borrower’s system. A newly introduced model might encounter support or resistance, and change may take time. Finally, in the internalization/indigenization stage, the “policy ‘becomes’ part of the system of education of the borrower country” (Phillips & Ochs, 2003, p. 455). Once the policy is no longer foreign to the borrower system, another cross-national attraction would be initiated. Fig. 2.1 Policy borrowing processes. Source Created by the author based on Fig. 1 of Phillips and Ochs (2003), p. 452

Cross-national attraction Internalization/ Indigenization

Decision

Implementation

2.3 Adoption of Student-Centered Pedagogies in Low-Income Countries

41

Based on this perspective, globalization of student-centered pedagogies can be understood as a result of repeated borrowing intended by various governments. Very rapid dissemination of student-centered pedagogies also created “a climate” in which more borrowing was facilitated (Phillips & Ochs, 2004, p. 776).

2.3.3 Postcolonial Perspectives In contrast to viewing the globalization of student-centered pedagogies as a result of intentional borrowing, other researchers have paid close attention to the politics and conflicts inherent in this process. Steiner-Khamsi (2000) suggested that we should distinguish borrowing, lending, and imposition from one another based on how certain educational ideas/practices are transferred. This is because educational transfer involves “patronizing aspects” (p. 179), especially when it occurs from donors to low-income countries. In such cases, educational transfer becomes more like a policy lending initiated by donors rather than policy borrowing initiated by borrowers. Given that student-centered pedagogies were legitimized by various transnational frameworks and preferred by both multi-lateral and bi-lateral aid agencies, it was unlikely that the recipients of aid money (governments of lowincome countries) could resist the imposition. This was particularly so in post-conflict situations similar to that in Cambodia in the 1990s. Tabulawa (2003), as cited at the beginning of this chapter, is very critical about the “imposition” of pedagogies in low-income countries firstly because such an approach is far more than an educational transfer, and secondly because epistemological as well as resource contexts in low-income countries are quite different from those in richer countries. Similarly, postcolonial theorists critically examined the diffusion of student-centered pedagogies in non-Western contexts and problematized such phenomena. For example, Guthrie (1990) warned that it is problematic to bring student-centered approaches to low-income countries in the absence of solid scientific evidence showing that such approaches produce higher cognitive achievement. Moreover, “wholesale adoption” of Western-origin student-centered pedagogies may even result in academic ineffectiveness and in the perpetuation of the dependence between Western and non-Western countries (Nguyen et al., 2009, p. 123). These postcolonial discussions help shed light not just on an unequal power relationship between donors and recipients, but also on hidden political agendas held by those who try to disseminate/adopt student-centered pedagogies worldwide.

2.3.4 Diverging Local Practices Although student-centered pedagogies have gained legitimacy globally, many studies have documented the persistence of teacher-centered “chalk and talk” practices in low-income countries. The major factors identified as constraining these reforms are

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2 Student-Centeredness as a Global Pedagogy?

(a) teachers’ lack of capacities to use new pedagogies appropriately (Brodie et al., 2002); (b) mismatch between the new pedagogies and the local culture and physical conditions (O’Sullivan, 2002; Vavrus & Bartlett, 2013); and (c) lack of incentives to encourage teachers to use new pedagogies (American Institutes for Research, 2006). These findings suggest there is much diversity in local practices beneath the discursive convergence. For example, based on her action research in Namibia, O’Sullivan (2004) suggested that it is necessary to take an “adaptive approach,” that is, to add changes based on the realities within which teachers work rather than to expect teachers to implement a student-centered policy as it is (p. 599). Other researchers, especially those who explore local meaning, have also reported that student-centered pedagogies are localized and contextualized rather than just adopted as they are. Steiner-Khamsi and Stolpe (2006) explored how the imported pedagogy of student-centered learning was “Mongolized” and found that the pedagogy was woven into “the hierarchical social structure” represented by the roles of class monitors in the classroom management (p. 129). In such a structure, student-centered classes were organized with presentations, discussions, and other activities that were primarily teacher-led, as well as with group work led by monitors. The hierarchical structure was not altered but kept and even strengthened by new practices. Furthermore, through their collaborative research experience with Tanzanian teacher educators, Vavrus and Bartlett (2013) also found that although Tanzanian teachers embraced student-centered pedagogies, they held “a persisting sense of knowledge as something pre-determined to be ‘given’ or transferred from teachers (or books) to students” (p. 72). They unveiled the contingency of pedagogy to the cultural and material contexts within which teaching and learning take place. These findings suggest that student-centered pedagogies are globalized only on the discursive level and that local practices diverge rather than converge, due to social and cultural diversities in the world. In the words of SteinerKhamsi and Stolpe (2006), “what converge internationally and eventually become standardized are pedagogical ideologies, not pedagogical practices” (p. 126).

2.4 Geopolitics of Cambodian Student-Centered Reform This chapter examined the globalization of student-centered pedagogies by tracing their philosophical grounds as well as historical contexts in which they were legitimized at different levels. The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was the turning point for student-centered pedagogies because unipolar geopolitical circumstances after the Cold War enabled the former Western bloc to more openly endorse specific educational and pedagogical approaches. Although it was also revealed that various actors emphasized different aspects of the pedagogies and employed different rationales, the pedagogies’ liberal and democratic connotations underpinned this “climate” (Phillips & Ochs, 2004, p. 776).

2.4 Geopolitics of Cambodian Student-Centered Reform

43

It is in such a global geopolitical situation where Cambodia first adopted studentcentered pedagogies in the early 1990s. Started as a form of humanitarian assistance after the Khmer Rouge regime (1975–79) and the following Vietnamese occupation, Cambodian student-centered reform was plainly a political—ideological, more precisely—endeavor for both Cambodian government and Western donors (see Chap. 3). Situating Cambodian pedagogical reform in this global geopolitical context enables us to examine it as a synchronic historic event rather than just as one of the random unsuccessful pedagogical reforms. Different theoretical perspectives presented in this chapter, namely, world culture theory, policy borrowing and lending, and postcolonialism, also shed light on different aspects of the phenomenon of globalization of student-centered pedagogies: world culture theory explains student-centered pedagogies became a taken-forgranted fabric of quality education; student-centered pedagogies travel across borders by repeated policy borrowing; and student-centered pedagogies were imposed on low-income countries. These perspectives represent cultural, technical, and politicaleconomic aspects of the phenomenon, and in many cases, these perspectives sound like mutually exclusive. But I rather believe it must be understood as a multi-faceted phenomenon where all of these aspects are intertwined, supplemented, and strengthened with each other to legitimate student-centered pedagogies as a global norm. In the rest of this book, therefore, these multiple facets are taken together to better understand why and how Cambodia has adopted and thus became part of the globalization of student-centered pedagogies. To start with, the next chapter presents a transversal analysis of pedagogical reform attempts in Cambodian history.

References American Institutes for Research. (2006). Issue paper: Challenges to promoting active-Learning, student-centered pedagogies. US Agency of International Development. http://www.equip123. net/webarticles/anmviewer.asp?a=518 Baker, D., & LeTendre, G. (2005). National differences, global similarities: World culture and the future of schooling (1st ed.). Stanford University Press. Barrett, A. M. (2007). Beyond the polarization of pedagogy: Models of classroom practice in Tanzanian primary schools. Comparative Education, 43(2), 273–294. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 03050060701362623 Boli, J. (1985). Global patterns of educational institutionalization. In J. H. Ballantine (Ed.), Schools and society: A reader in education and sociology. Mayfield. Bransford, J., Derry, S., Berliner, D., Hammerness, K., & Beckett, K. L. (2005). Theories of learning and their roles in teaching. In L. Darling-Hammond, J. Bransford, P. LePage, K. Hammerness, & H. Duffy (Eds.). Preparing teachers for a changing world: What teachers should learn and be able to do. National Acadecy of Education, pp. 40–87. Brodie, K., Lelliott, A., & Davis, H. (2002). Forms and substance in learner-centered teaching: Teachers’ take-up from an in-service programme in South Africa. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(5), 541–559. Bunlay, N., Wayne, E. W., Sophea, H., Bredenburg, K., & Singh, M. (2010). Active-learning pedagogies as a reform initiative: The case of Cambodia. American Institute for Research.

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Delors, J., Mufti, I. A., Amagi, I., Carneiro, R., Chung, F., Geremek, B., Gorham, W., Kornhauser, A., Manley, M., & Padr, M. (1996). Learning: The treasure within (Report to UNESCO of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century), 46. Delpit, L. D. (1988). The silenced dialogue: Power and pedagogy in educating other people’s children. Harvard Educational Review, 58(3), 280–298. Department for International Development. (2018). DFID education policy: Get children learning. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/att achment_data/file/685536/DFID-Education-Policy-2018a.pdf Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum. Ginsburg, M. (2010). Improving educational quality through active-learning pedagogies: A comparison of five case studies. Educational Research, 1(3), 062–074. Guthrie, G. (1990). To the defense of traditional teaching in lesser-developed countries. In V. Rust & P. Dalin (Eds.), Garland. Teachers and teaching in the developing world, 8, 219–232. Hardman, F., Abd-Kadir, J., & Smith, F. (2008). Pedagogical renewal: Improving the quality of classroom interaction in Nigerian primary schools. International Journal of Educational Development, 28(1), 55–69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2007.02.008 Heneveld, W., & Craig, H. (1996). Schools count: World Bank project designs and the quality of primary education in sub-Saharan Africa. World Bank. Henson, K. T. (2003). Foundations for Learner-Centered Education: A Knowledge Base. Education, 124(1), 5–16. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=11046646& lang=ja&site=ehost-live. Interagency Commission. (1990). WEF (Jomtien Declaration). http://www.unesco.org/education/ wef/en-conf/Jomtien%20Declaration%20eng.shtm Japan International Cooperation Agency. (2004). The history of Japan’s educational development. Institute for International Cooperation, JICA. https://openjicareport.jica.go.jp/pdf/11778784.pdf Kingdom of Cambodia. (2007). Child Friendly School Policy. Klees, S. J., Samoff, J., & Stromquist, N. P. (Eds.). (2012). World Bank and education: Critiques and alternatives. Sense Publishers. Matachi, A., & Kosaka, M. (2017). JICA’s support to education in Africa in the last two decades: Focusing on mathematics and science education. Journal of International Cooperation in Education. McCombs, B. L., & Whisler, J. S. (1997). The Learner-Centered Classroom and School: Strategies for Increasing Student Motivation and Achievement. Jossey-Bass. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. (1992). Japan’s Official Development Assistance Charter 1992. https://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/oda/summary/1999/ref1.html Nguyen, P.-M., Elliott, J. G., Terlouw, C., & Pilot, A. (2009). Neocolonialism in education: Cooperative learning in an Asian context. Comparative Education, 45(1), 109. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 03050060802661428 Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. (1990). Convention on the Rights of the Child. https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx O’Sullivan, M. (2002). Reform implementation and the realities within which teachers work: A Namibian case study. Compare: A Journal of Comparative Education, 32(2), 219–237. https:// doi.org/10.1080/03057920220143192 O’Sullivan, M. (2004). The reconceptualisation of learner-centred approaches: A Namibian case study. International Journal of Educational Development, 24(6), 585–602. https://doi.org/10. 1016/S0738-0593(03)00018-X Ouane, A. (1989). Handbook on learning strategies for post-literacy and continuing education. UNESCO Institute for Education. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000084592? posInSet=15&queryId=b0acab58-c23b-4be8-952b-ff6100664ebc Phillips, D. (1989). Neither a borrower nor a lender be? The problems of cross-national attraction in education. Comparative Education, 25(3), 267–274. Phillips, D., & Ochs, K. (2003). Processes of policy borrowing in education: Some explanatory and analytical devices. Comparative Education, 451–461.

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Phillips, D., & Ochs, K. (2004). Researching policy borrowing: Some methodological challenges in comparative education. British Educational Research Journal, 30(6), 773–784. Schriewer, J. (2003). Globalisation in education: Process and discourse. Policy Futures in Education, 1(2), 271. https://doi.org/10.2304/pfie.2003.1.2.6 Schriewer, J., & Martinez, C. (2004). Constructions of internationality in education. The Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending, 29–53. Schweisfurth, M. (2013). Learner-centred education in international perspective: Whose pedagogy for whose development? Routledge. Smith, P., Pigozzi, M. J., Tomasevski, K., Bhola, H. S., Kuroda, K., & Mundy, K. (2007). UNESCO’s role in global educational development. Comparative Education Review, 51(2), 229–245. https:// doi.org/10.1086/512019 Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2000). Transferring education, displacing reforms. In J. Schriewer (Ed.). Discourse Formations in Comparative Education. Lang Publishers, 155–187. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2004). The global politics of educational borrowing and lending. Teachers College Press. Steiner-Khamsi, G., & Stolpe, I. (2006). Educational import: Local encounters with global forces in Mongolia (1st ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. Tabulawa, R. (2003). International aid agencies, learner-centred pedagogy and political democratisation: A critique. Comparative Education, 39(1), 7–26. Tabulawa, R. (2013). Teaching and learning in context: Why pedagogical reforms fail in SubSaharan Africa. African Books Collective. Terhart, E. (2003). Constructivism and teaching: A new paradigm in general didactics? Journal of Curriculum Studies, 35(1), 25–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220270210163653. The World Bank. (2003). Lifelong learning in the global knowledge economy: Challenges for developing countries. The World. http://documentos.bancomundial.org/curated/es/528131468749957 131/pdf/multi0page.pdf The World Education Forum 2000. (2000). Dakar framework for action. UNESCO. http://www. unesco.org/education/wef/en-conf/dakfram.shtm The World Education Forum 2015. (2016). Education 2030: Incheon Declaration. UNESCO. https:// unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000245656 UNESCO. (1946, November). UNESCO Constitution. http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ ID=15244&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html UNESCO. (2018). Transforming lives through education. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/ pf0000264088.locale=en UNICEF. (2009). Child Friendly Schools Manual. https://www.unicef.org/publications/files/Child_ Friendly_Schools_Manual_EN_040809.pdf USAID. (2000). Policy paper: Program focus with basic education. USAID. USAID. (2019, May 7). USAID History. https://www.usaid.gov/who-we-are/usaid-history Vavrus, F. (2009). The cultural politics of constructivist pedagogies: Teacher education reform in the United Republic of Tanzania. International Journal of Educational Development, 29(3), 303–311. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2008.05.002 Vavrus, F., & Bartlett, L. (2013). Teaching in tension: International pedagogies, national policies, and teachers’ practices in Tanzania. Sense Publishers.

Chapter 3

Power and Pedagogy in Cambodia—A Historical Overview

The definition and goals of education are mercurial, varying widely across time and space. In Cambodia, which has experienced both flux and reflux over time, education—particularly in schools—has strongly reflected the political circumstances of the time. Education as a fundamental human right is a very new idea: it was, and still is to a significant extent, a privilege that cannot be enjoyed by the majority of the population. In such context, we must look closely at how basic assumptions about education—its purposes, organizational structure, and pedagogy—have changed over time. Additionally, given that Cambodian education has to a significant extent been financed by external support, the influence of international development agencies as well as global development agendas, such as Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Education for All (EFA), and, more recently, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), cannot be dismissed. The goal of this chapter is to situate the Cambodian pedagogical reform in the historical, social, and political milieu as well as in the context of globalization, which shapes how the current formal education system is structured and operated. Examining pedagogical reform “both near and afar simultaneously” (AndersonLevitt, 2002, p. 20), in terms of both time and space, helps us understand why Cambodia “borrowed” the globalized student-centered policy. Particularly, I argue that Cambodian student-centered reform, by replacing basic assumptions about education, reflects the desire to create a free and peaceful society after the Civil War in the 70s and 80s.

3.1 History of Education in Cambodia The history of Cambodian education can be understood to have occurred in five stages. During the first stage, there were no formally operated schools, although informal educational venues were extant even before the sixteenth century. These informal venues, and the educated population that they created, played key roles in the © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 T. Ogisu, Reforming Pedagogy in Cambodia, Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects 62, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6750-3_3

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perpetuation of the Angkor kingdom. The second stage, which occurred during the French colonial period from 1863 to 1953, saw the establishment of the Cambodian formal education system (education in public schools). In the process of building the state after independence, the education system was developed, expanded, and then largely destroyed. I designate this dramatic period (1953–1975) as the third stage of the Cambodian history of education. From 1975 to administration of the national election in 1993, the education system experienced destruction under the Khmer Rouge regime, reformation under Vietnamese occupation, and rehabilitation under the supervision of the United Nations Transitional Authority of Cambodia (UNTAC). Following this fourth stage, Cambodian education finally reached the development stage, in which the current education system was introduced and access to primary education witnessed a rapid growth. Based on this dynamic history, Effective Teaching and Learning (ETL), a pedagogical reform policy explored in this study, has been developed and implemented as a way to reform not only education but also the society as a whole. In the sections that follow, I discuss how education has been associated with the social and political circumstances in each of the five stages and how it is connected to the desire for societal change.

3.1.1 Education Before the Arrival of the French (1863) It is said that there was no formal education system in Cambodia before the French arrived in 1863, but this is quite untrue. Cambodia had an established education system well before the French arrival, as is evidenced by the sophisticated levels of knowledge and technology in historic architecture, such as Angkor Wat. Religions—Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism introduced from India and Theravada Buddhism from Sri Lanka in the thirteenth century—played a significant role in education: Buddhist temples, known as wat, functioned as educational institutions and knowledge centers, and Buddhist monks volunteered to teach young Cambodians at temple schools. The first of these temple schools can be traced back to the 7th century, when Cambodia was ruled by Champa. At that time, it was primarily attended only by elite members of the society (Chandler, 2008). By the twelfth century and the rise of the Khmer Empire, temple schools were widespread (Dy, 2004). Education at these schools was documented in the fourteenth century by a diplomat from the Yuan dynasty, Zhou Daguan, in The Customs of Cambodia (Zhou, 1987). In temple schools, volunteer monks taught boys didactic poems, epics, and folk tales for the purpose of the children’s moral and spiritual development (Ayres, 2000a). Monks also taught children “to read the Satras, the sacred books of the Buddhism, written in the Cambodian language,” and sometimes children learned carpentry by engaging in the repair of the temples (Bilodeau et al., 1955, p. 16). Opportunities were restricted to boys because the students were required to stay and work at temples with monks, the majority of whom were male.

3.1 History of Education in Cambodia

49

According to David M. Ayres, an American historian, temple schools played a central role in perpetuating the monarch social hierarchy in Cambodia. In this hierarchy, the God-King was on the top, monks in the middle, and peasants (who constituted more than 90% of the population) at the bottom. This hierarchy was in effect throughout the Khmer Empire, as Zhou observed with surprise in the fourteenth century (Zhou, 1987), and the roles played by temples in this social order were significant in two ways. Firstly, temples had strict control of knowledge—what was regarded as knowledge and how it should be taught and learned. Only written texts were considered to be knowledge, and, in many cases, these were sutras. It follows naturally that these written materials were stored in temples. In order to safeguard this knowledge, monks memorized the contents and transmitted it orally. Oral transmission of knowledge, the dominant pedagogy employed at temples, defined the proper teacher–student relationship as being of a storyteller and their audience (Needham, 2003). The student audience was expected to listen to stories quietly and then recite the information correctly. Possession of knowledge was directly linked to the possession of power. Temples, therefore, monopolized knowledge and determined “what texts were worth knowing” as well as how knowledge should be transmitted (Ayres, 2000, p. 14). Secondly, as Ayres noted, the monastic instruction offered at temples provided “a strong and explicit tie between rural life and religious ideology,” without which peasants could not survive the harsh and precarious environment (Ayres, 2000a, p. 28). Such religious-educational ideology stresses “the importance of appropriate conduct and behavior and of maintaining the correct relations between members of society” (Ayres, 2000a, p. 28). In this way, temple schools contributed to the maintenance of the king–monk–peasants hierarchy. Education in pre-colonial Cambodia was, therefore, crafted in a milieu of religious-political hierarchy and perpetuated such social order. Pedagogy that heavily relied on oral transmission of knowledge also strengthened, and was strengthened by, the society’s hierarchical relationships. Because Cambodian education has been so significantly linked to Buddhism, a wide range of research has illuminated the tangible and intangible continuities between the Buddhist tradition and current educational practices (Needham, 2003).

3.1.2 French Protectorate (1863–1953) Cambodia was under the French protectorate for 90 years, from 1863 until 1953, and it was during this period that the structured, “modern,” and secular public education system was introduced. The first secular school was established by King Norodom in 1867, four years after Cambodia was incorporated into the French protectorate (Bilodeau et al., 1955). He opened schools for the children of his allies as well as for the children of his servants in the capital. The first Franco-Khmer public school was established in 1873 in Phnom Penh and was followed by several such schools

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Table 3.1 Number of schools and students, 1930 and 1952 1930 School

1952 Pupil

School

Pupil

Khum school

203

7,204 (+55)

–

–

Modernized temple school

53

2,386

1,447

76,943

Franco-Khmer school (elementary)

74

3,507

787

120,664

Franco-Khmer school (full primary)

18

4,662 (+273)

Source Created by author. Data set for 1930 based on René Morizon’s (1931) Monographie du Cambodge. Hanoi: Emprimrie d’Extreme-Orient, first cited in Kitagawa (2004, p. 60). Data set for 1952 is based on Bilodeau et al. (1955)

in provincial capitals. By 1907, a total of 18 Franco-Khmer schools that offered full primary curriculum had been established (Forest, 1980).1 At first, the French protectorate government attempted to introduce an education system identical to that of France in all of the Indochina colonies and protectorates. The French tried to deny the legitimacy of the monarch system in Cambodia by establishing the secular Frenco-Khmer education system and using it to replace traditional temple schools. They also encouraged Cambodian peasants to open khum schools in communes (khums) that were authorized by the French protectorate government. However, these plans did not come to fruition, as the French simply underestimated the strength of the bond between education and the monarch social order. The French protectorate government thus altered its approach in 1918 and started to introduce an education system that was based on the existing local systems. In order to attract a large segment of the Cambodian population, traditional temple schools were reformed into “modernized” temple schools instead of purely secular institutions. 53 such schools offered public primary education only in the six years between 1924 and 1930, and as many as 1,447 schools were recorded a year before independence (Table 3.1). Public education under the French protectorate was therefore operated in a double-track system: Franco-Khmer schools established by the French protectorate government followed the French education system and used French as a medium of instruction, and the modernized temple schools, which were locally established and operated, maintained strong ties with the monarch social order and instructed students in the Khmer language.

3.1.2.1

Franco-Khmer Schools

As stated, the first Franco-Khmer school was opened in 1873 by an infantry officer named Ferryrolles (Bilodeau et al., 1955). Other French residents and provincial 1

Most Cambodian children quit school after two or three years at that time. In response, the French protectorate government made an adjustment to its education system; it divided primary education into two 3-year cycles, i.e., the elementary cycle and the complementary cycle.

3.1 History of Education in Cambodia

51

governors also established Franco-Khmer schools, but not with the intention to provide mass education open to the general public (Forest, 1980). Franco-Khmer schools mainly catered to the families of loyalists, to Chinese merchants, and to Vietnamese government officials who wished to educate their children for administrative service in Cambodia. Forest (1980) reported that nearly half of the students enrolled in Franco-Khmer schools were non-Cambodians.2 Based on a detailed review of artifacts stored by the French colonial government, Kitagawa found that Franco-Khmer schools played varying functions across districts (circonscriptions) (Kitagawa, 2004, 2005). In the Kompong Cham district in 1930, for example, there were nine Franco-Khmer schools that offered the elementary curriculum and one Franco-Khmer school that offered the full primary curriculum, while no khum and temple schools were operational. In contrast, as many as 47 modernized temple schools were functioning in Kampot district, along with a sole Franco-Khmer school. Such diversity represents, according to Kitagawa (2005), the differing extent to which Cambodians found the relevance of the French education system to their lives. Kompong Cham Franco-Khmer school (école résidentielle) was established in early 1904 by one French and two local teachers; the school instructed students in French and Khmer, math, Indochinese history and geography, French geography and history aside from Khmer moral, physical education and fieldwork (Kitagawa, 2004). This school started to offer the full cycle of primary education in 1908 and attracted from 50 to 300 pupils every year, nearly half of whom were Cambodian and received a scholarship to attend. After graduating from this school, students could take the exam for the Certificate of Complementary Primary Studies. Success in this exam meant that they could proceed to secondary education in Phnom Penh. For more ordinary Cambodian children who sought education opportunities, the district government began in 1911 to allow communes to open khum schools at their own expense as well as pagoda schools to which teachers were sent from the provincial capital. The subjects taught in these two types of schools were French, math, and Cambodian history. There were eight of these newly established schools in 1915, when they were transformed into a part of the Franco-Khmer education system as école élémentaire (offering the first 3-year cycle of primary education). The primary objectives of the khum and pagoda schools were to expand access to secular, Franco-Khmer education and to make attendance compulsory. In order to detach Buddhism from the public education system, it was necessary to put schools under the control of the protectorate government. It was also necessary to situate these schools within the larger Franco-Khmer education system by allowing graduates to continue with the full primary cycle in Kompong Cham Franco-Khmer school and then possibly on to Collège in Phnom Penh.

2

Kitagawa (2004, 2005) argued that Forest’s dataset represents only prestigious schools and thus is not relevant to discussion of the extent to which formal education was present in the lives of peasants.

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Franco-Khmer schools, however, failed to attract as many pupils as the district government had originally expected.3 There were only 10 Franco-Khmer schools outside of the district capital and these schools instructed only 394 pupils in 1924 (Kitagawa, 2004). Further, the khum schools and pagoda schools that were later merged into the Franco-Khmer system were ineffective at establishing compulsory mass education. The major reasons given in the periodical reports prepared by the district resident were: (1) parents wanted their children to work rather than go to school; (2) teacher quality was low, and there were not enough of them; and (3) school buildings were not well maintained (Kitagawa, 2004). Kitagawa also found that many Cambodians considered the curriculum primarily based on the French education system to be irrelevant to their lives, except for those who aspired to become colonial government officers. Ayers (2000a) even questioned whether the French were “ever truly serious about providing Cambodia’s peasants with modern education” (p. 25). These factors discouraged parents from sending their children to Franco-Khmer schools, and thus temple schools continued to be an important venue of education for Cambodian children. According to Bilodeau et al. (1955), Cambodians held the view that “the principal purpose of study is to master and practice the Buddhist doctrine; thus it is that one acquires the ‘merit’ which will receive its due reward in subsequent existences, until Nirvana is attained” (p. 19). It was temple schools where religious precepts were taught, not Franco-Khmer schools.4 As of 1906, there were 200 such temple schools, catering to nearly 2,000 pupils, that functioned independently of the public education system (Kitagawa, 2004).

3

The French protectorate government’s initial plan to utilize pagoda schools in order to establish compulsory education and its later revision can clearly be seen in the series of Decrees Concerning Compulsory Education that were issued between 1911 and 1916. In 1911, King Sisowath issued a loyal decree on compulsory education that reads: “Article 2. Parents shall send all their sons to a pagoda school as soon as they shall have reached the age of 8 years” (Royal Decree of 10 November 1911). He followed this with another decree in the following year in which he declared, “Article 1. Parents who refuse, without justifiable reason, to send their children to the pagoda schools,…shall pay a fine of 1 piastre” (Royal Decree of 11 April 1912). However, little attention was paid to these instructions, so the plan was revised and the idea of compulsory mass education was abandoned in the 1916 decree: “Article 1. Cambodian domiciled in centerscentres provided with a FrancoCambodian school [Franco-Khmer school], or in the neighborhood of such centres (within a radius of 1 to 1 1/2 miles), shall send their sons to such schools as soon as they have reached the age of 10 years” (Royal Decree of 19 October 1916, Obligation to Attend School). 4 Bilodeau et al. (1955) also reported the characteristics of education in temple schools, as follows: “In actual fact, the texts were learnt by heart, as a result of endless repetition, and the pupils were quite incapable of reading the words separately. A Cambodian boy leaving the pagoda school [temple school] had his memory stocked with edifying passages, but could neither read, write nor count. Any written characters he might have learnt were of no practical use to him, for the sacred script was not employed outside the pagodas” (p. 21).

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3.1.2.2

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Modernized Temple Schools

Given that temple schools were tightly tied to the lives of Cambodians, the French protectorate government invented a way to utilize them toward its own ends. It tried to modernize temple schools by providing training to monks and establishing a Khmer education system parallel to the Franco-Khmer system. The first modernized temple school was established in the Kampot district. In 1924, a demonstration school (école d’application) was opened in the district center to train monk-teachers. During their nine months of training, monk-teachers observed standard lessons given by the principal and then had to copy and demonstrate the lesson. By 1930, 58 monkteachers had been trained by the Kampot demonstration school; these monk-teachers taught in each modernized temple school (Bilodeau et al., 1955). This school model quickly expanded to all districts in Cambodia. Although the details of these modernized temple schools are not available, Bilodeau et al. (1955) reported that the quality of education offered within them was not bad “having regarded all the circumstances” (p. 31). Their elementary 3-year course was More or less equivalent to the corresponding course in the Franco-Khmer schools; but the instruction is given exclusively in Cambodian and only to boys, every afternoon (from 3:30 to 6:30 pm), except on days of religious celebrations (which usually number four a month, depending on the phases of the moon). At the end of the course the pupil may take the examination for the Certificate détudes primaire élémentaires (Elementary Primary School Certificate). (p. 24)

By 1939, there were 908 modernized temple schools that catered to 38,519 pupils; there were 1,477 schools with 76,943 pupils in 1952. Ayres (2000a) evaluated the modernization of temple schools as “a financially prudent move” for the French protectorate government (p. 25). This is because the French could rely on existing educational resources—teaching staff and classrooms—that were financed by villagers themselves as religious contributions. For these reasons, modernized temple schools accounted for a significant portion of the education system in Cambodia in the first half of the French protectorate period.

3.1.2.3

A Double-Track Education System

Although the French protectorate government introduced a modern school education and a partial mass public education system in Cambodia, they also brought a troublesome byproduct. The double-track education system that was based on the Franco-Khmer schools (French education) and modernized temple schools (Khmer education) increased social tension between modernity and tradition. Cambodian elites enjoyed the fruits of modernization and development brought by the protectorate, while at the same time they continued to benefit from the traditional monarchsocial order (Ayres, 2000a, p. 186). This tension created a social divide between the modern elites educated in the French system and the general public (peasantry) that

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could only access Khmer education or no education at all, and thus were kept at the bottom of the social hierarchy. This divide has had long-lasting implications, both for the education system and for the entirety of Cambodian society. Elites utilized the divide to maintain and further strengthen the pre-colonial, monarch social system in local communities. For peasants, in contrast, their subordinate status was justified by meritocracy, a modern notion, which allowed for only very limited access to French education. A member of the peasantry could only proceed to the complementary cycle after finishing their primary education, so social mobility was not to be expected. Ironically, however, it is this hierarchy that the French first tried to terminate.5

3.1.3 From Independence to the Khmer Rouge (1953–1975) Prior to the completion of the independence process in 1953,6 the education system was transferred from the French to the local government in 1950. The development of education in this period is relatively well documented, mostly thanks to the reports included in the UNESCO International Yearbook of Education and the Bulletin of the UNESCO Regional Office for Education in Asia. The Ministry Office of Education also published a series of magazines for teachers—Revue de l’Instituteur Khmer was published in French from 1947 to 1967, and Tossanavodey Krou Bangrean [Teachers’ Magazine] was published in Khmer from 1949—some issues of which survived the Khmer Rouge and are available for analysis. The Cambodian education system saw notable development as a state apparatus under the strong dual leadership of Prince Norodom Sihanouk and Prime Minister Lon Nol (Maeda, 2003). Although they approached educational development from opposite ideological stances.

3.1.3.1

Education Under Sihanouk

Sihanouk, who became the absolute ruler of Cambodia by the time of independence, tried to modernize Cambodian education by building on the modern system introduced under the French protectorate. His strategy was to replace modernized temple 5

It was modern elites who revived the traditional social system in a time of growing nationalism (when Japan took over Indochina from the French occupancy at the end of World War II), and it was again the modern elites who eventually questioned that traditional system and attempted to enact radical reforms in post-colonial Cambodia. 6 King Norodom Sihanouk declared independence from France and established the Kingdom of Kampuchea in March 1945 during the Japanese occupation, the result of which was short-lived and led to Cambodia’s return to the French protectorate. Cambodia’s first constitution was declared in 1947. Sihanouk paid visits to France, Japan, the United States, and Thailand between February and November of 1953 as part of his “crusade for independence” (Chandler, 2008, p. 67). Cambodia finally won independence in October 1953.

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schools with Franco-Khmer primary schools, similar to what the French protectorate attempted and failed to achieve. In a single school year (1950–51), Sihanouk succeeded in turning 18 modernized temple schools into Franco-Khmer primary schools (Bilodeau et al., 1955).7 In Cambodia in 1954, there were 1,414 modernized temple schools with 72,967 pupils and 1,047 Franco-Khmer primary schools with 208,879 pupils. Sihanouk’s strong commitment to education led to an investment in the 1950s of around 20% of Cambodia’s GDP in the education system, resulting in a surge in primary school enrollment. In the academic year 1959–1960, there were 543,450 pupils enrolled in primary education (UNESCO, 1959), compared to roughly 197,600 pupils in the 1951–1952 school year. In other words, the number of primary school students nearly tripled in less than a decade. Such rapid growth in primary education, however, produced serious social problems. As the number of schools that offered post-elementary education (complementary cycle and secondary education) was limited, a large number of youths with elementary education diplomas were produced, but were not given the opportunity for commensurate employment. In response to this issue, Sihanouk established apprenticeship centers and workshops in 1960 in order “to supplement theoretical instruction and to enable young people to find a trade upon leaving school” (UNESCO, 1960, p. 107). This was followed by the introduction of technical and professional subjects in secondary education and post-secondary vocational education in 1961, by orientation programs to attract students to productive sectors in 1962, by lessons in practical exercises and agriculture in 1963, and by the introduction of workshops (in carpentry, machinery, electrical and sheet-metal work, dressmaking, etc.) to colleges and lycées in 1967. A series of Sihanouk’s reform efforts were not well received, according to Ayres (2000a), because unemployed graduates expected that they would be given “modern” jobs, not manual jobs. However, the labor market was simply not mature enough to absorb them. This resulted in frustration and even political protests among youths throughout the 1960s.

Khmerization Sihanouk undertook another important project through education: the “Khmerization” of public education and establishment of a national education system (UNESCO, 1967, p. 69). The first attempt was in a 1958 reform covering: (a) simplification and modernization of the curriculum, (b) emphasis on “the national character of the syllabuses” (UNESCO, 1959, p. 118), and (c) an increase in learning time 7

It is not clear from available resources when this project—converting modernized temple schools to public primary schools—was completed. The government reported the number of modernized temple schools to UNESCO until 1958, but only an aggregated number of primary schools was reported thereafter. Nonetheless, it can be assumed that modernized temple schools still existed in 1965, when Mr. Soth Samreth, a delegate of the Cambodian government, said that the nation’s primary education “at present comprises elementary and complementary primary schools and renovated pagoda schools [modernized temple schools]” (UNESCO, 1965, p. 59) at the 27th session of the International Conference of Public Education.

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for science and math. The most obvious “Khmerizations” included re-classifying French as a foreign language8 and emphasizing Cambodian culture and civilization in the history curriculum. The second reform targeted the Khmerization of secondary education. In August 1963, Sihanouk decided that Khmer would be used in the teaching of mathematics and science at secondary schools. The purpose of this reform was to produce human resources who could contribute to the economic growth of the country by strengthening the teaching of math and science (Khin, 1999). Sihanouk’s Khmerization project was completed in the 1967 reform. The Cambodian Ministry of Education reported this reform to UNESCO as follows: Adopted at the 23rd National Congress, held in July 1967, this process [Khmerization] makes Khmer the language of instruction for all subjects in lycées … it is to be introduced in the universities by about 1972. … For it [Khmer] to become a scientific and functional language some effort must be made to create new words … International scientific and technical terms will be retained either as they are or else transcribed in Khmer characters (UNESCO, 1968, p. 75).

The report evaluated this Khmerization project favorably by saying, “high hopes have arisen as, with the support of teachers, pupils and parents, the Khmer language has taken a leap forward and the national culture has advanced enormously” (UNESCO, 1968, p. 76).

Pedagogical Khmenization Khmerization was intended not just to affect the language of instruction but also the pedagogy. A series of teachers’ guides, magazines, and textbooks were published in the mid-1950s in order to encourage teaching from a post-colonial perspective. This change was particularly evident in the Khmer literacy curriculum. Before the mid-1950s, the Khmer language was taught in schools based on the phonetics-based method developed following French literacy teaching, and this was regarded as problematic (UNESCO, 1953). To change this situation, Chet Chhem, then-inspector of Franco-Khmer elementary education, developed a method of teaching Khmer literacy from a Cambodian perspective. He wrote a series of teachers’ guides and textbooks.9 One of Chet Chhem’s textbooks, Nouvelle Méthode de Lecture et e’Ecriture Khmères pour les Débutants, was published in 1953 and introduced this new method of teaching the Khmer language. In comparison to the French-based method that places a strong emphasis on the sounds of letters and on the decomposition of words into consonants and vowels, this new method focuses on the shapes of letters and on combinations of consonants and vowels. According to Chet Chhem, shapes are 8

Since the introduction of a public education system, Franco-Khmer education has primarily been conducted in French. Particularly from the complementary cycle onward, all subjects were taught in French. The 1958 reform defined Khmer as the medium of instruction at the elementary cycle, i.e., for the first 3 years of primary education. Textbook was also renewed to Mauger, which was developed for beginning learners of French as a foreign language (Hayashihara, 2001). 9 Records indicate that Chet Chhem consulted Mr. Chhum Sott, who was a distinguished scholar of Pali literature at the French Research Institute in Phnom Penh (Chet, 1953, p. ii).

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Fig. 3.1 Nouvelle Méthode de Lecture et e’Ecriture Khmères pour les Débutants. Source Chet Chhem (1953) Nouvelle méthode de lecture et d’écriture Khmères pour les débutants

“easier for young students to memorize” than sounds, and thus focusing on shapes enables them to write Khmer letters correctly and to combine consonants and vowels easily (Chet, 1953, p. iii). The first half of the textbook, therefore, introduces two to three similar-shaped consonants in each chapter, presents each consonant with vowels, and then lists words and short phrases that involve the respective consonants (Fig. 3.1). Chet Chhem’s project was more than just a definition of what the Khmer language is and how it should be taught and learned; he also clarified Khmer as an ethnicity. This is particularly apparent in the latter half of his textbook. After learning all the consonants and vowels, students are introduced to short passages on topics such

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as typical Cambodian school structures, the behaviors of a good student, villages, pagodas, people, nature, traditional customs, and other facets of Khmer culture. The passage titled “My Village” (Chet, 1953, p. 85), for example, describes the Khmer as a people who work in rice fields and live in stilt houses, and then contrasts them with the Chinese, whose row-rise houses are along streets, and with the Vietnamese, who tend to make a living by fishing and often live near rivers. Such description implies not just what Khmer is but also what is not Khmer. Each of these passages represents how the Khmer people and their society have traditionally been and need to be. Correctly learning the Khmer language was, therefore, strongly tied to becoming an appropriate Khmer citizen. My analysis of Chet Chhem’s teachers’ manual, Sakday Naenoam: Kruu Bongrien Nau Sala Bothomsoksah [Manual for Primary School Teachers] (1955),10 reveals that recitation continued to be the core of teaching and learning. Contrary to the practices in traditional temple schools where oral recitation was practiced, however, the Chet Chhem method places a particular emphasis on recitation in relation to students’ writing abilities. The manual stresses the importance of enabling students to write Khmer letters correctly, and instructs teachers to let students use a slate to practice writing letters and words repeatedly. The words, phrases, and short passages in the textbook are to be first dictated and then recited. Recitation needs to proceed, according to the manual, by first making students read a phrase written on the blackboard and then by covering one word at a time until it can be fully recited. Finally, students must be able to write the recited phrases on their slates. The teacher then corrects students’ spelling mistakes. After students can recite and write a sample passage without a mistake, composition is introduced. Topics are focused on students’ daily lives, such as on their pets and family members. As such, this manual granted recitation—traditionally practiced at temple schools—legitimacy as a modern method of teaching that had been denied by the French. Another interesting characteristic of the manual is its detailed instructions. As in the case of recitation, the manual identifies small steps that teachers can follow to teach stroke orders, to encourage students to read aloud in chorus, to pose questions, and so on. Instruction details include what to prepare before class (such as a sheet of thick paper and pen), who to call on—either outstanding or average students— during class, what questions to pose, how to check students’ understanding and correct mistakes and when students should write on their slates or in their notebooks. Most of the time, however, lengthy instructions are presented without explanation of 10

We do not know, however, how many teachers understood or were even aware of Chet Chhem’s project. His textbooks and teachers’ manuals were published, but there is no concrete evidence on how many were actually printed, distributed, and used in schools. According to Hayashihara (2001), who examined a teachers’ magazine, Revue de l’Instituteur Khmer, that was published from 1946 to 1967, the magazine was published to supplement the limited number of available textbooks and teachers’ manuals, and as many as 31,000 copies of this magazine may have been printed. This implies that teachers and students may not have had access to the school textbooks and teachers’ manual prepared by Chet Chhem and instead made use of the more accessible magazine. Though Hayashihara (2001) notes that the magazine began to include more topics related to Cambodian daily lives, such as traditional culture and religious festivals, after 1958, she also points out that the magazine continued to present French as the primary medium of instruction (p. 213).

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the rationales behind them. It can be assumed, therefore, that these instructions were directed particularly to the inexperienced teachers who made up a large part of the Cambodian teaching force at the time. Ultimately, Chet Chhem’s teachers’ manual officially formulized a post-colonial, Khmernized pedagogy. In sum, the Khmernization project, which echoed with the growing nationalism after independence, was critical to the evolution of education in Cambodia. Pedagogical Khmernization led by Chet Chhem is a great example of pedagogy as an expression of power: the power to leave French ways of teaching and learning behind and the power to define the language, people, culture, and society of Khmer. Although his work may not have had tangible impacts in classroom teaching and learning at the time, Chet Chhem’s attempts have since had tremendous impacts on current pedagogical reform efforts.

3.1.3.2

Education Under the Khmer Republic

The late 1960s was “a period of division” in Cambodian history (Ayres, 2000a, p. 69). These divisions existed, as Ayres (2000a) describes. Between supporters of Communism and republicanism; between supporters of the political left and those of the political right; between inhabitants of the city and those of the country; between the rich and the poor; between the beneficiaries of corruption and its victims; and between those Cambodians whose conception of nationalism constituted the notion of social equality and those whose conception supported the status quo. (p. 69)

In such circumstances, policies were not fully implemented and frivolous counter policies and criticisms were launched. Education was, like the other sectors, a field of political strife. Sihanouk was in decline. In March 1970, Sihanouk was desposed by the National Assembly, after which he joined the communist movement. Lon Nol, who embraced participatory democracy and liberal ideology with support from the West, took power after the coup and established the Khmer Republic. As reported at the 1973 UNESCO regional conference, education was severely damaged by the armed disputes in 1970, and primary school enrollment declined sharply from 949,725 (66.9%) in 1969/1970 to 337,729 (23.2%) in 1970/71 (Ho, 1973, p. 87). Re-establishing primary education, therefore, was given priority over any other development program under Lon Nol. His approach to education was socalled neo-Khmerism (Ayres, 2000a). He first tried to remove reminders and images of the past under Sihanouk, both symbolically—removing his portrait from school buildings—and substantively—localizing the French colonial education system by completely removing French from the language of instruction in public schools. He also tried to involve students in the national campaign and to direct actions against the Vietnamese and communism through civic and political education. Pedagogy was one of the targets of Lon Nol’s neo-Khmerist reform. Ho Tong Ho, a representative from the Khmer Republic to the 1973 UNESCO conference, utterly devalued the pedagogical practices prevalent in Cambodia at the time, describing them as ignoring “the psycho-educational advances which have been accomplished

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in other countries” and therefore as an “old doctrine” that must be overthrown (Ho, 1973, pp. 84–85). The old doctrine, according to Ho, is the one in which the “teacher’s only function is to impart knowledge and see to it that it is remembered” (Ho, 1973, p. 85). He instead proposed three novel tenets of a new pedagogy, which can be described as follows: (1) both instructive and formative, aiming at developing students into self-directed learners; (2) more realistic, functional, and utilitarian than formal, theoretical, and academic; and (3) based on modern educational technology (Ho, 1973). Several studies were undertaken in the Ministry of Education to accelerate the formulization of this modernized pedagogy, and the results of these studies were shared via official magazines,11 in which recommendations for instructional behaviors and model lessons were presented (Ho, 1974). To this purpose, the Ministry of Education under the Khmer Republic established an institute that specialized in educational research. In spite of such serious commitments to modernizing the pedagogy, these attempts were disturbed again by political instability. Lon Nol and the Khmer Republic gradually lost their legitimacy around 1975, as the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) extended its power. The government territory began to shrink and the majority of schools were closed, abandoned, or destroyed. Education policies and practices in this era, therefore, “were an overwhelming failure” (Ayres, 2000a, p. 62).

3.2 From the Khmer Rouge to the Paris Peace Agreement (1975–1993) Cambodian education cannot be understood without referring to its tragic history under the CPK, also known as the Khmer Rouge period (April 1975–January 1979). After the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh and took power on April 17, 1975, they forced all citizens to empty the capital and started to purge any opposition to their rule. Even though this coup was originally aimed at social revolution in order to achieve complete equality, top leaders, such as Pol Pot and Nuon Chea, refused to give up power and control. As a result, there was “less freedom, less equality, and a negation of citizenship rights” (Tyner et al., 2015, p. 1296), and one to two million people died due to starvation, illness, and massacre in less than four years.

3.2.1 Education Under the Khmer Rouge The Khmer Rouge denied the existing formal education system, as they believed it to be oppressive, imperialistic, and a source of the social division between educated white-collar workers and illiterate peasants. Thus, the Khmer Rouge considered it an obstacle to building socialism. They tried to destroy the link between education and 11

The actual recommendations provided in this magazine are, unfortunately, unknown.

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power. As a result, the Cambodian formal education system was destroyed. Nearly 90% of teachers at all levels12 were killed simply because they were literate, and school buildings were reimagined as prisons (Ayres, 2000a). Books were burned and religion was prohibited. However, this does not mean there was no education at all in this period. The Khmer Rouge leaders acknowledged education as an important social apparatus for the dissemination of propaganda to their cadre and to ordinary citizens. They tried to establish a new formal education system that was nine years long, included primary, secondary, and tertiary levels, and covered a variety of subjects, including reading and writing, arithmetic, geography, natural science, politics, and the history of revolutionary struggle (Tyner et al., 2015). They even produced at least three school textbooks. However, this revolutionary education system was not put into practice. Instead, the Khmer Rouge utilized different media, such as radio broadcasting, songs, poems, art, newspapers, and magazines, and moved learning from classrooms to public places (Tyner et al., 2016). These combined methods provided an alternative means through which the Khmer Rouge leaders could cultivate the desired political consciousness and reeducate the former bourgeoise. Through analysis of poems and songs produced during the Khmer Rouge period, Tyner et al. (2015, 2016) draw on the idea of public pedagogy and argue that the Khmer Rouge, through their alternative methods, was primarily attempting to convince people of the importance of labor and collective sacrifice. This was not just to encourage the digging of dams or the construction of irrigation channels, but also because these values were believed by the Khmer Rouge to be important tenets of fully revolutionary citizenship. As a result, labor “became a unity of the cultivation of rice and the cultivation of political consciousness” (Tyner et al., 2015, p. 1295). It was these transformations—of nature and of public consciousness—that characterize the Khmer Rouge pedagogy. Contrary to their revolutionary ideology, however, the Khmer Rouge employed a traditional pedagogy that has long been applied by prior rulers. The Khmer Rouge used pedagogy to legitimate their power and to govern the masses, as did the ruling members of the Empire of Angkor. A small number of CPK leaders controlled knowledge and information—real-life experiences became more valuable than ever before—and the masses were only allowed to access knowledge that was compatible with the CPK ideology. The party leaders also defined how such knowledge and information should be taught: through collective activities, such as singing songs, performing poems, and listening to the radio, all of which occurred in public spaces. The Khmer Rouge, like the past rulers, took control of knowledge. More importantly, people—even high-ranking members of the CPK cadre—were supposed to internalize without questions anything that the angkar, or revolutionary government, told them; posing questions could be fatal. Even though the formal school system was dismantled, the Khmer Rouge strategically utilized pedagogy as “a form of power” to govern the masses socially, economically, and politically (Tyner et al., 2015, p. 1296). 12

This figure varies across different sources from 75% to nearly 90% (Clayton, 2000).

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3.2.2 Education Under Vietnamese Occupation After the Vietnamese army overthrew the Khmer Rouge on January 7, 1979, the Vietnamese-sponsored People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK, the name of which was later changed to the State of Cambodia, SOC) ascended to power. The PRK’s priorities were to seize influence from the Khmer Rouge, to reestablish political stability, and to reunite the nation. Education was, therefore, at the top of the PRK’s agenda; schools were reopened less than 10 months after January 7. With support from Vietnam, which sent thousands of teachers and educational administrators to Cambodia (Clayton, 2000), the Soviet-based formal education system was introduced (Tully, 2005). Evaluations of education in this period are inconclusive due to its ideological nature. For example, Clayton (2000) argues that education under the PRK was controlled by Vietnamese advisors and that the Vietnamese were both “saviors” and “plunderers” of Cambodian educational development. They were saviors because, without their support, many Cambodians would not have received childhood education; they were plunderers because Vietnam obviously held exploitative objectives and utilized education as a channel through which Cambodia was incorporated into the Eastern Bloc hegemony. Kholk (2003), in contrast, favorably evaluates educational development under the Vietnamese occupation. She first explains that, without Vietnamese support, Cambodian educational development would have been significantly delayed due to a shortage of human resources, and thus dependence on the Vietnamese assistance was unavoidable. Second, she notes that the socialist ideology promoted under the PRK and SOC played a role in the prevention of increased social inequalities. Similarly, Hagai (2011), based on her analysis of curricula and textbooks printed under the PRK, reveals that, although socialist ideology was introduced in various subjects, including the arts, education under the Vietnamese occupation did not undermine loyalty and patriotism among young Cambodians. Khmer traditional dance, for example, was introduced as a means to reunite Cambodian citizens, a goal that more directly served the PRK’s agenda than it did the Vietnamese. Although not much is known about the pedagogical practices of this period, evidence suggests that a pragmatic approach was taken in teaching and learning. By exploring the lived experiences of those who were teachers and students under the PRK, Senda (2017, 2020) examines how teaching and learning were reorganized in a post-conflict context. The Ministry of Education, with the slogan “those who know more teach those who know less” (Senda, 2017, p. 168), recruited anyone who had at least some formal education experience as contract teachers. Educated survivors, including those who had higher levels of educational attainment or who taught at the primary level before the Khmer Rouge, volunteered to become contract teachers in response to the devastating situations of children. Former teachers, Senda (2017) argues, recall that their teaching needed to be based on the “French-style” pedagogy due to lack of textbooks and their own capacities (p. 169).13 French-style pedagogy 13

Although little explanation is provided, former teachers contrasted the French style with today’s active learning pedagogy (Senda, 2017).

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means, according to the informants, that the teachers relied heavily on the textbook and instructed students to recite the texts, as the teachers themselves had been taught to do. Both old textbooks—from the pre-Khmer Rouge era—and new textbooks—printed by PRK—were utilized. Former students recalled that ideologicalbased education did not make up a significant part of their learning experience, except the subject of labor, which was fondly remembered by former students as a cooperative working experience with friends and teachers (Senda, 2020). Teaching and learning were organized, as these facts suggest, to make use of the immediately available resources (human resources and textbooks as well as pedagogy) and was comparatively indifferent to ideologies. This pragmatic approach revived colonial pedagogy and made it difficult for the PRK (or for the Vietnamese advisors) to form “new men and women” through ideological education (Clayton, 2000, p. 134).

3.2.3 Education Under UNTAC Vietnamese troops completed the withdrawal from Cambodia in September 1989, just as the Berlin Wall was about to collapse. The end of the Cold War opened a door for Cambodia to accept international interventions regarding its stability and development. The Paris Peace Agreement was concluded in 1991, the first election was held in 1993 under the supervision of the United Nations Transitional Authority of Cambodia (UNTAC), and a new coalition government14 was established. Again, one of the priorities during the UNTAC period was to reconstruct the formal education system, this time based on a liberal democratic ideology and under the surveillance of the international community (Chandler, 2008).15 The Cambodian Ministry of Education, however, in a situation similar to the Vietnamese occupation, was not granted full autonomy over the education system. This is partly because, having experienced the development aid embargo under the PRK and relying on international aid for more than half of its budget under UNTAC, the Ministry of Education was eager to accept as many development aids as possible (Shimizu, 2007). Although many efforts were made, education in this period was based on “donor-driven” projects that resulted in discrete, inconsistent, and unsatisfactory development (Shimizu, 2007, p. 2). Consequently, enacting substantive reform to the education system introduced with Vietnamese assistance proved to be impossible. The formal education system, therefore, as well as curricula and textbooks, remained essentially unchanged until 1996.

14

FUNCINPEC and the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) shared control in this coalition government. 15 Political scientists argue that Cambodian political culture during this period can be characterized as follows: politicians were concerned about maintaining their legitimacy and complying with expectations from international communities, but rarely had that same level of concern for the Cambodian people (Kusakabe, 2009).

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3.3 Situating Student-Centered Reform in Context The above history of Cambodian education helps us understand that political circumstances have significantly affected the system, content, and pedagogy of Cambodian education. Pedagogies, in particular, have been utilized by different rulers to legitimate and strengthen their power. Student-centered pedagogies have also emerged in Cambodian education discourse at the time of the rise of a new government. I now turn to both national and international circumstances in which student-centered pedagogies have been applied to the Cambodian education system. The term student-centered pedagogies first appeared as early as 1995 in official documents and guidelines for curriculum development. According to Va (2006), the ministry officials were exposed to student-centered pedagogies at the World Conference on Education for All that was held in Jomtien, Thailand, in 1990. Three representatives from the ministry participated, and these officials later took leading positions in the ministry16 and brought student-centered pedagogies back to the country. Initially, the biggest impetus for the adoption of a student-centered framework by the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) was political. In Cambodia, the task of modernizing pedagogy was not just a matter of education. It has been a national political project to convince the international community that Cambodia has quieted the ideological disruptions in the country—from monarchism, to republicanism, to communism, and finally to Soviet socialism—since its independence from French colonial occupation in 1965 (Ayres, 2000b). For the RGC, it was necessary to reconstruct the country upon democratic principles, and education is the sector through which a democratic society could be built. Replacing traditional authoritative teaching methodologies with others that are based on democratic principles was one of the key strategies of the RGC (Va, 2006). Student-centered pedagogies, which carry a democratic connotation, were, in fact, a useful tool with which the political leaders could illustrate their efforts toward democracy, albeit at least on paper.17 Along with this political interest, student-centered pedagogies also worked as a channel through which the RGC could attract external assistance with its education system. Cambodian education during the 1990s can be characterized by its heavy dependence on external assistance, which contributed 57.9% of total educational expenditure between 1994 and 1999 (Government-Donor Partnership Working Group, 2004). Under this circumstance, development partners (including UNICEF, Redd Barna, Kampuchean Action for Primary Education: KAPE, VSO Cambodia, and Japan International Cooperation Agency: JICA) launched emergency and development projects that touched upon student-centeredness and emphasized different aspects with different labels: child-centered approach (UNICEF and Redd Barna); 16

One of the participants became a minister (Mr. Im Sethy), and another one became a secretary of state (Mr. Nath Bunroeun). 17 Although all teachers were required to use student-centered teaching methodologies regardless of subject or grade level, there was neither shared understanding about student-centeredness among the higher level officials nor enough learning opportunities for in-service teachers (Reimer, 2012).

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cooperative learning (KAPE); student-centered learning (VSO Cambodia); and inquiry-based learning (JICA).18 Redd Barna, for example, stressed critical thinking skills, while KAPE’s cooperative learning strategies emphasized non-cognitive aspects, such as attitudes and communication skills. The government accepted these similar but isolated projects with very limited coordination, as discussed above, because these projects not only allowed the RGC to utilize education as a channel for democratization but also to secure the funding needed to reconstruct the education system. In terms of educational intention, the purpose of adopting student-centered pedagogies at its early stage was quite instrumental. It meant accommodating a growing number of students in primary schools, which had increased 19.7% in three years (from 2.0 million in 1997/98 to 2.4 million in 2000/01).19 In order to meet such heavy demand, the ministry employed two solutions, hiring contract teachers with emergency licenses and introducing multi-grade teaching (Geeves & Bredenburg, 2005). In fact, various manuals for active and participatory teaching methods were produced during the 2000s as part of the training for multi-grade teaching (Teacher Training Department, 2007). These programs valued the student-centered methods as an effective approach that enables the teacher to keep one group of students on task while they instruct another grade. In this sense, student-centered pedagogies provided a practical solution for the problems found in many schools throughout Cambodia. The current pedagogical reform emerged as an elaboration of the outcomes of various projects during the 1990s. Because multiple development partners had been involved in this reform, it should also be understood as a product of interaction and negotiation between the ministry and development partners. Though there must be some kind of power relationship or dynamic, it may not be as simple as oppressive donors and obedient recipients. We should also take into account the multiplicity of agencies within donor communities or within the ministry, which further complicates the power relationship (Steiner-Khamsi & Stolpe, 2006). I will tackle this complicated balance of power in Chap. 4.

3.3.1 Policy Priorities in Education Before moving on to discussing the making of the current pedagogical reform, the rest of this chapter presents the general characteristics and challenges of contemporary Cambodian education, in which student-centered reform takes place. The current Cambodian education system took its form in 1996, when it was divided into four levels: pre-school education, primary education, secondary education (lower and upper), and higher education. Six years of primary education and 18

JICA’s Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) is mainly used for secondary-level science. During the same period, the number of primary school teachers (teaching staff) increased by only 4%, from 43,282 to 45,152 (MoEYS, 1998, 2001).

19

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three years of lower secondary education constitute the country’s basic educational cycle, as shown in Fig. 3.2 (UNESCO, 2008). Based on this system, the Cambodian ministry of education (known as the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, hereafter MoEYS) has issued 5-year education plans since 2001, and all the past Education Strategic Plans (ESPs) repeatedly identified: (1) ensuring equitable access to education, (2) improving quality of education, and 3) capacity development of education management staff as policy priorities in Cambodian education. Figure 3.3 shows how access to primary schools has improved over a 20-year span, but challenges still remain in retaining students in school: on average,

Fig. 3.2 Structure of the Cambodian Education System. Source UNESCO (2008). Secondary Education Regional Information Base: Country Profile—Cambodia, p. 2 120 100

96.9

91.3

94.3

80 78.5 60 40 20

19 97 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 20 16 20 17 20 18 20 19

0

Female

Male

Fig. 3.3 Gross Enrollment Rate, Primary Education (%). Source Created by the author based on UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2020)

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nearly 20% of students actually do not complete six years of primary education (MoEYS, 2020). This figure has improved only about 3% from 2001, when CFS was initially piloted (MoEYS, 2001). One of the factors that severely affects the high dropout rate is repetition, especially in lower grades, because those students who repeat grades reach fourteen or fifteen years old, which is considered old enough to start working, when they are still in primary school. As of 2019, nearly 14% of primary school students were over-aged, which means older than 11 years old. Those students are at higher risk of dropping out. As a result, access to education and students’ retention continue to be Cambodia’s major policy concern for more than 20 years.20 The current pedagogical reform mainly concerns with the second priority: improving the quality of education (Kingdom of Cambodia, 2007). Much closer attentions have been paid to students’ learning outcome since the mid-2000s,21 when nationwide learning assessment results came out for the first time. A series of assessment results revealed that Cambodian students do not really learn the content they are supposedly being taught. The results from the Khmer and math assessments conducted in 2006 for sampled Grade 3 students were particularly shocking: students correctly answered only 40.4% of the items for Khmer and 37.5% for math. Each of these assessments required only the minimum skills that should have been acquired by the time students entered Grade 3. Although slight improvements (around 5% each) were observed in the 2009 assessment, it was again worrisome for the ministry. In contrast, in a survey conducted in 2007, Grade 6 students correctly responded to nearly 70% of the Khmer items and to 53% of the math items. This gap suggests, according to MoEYS, that the students in Grade 6 are those who were able to “survive” the lower grades and are thus a more selective group than those in Grade 3 (MoEYS, 2008). This implies that primary education, especially before Grade 3, fails to equip students with the necessary knowledge and skills needed for success. However, a more recent study conducted by OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) confirmed, unfortunately, that Cambodian students did not learn what they were supposed to be taught even at higher grades. Cambodia participated in PISA for Development (PISA-D) for the first time in 2017, but only 28% of 15-year-old students actually reached Grade 7, and those who achieved the minimum level of reading proficiency and mathematics was only 8 and 10%, respectively (MoEYS, 2018).22 Those who participated in PISA-D were those who 20

The latest ESP 2019–23 identifies: (1) ensuring “inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” and (2) ensuring “effective leadership and management of education staff at all levels” as its two policy priorities (MoEYS, 2019, p. 18). 21 Student-centered reform was exposed to criticisms amid the growing attentions to students’ learning outcomes. More discussion can be found in Chap. 4. 22 Recently, OECD started to influence Cambodian education policies through PISA-D, which is a version of PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) designed especially for lowincome countries. Cambodia took part in PISA-D in 2017 as one of nine countries participated in this initiative (MoEYS, 2018). However, as Auld, Rappleye & Morris (2019) documents, contrary to the official portrayals of local demands, OECD and the World Bank have pushed MoEYS to participate in PISA-D and it is yet to bring substantial impacts on Cambodian education.

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managed to survive and succeed to Grade 7, but the majority of them nevertheless did not master the minimum levels of proficiency. It was similarly shocking that, in the 2006 assessment, teachers who taught in Grade 3 had only limited Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) in math. In the assessment, teachers were asked to answer the same items as their students as well as additional items that required analysis of examples of students’ errors and effective diagnosis of problems. The results show that most of the Grade 3 teachers had lower order knowledge (they answered 90.1% of the items correctly), but their average PCK level was assessed as 3.4 points out of a maximum of 6 points. More than 10% of teachers could not provide any responses. Although the research found only small correlations between teachers’ PCK and students’ test scores, these results have inevitably fueled debates over the effectiveness of teaching and learning in Cambodia. Results from a series of learning assessments were sensational, with which the necessity for the renewal of pedagogical practices has been claimed from both those embrace student-centered pedagogies and those oppose them. The recent changes in the national curricula also point to new pedagogy that enables students to acquire skills and attitudes, not just knowledge. Cambodian curriculum underwent major revisions in the latest Curriculum Framework issued in 2015. It was developed based on the critiques of the previous curricula, which just specifies contents to be covered in each subject area, as a cause of low quality of education, which was evident with the following facts: Some students have dropped out from schools before they have acquired reading and writing skills. Functional literacy of students is limited even though they have completed primary education level or lower secondary education level. Less than 50 per cent of examinees passed the 2014 national examination of upper secondary education level. (Department of Curriculum Development, 2015, p. ii).

To address these quality issues in education, and to produce “competitive” human resources (Department of Curriculum Development, 2015, p. 1), a new framework sets competency standards specified for each education level, which include a set of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that students are expected to learn across subject areas. In particular, “self-study, research, critical thinking, communication and problem solving skills” is listed as one of the eight areas to develop in students through 12 years of general education, together with competencies in Khmer language, mathematics, and science (Department of Curriculum Development, 2015, p. 3). Such a skill set definitely has student-centered pedagogies as a prerequisite.23

23

Curriculum Framework identifies “modernization of teaching methodology in all levels of education” as one of the recommendations from the review of the previous framework (Department of Curriculum Development, 2015, p. 2). However, as of 2019, there was no textbooks written based on the 2015 framework yet, and thus I cannot evaluate its actual implications for teaching and learning yet.

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3.3.2 Recent Policy Changes Concerned with Teachers The issues concerning teachers and teaching also have profound implications for the student-centered reform. MoEYS has worked on improving teachers and teaching by introducing a comprehensive Teacher Policy in 2013, which defines teachers as professionals who continue to learn throughout their careers (MoEYS, 2013). Teacher Policy covers from attracting the best candidates, offering quality preservice training, providing regular professional development and in-service training, to ensuring necessary working conditions.

3.3.3 Attracting and Preparing Teachers Limited teacher knowledge is referred to as the major barrier to student-centered practices in Cambodia (Bredenburg, 2009; Bunlay et al., 2009; Wheeler, 1998). To date, teaching certificates for the primary education level are offered to those who complete two years of training at Provincial Teacher Training Centers (PTTC) after upper secondary education. In fact, a survey revealed that teacher training is not necessarily beloved by a large number of the students in teacher training programs. Actually, most of the student-teachers come to teacher training simply because they have failed university entrance exams (Benveniste et al., 2008). In this sense, Cambodian teacher preparation fails to attract the best candidates. Preparation, moreover, fails to offer quality learning opportunities to future teachers. In addition to the limited knowledge among teacher educators (Japan International Cooperation Agency, 2009; Tandon & Fukao, 2015), teacher preparation curriculum is too much practice-oriented. It focuses primarily on preparing student-teachers for actual classroom teaching and thus emphasizes too much on reviewing the contents they are going to teach. This means, for example, that future primary school teachers devote two-thirds of their preparation to review primarylevel contents and teaching practicum, while they spend only one-third for liberal arts, upgrading subject contents, and theories of psychology and education (MoEYS, 2010). As a result, primary school teachers essentially possess content knowledge up to the upper secondary level when they start teaching, and such limitation in teachers’ knowledge has been regarded as a bottleneck in various policy interventions including student-centered pedagogies. In response to such a situation, with support from JICA, MoEYS launched two Teacher Education Colleges (TEC) in 2018 that offer university-level, 4-year teacher preparation programs. By introducing university-level teacher preparation, TEC is expected to attract the best candidates. Once admitted, TEC students are provided with higher level preparation by studying liberal arts and then specializing in different subject matters, and also engaging in research. TECs are yet to send their first batch of graduates to schools, and teacher preparation has been disturbed in the 2020–2021 academic years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so we are not yet to see their impacts as of summer 2021.

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3.3.4 Retaining Teachers Retaining qualified teachers is probably more difficult than attracting students to the teaching profession,24 mainly due to the low teacher salary, and its impact on studentcentered reform is profound. Teacher salary can start as low as US$50 per month. To put this amount in context, an individual needs US$19.5 each month to purchase the absolute minimum amount of food needed to meet basic caloric requirements (CITA, 2010). It is impossible to make ends meet if they have two or more family members and must pay the rent, purchase clothes, etc. As a result, many teachers have second or even third jobs to maintain enough income. It is reported that Cambodian public school teachers engage in professional misconduct by offering private tutoring, where they provide the same students they teach in school with supplementary lessons with fees collected (Bray, 2006; Edwards et al., 2020; Silova & Brehm, 2014). Or they just try to seek other employment opportunities. According to a survey that explored the demographic characteristics of pre-service and current teachers, there was a significant portion of teachers who attempted to get a bachelor’s degree, not for the purposes of professional development, but in order to seek a better job (Williams & Kitamura, 2012). MoEYS takes this issue seriously and has continuously increased teacher salaries to a minimum of US$300 as of 2019. Teacher Professional Standards are also prepared in 2010 with inputs from Australia and used them for monitoring purposes, although Tan and Ng (2012) reported that teachers tend not to get useful feedback from inspectors and school principals. More recently, MoEYS prepared a Teacher Career Pathway, with which teachers are expected to have long-term career prospects and continue to engage in professional learning. MoEYS also plans to introduce Teacher Performance Appraisal to be used as a means to evaluate teachers’ performance.

3.3.5 Ensuring Professional Learning Opportunities Given limited teacher preparation and teachers’ knowledge level, it is essential to support teachers’ professional growth after they start teaching. Unfortunately, however, there are no institutionalized professional development programs and opportunities in Cambodia until today. In fact, monthly teacher meetings are organized in every cluster (a group of 5–10 nearby schools), and this is supposed to be professional development opportunities, its effectiveness and impacts are in question

24

Failure to retain qualified teachers after the Khmer Rouge period resulted in, at its peak, nearly 10% of contract teachers being under-qualified or altogether unqualified to address the chronic teacher shortage (Geeves & Bredenburg, 2005).

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(Ogisu, 2016; Wheeler, 1998).25 Wheeler (1998) contended that discussions held in these meetings were often dominated by elder teachers who tried to disseminate traditional teaching practices rather than encourage new practices. Ogisu (2016) also argued that most of the time was spent on administrative information sharing and only limited professional learning opportunities, if not at all, were offered during teacher meetings. As a result, teachers did not necessarily take monthly teacher meetings seriously, even though they might not be offered any other supports for their professional growth. Aside from monthly teacher meetings, Cambodian teachers get to participate in workshops and trainings offered by different donors as part of their development projects, but the impacts of such training have been limited (Tandon & Fukao, 2015; Wheeler, 1998). Such inadequate and ineffective professional learning opportunities place a significant barrier for policy interventions concerned with teaching and learning. It is because, for the majority of Cambodian teachers, these limited opportunities may be the only place where they are exposed to new ideas and deepen their understandings about and making sense of them through discussions with their colleagues and within school contexts. Such processes are known as sense-making (Spillane et al., 2002) and consist an important part of policy enactment (Braun et al., 2011). The absence of effective professional development systems is a huge drawback to student-centered reform. The current pedagogical reform takes place in these challenging contexts, and it is expected to address issues of quality that are directly linked to teaching and learning. Moreover, the problems that it must address have evolved over time as people (mainly in aid agencies and MoEYS) discover new problems and challenges. In this sense, actors involved in this reform need to keep shaping and reshaping its meaning in order to address and respond to new challenges, and this is where we can observe macro–micro dynamics.

3.4 Power and Pedagogy in Cambodian Education This chapter examined the historical struggles to form and reform pedagogies in Cambodia. Since as early as the seventh century, various Cambodian rulers have tried to control the pedagogy—in terms of both what knowledge is and how it should be taught—in order to legitimate and sustain their power. The French protectorate, for example, devoted significant effort to removing religious influence on education. Chet Chhem, under Sihanouk and in an atmosphere of growing nationalism, tried to decolonize teaching and learning and crafted the Khmenization of pedagogy. Even the Khmer Rouge, who dismantled a large part of the public education system, also skillfully utilized public pedagogy to transform society, nature, and people. Finally, 25

In the most recent policy, MoEYS declares that they work on teacher professional development based on the Professional Learning Community model. But it is yet to be formalized and implemented at the school level (MoEYS, 2019).

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after the civil war, the adoption of student-centered pedagogies was encouraged by many different donors, echoing the domestic public desire for freedom and peace. The latter half of this chapter situated the current reform based on student-centered pedagogies in the contemporary challenges and issues in Cambodian education. Student-centered reform is expected to address the issues of quality—particularly low student retention and unsatisfactory academic performance among students— that have been one of the key policy priorities for more than two decades. Challenges related to teachers, such as attracting, preparing, and retaining teachers and ensuring their professional development, however, consist of major bottlenecks in policy interventions. As MoEYS has taken a series of drastic policy measures recently, changes may happen from various directions. Student-centered reform should be understood as part of these interventions. Pedagogical changes have always been initiated in times of political transition. However, no pedagogical reform attempt has thus far succeeded. It is evident from the fact that the current pedagogical reform, like all those in the past, was initiated to replace “traditional” practices. It is, in fact, this strong connection between power and pedagogy that makes the current pedagogical reform difficult—or perhaps impossible—to succeed. A history of Cambodian pedagogical reform efforts helps us reconfirm that reforming pedagogies is more than just a matter of education. It is as profound as reforming politics, society, economy, power, and culture. I now turn to discuss the political aspect of student-centered reform in the following chapter.

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Tyner, J. A., Rhodes, M., & Kimsroy, S. (2016). Music, nature, power, and place: An Ecomusicology of Khmer Rouge Songs. GeoHumanities, 2(2), 395–412. https://doi.org/10.1080/2373566X.2016. 1183464 UNESCO. (1953). International Yearbook of Education, Vol 15, 1953. UNESCO. UNESCO. (1959). International Yearbook of Education, Vol 21, 1959. UNESCO. UNESCO. (1960). International Yearbook of Education, Vol 22, 1960. UNESCO. UNESCO. (1965). International Yearbook of Education, Vol 27, 1965. UNESCO. UNESCO. (1967). International Yearbook of Education, Vol 29, 1967. UNESCO. UNESCO. (1968). International Yearbook of Education, Vol 30, 1968. UNESCO. UNESCO. (2008). Secondary Education Regional Information Base: Country Profile— Cambodia. http://uis.unesco.org/sites/default/files/documents/secondary-education-regional-inf ormation-base-country-profile-for-cambodia-en_1.pdf. Va, V. (2006). The development of basic education in Cambodia 1979–2003: A critical review. [Thesis]. Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. WFP. (2021). Cambodia market update: October 2021. WFP. https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/ WFP-0000134220/download/?_ga=2.74201234.1613238447.1637808552-1080351884.162380 7455 Wheeler, C. W. (1998). Rebuilding technical capacity in UNICEF/Sida supported school clusters: A Study of UNICEF’s Capacity-Building (Education) Project 01. UNICEF. Williams, J. H., & Kitamura, Y. (2012). Privatization and teacher education in Cambodia: Implications for Equity [REPORT PREPARED FOR PERI RESEARCH PROGRAM]. PERI. Zhou, D. (1987). The customs of Cambodia. Siam Society.

Chapter 4

Whose Voice Got Reified

The meaning of a certain policy is not given. It is shaped by the interaction among written policy, people, and contexts in which people do the policy (Honig, 2006). From this perspective, pedagogical reform is a complex social practice in which various actors construct and reconstruct the meaning of teaching and learning. In the case of pedagogical reform in Cambodia, all actors actively construct the meaning by interpreting and sometimes contesting the idea of student-centered pedagogies and enacting what they understand as the demands of the policy within cultural, historical, social, and political contexts in which they belong (Sutton & Levinson, 2001). Pedagogical reform is thus neither monolithic nor normative: different actors would make sense of and enact a pedagogical reform policy in totally different ways, even when they all actively engage in it. Social constructivism informs how we can understand the roles of various actors and their interactions in Cambodian pedagogical reform. Social constructivism sees all individual actors actively engaging in constructing meaning. This perspective in particular challenges policy-makers’ common understanding of Cambodian teachers, who have been referred to as instruments for and obstacles to instructional reform (Chae-Young & Rouse, 2011). Teaching has also been trivialized into techniques and, as a result, complexities and uncertainties inherent in teaching have been undermined in education policies. Instead, social constructivism suggests that teachers are the key agents who hold specialized knowledge and skills based on which they construct and enact a pedagogical reform. They play a role as important as development partners, policy-makers, and school administrators in constructing this reform. This co-construction of meaning should be understood as a social and situated process (Lave & Wenger, 1991) rather than as an individualized and isolated process. It is necessary to pay attention to the meaning constructed through interactions among This chapter is originally published as Ogisu, T. (2018). ‘It is not politically correct’: Exploring tensions in developing student-centred policy in Cambodia. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 48(5), 768–784. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2017.1353409 and revisions and additions were made. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 T. Ogisu, Reforming Pedagogy in Cambodia, Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects 62, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6750-3_4

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various actors in order to better understand the process in which a policy is interpreted and enacted. For example, donors negotiate the meaning of this reform in annual donor meetings, and ministry officials try to figure out what they want from donors and what donors want them to do in their business meetings. Cambodian teacher meetings at the cluster level are also an important mechanism to foster discussions among teachers specifically around this reform, aside from more informal interactions between teachers before or after classes or during school-level meetings. These meetings and interactions among actors within and between different levels can be considered as a social setting where negotiations over the meaning of the policy could occur.

4.1 Effective Teaching and Learning: A Written Policy Cambodian reform policy (ETL) has been developed under international influences. As discussed in Chap. 1, ETL is the second dimension of the CFS model that UNICEF advocates. CFS models are based on the notion of education as a human right and “a child-centered ideology that regards the best interest of the child as a paramount at all times” (UNICEF, 2009b, p. 2).1 In addition to child-centeredness, “democratic participation” and “inclusiveness” are also the basic principles that underlie CFS models (UNICEF, 2009a, p. 1). These principles are further developed as key components such as pedagogy, health, gender sensitivity, community participation, inclusiveness, and protection (UNICEF, 2009a). What UNICEF (2009b) called “child [student]-centered ideology” informs Cambodian CFS policy. It describes the student-centered approach not just as a teaching methodology. Rather, it is “very significant and overarching educational methodologies which are vital to all aspects of its implementation” that is characterized by: • • • • •

Teaching and learning through creative idea, Participation and co-operative learning, Research, analysis and critical thinking, Problem-solving, Innovation and encouragement of creative and divergent thinking (Royal Government of Cambodia, 2007, p. 8).

Through this educational methodology, the policy emphasizes developing students’ knowledge and attitudes to be able to live together (Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, 2005). It clearly reflects the desires of NGOs to build a democratic society based on student-centered principles.2 1

The child-friendly school concept was first used as an “equivalent of the ‘baby-friendly hospitals’ that contributed to quality standards in health” (UNICEF, 2009b, p. 7). 2 See Chap. 2 for the discussion about globalized student-centered principles, and Chap. 3 for the roles NGOs played during the 90’s.

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4.1.1 Effective Teaching and Learning (ETL) As the second dimension of the Cambodian CFS model, ETL details concrete and practical teaching methods. It is divided into eight areas as shown in Fig. 4.1. By representing eight areas based on ETL Training Manual (MoEYS, n.d.-a), I unpack the nature of ETL.

4.1.1.1

Area 1: Classroom Management

Area 1 lays out the principles of difference and equity that are fundamental to CFS framework. Two basic notions are discussed under the section of classroom management. The first is the idea that all children are different and teachers must employ various teaching methods to help all students to learn. Children are all different and learn in different ways. Therefore, teachers have to provide as many of these possible ways as we can to understand the ways of learning of these children. We cannot just rely on one or two methods all the time. We can use other methods to help students to learn (p. 8).

It clearly states that teachers must understand different ways of learning of their students in order to help them to learn. It also implicitly criticizes teaching that relies solely on dominant methods, most probably on lecturing or rote learning, which may dismiss other possible ways of teaching/learning and thus leave some children behind. Related to this, the notion of “natural learning” is introduced (p. 9). ETL Training Manual presents it as an approach different from the traditional one, in which learning happens in a formal classroom setting where students absorb and memorize knowledge in the textbooks as it is. The manual’s description of ETL touches upon the sources of knowledge, including families, friends, and students’ own experiences.

Fig. 4.1 Eight areas under ETL. Source Created by the author based on ETL Training Manual

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Fig. 4.2 Levels of cognitive skills. Source Created by the author based on MoEYS (n.d.-a). ETL Training Manual. p. 12

Most effective learning can take place without formal teaching using textbooks and teacher manual, writing things down, and so on. It is what might be called “natural learning”. … Teachers can use a lot of these ways of learning in their own classrooms at school (p. 9).

The discussion goes on to value what individual children know from their lives, regardless of their ethnicity, gender, or family backgrounds. It further draws our attention to the fact that a traditional teaching method that primarily relies on lecturing impacts negatively “the bottom line” students (p. 7).

4.1.1.2

Area 2: Questioning

By directing our attention to the cognitive process involved in learning, Area 2 makes us think about how students know, rather than what they know. Asking questions is described as an important strategy to foster students’ cognitive development by checking students’ understanding, getting students to talk and express their ideas and opinions, and to make the instruction more student-centered (p. 11). ETL Training Manual categorizes levels of questions into memory, understanding, and critical thinking questions (p. 12, see Fig. 4.2). It places critical thinking at the highest level and most important. Critical thinking is defined as “…requires children to think about one or more pieces of information or ideas and produce a new piece of information or idea as a result” (p. 48). It is more than just recalling information (memory) or explaining the meaning of information (understanding), but critical thinking requires application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of one or more pieces of information. ETL Training Manual recommends research assignments as a possible method to develop students’ critical thinking skills. It states, “organizing simple research tasks for students is an excellent way of stimulating critical thinking. This is because the children are "creating" knowledge for themselves by the research they do, not by simply hearing about or reading something” (p. 17). These assignments also cover communication and presentation skills in addition to critical thinking. ETL even acknowledges critical thinking as a skill that is as important as reading and writing (p. 1).

4.1.1.3

Area 3: Learning Games

Area 3 discusses a range of learning games as a way to develop skills discussed in Area 1 and 2. ETL Training Manual pays particular attention to the social aspect

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of these games, which contribute to nurturing students’ non-cognitive skills that are necessary to learn to live together. Children enjoy playing games and this can help make the classroom atmosphere lively and fun. … children are also developing their skills in speaking, listening, and co-operating with others (social skills and values). Many children also learn best when they have a chance to discuss new learning with other children (peer learning) (p. 11).

Games can also reinforce and enrich what students have learned, and stimulate critical thinking by encouraging students to apply what they know.

4.1.1.4

Area 4: Classroom Resources

This area introduces the idea of an enabling environment for learning, which is healthy (clean), attractive, and stimulating (p. 29). In such classrooms, stimulating materials are displayed and used in the lessons, in order for children to be happy to come every day. ETL Training Manual particularly discusses posters and maps as useful materials because they contribute to develop students’ listening and speaking skills and critical thinking skills, if used in participatory ways. Using posters and maps is also described as an effective classroom management strategy when teachers need to give additional assignments for students who finish tasks earlier.

4.1.1.5

Area 5: Reading Skill

Area 5 particularly discusses approaches to develop students’ reading skills. ETL emphasizes basic literacy skills as important both for students’ educational prospects and for their social lives. In this area, teachers are encouraged to help students acquire understanding of basic rules of written texts (conventions of print) because Cambodian children do not often see adults reading and usually come to school without knowing these rules. Developing basic reading skills also has social importance.3 In rural Cambodia, having someone in the family who can read is a very important resource. The ability to read gives access to many different kinds of information. Some of this information, such as directions or warnings on medicines, agrochemicals, and other products, could be life saving. Literacy is also a vital skill in accessing information about legal rights and citizen’s rights. This is why many people describe literacy as the most important “life skill” of all (p. 38).

Reading skills are not limited to basic literacy: teachers are expected to help children understand texts as a whole and introduce various types of texts such as advertisement, recipe, and manuals for electric devices are also encouraged as a way to help broaden students’ reading experiences. This is based on the concerns about pervasive practices where teachers “concentrate heavily in their teaching of reading 3

Cambodia’s adult literacy rate was 73.9% in 2009 (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, n.d.) and the ministry has set the goal to double its spending to adult literacy programs by 2015.

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on letters and words rather than on the whole texts” (Logbook, p. 21) and as a result, students do not have the chance to understand and think critically about the texts as a whole.

4.1.1.6

Area 6: Writing Skill

The vision introduced in this area is the importance of original writing that communicates meaning clearly and economically. ETL Training Manual defines writing skills as more than just knowing letters and being able to write neatly and spell correctly. It is important for the teacher to provide opportunities for even the youngest children to produce their own writing. This means that the writing contains the children’s own ideas, it is not copied from the blackboard or a book. Children who do original writing will grow in confidence as they practice. One sentence will become two and then three and then a paragraph and then each one a text (MoEYS, n.d.-a, p. 25). The strategies recommended based on this vision are “negotiating texts” (MoEYS, n.d.-a, p. 25) and the process of drafting and re-writing. Negotiating texts means teachers and students, or a group of students, develop a text collaboratively on a certain topic by discussing what they want to say. By doing this, students can get a sense of ownership of the text they develop and understand the process to write their own texts. Drafting and re-writing is another strategy to help students develop their writing skills.

4.1.1.7

Area 7: Assessment

ETL Training Manual introduces a vision that good teachers use various types of assessment as part of their daily routine. Both informal and formative assessments are important, because teachers need to understand the characteristics of students as learners and identify the growth each student makes. These types of assessment are particularly necessary to “identify children who need more help and what kind of help is most useful” (MoEYS, n.d.-b, p. 28). The recommended assessment strategy is a portfolio, by which teachers collect examples of students’ work during the year to assess their progress and use them as evidence when they have a conference with students and parents.

4.1.1.8

Area 8: Reflection

The idea of reflection is introduced in this area as a routine that “most good teachers do as a habit” (MoEYS, n.d.-b, p. 39). The main purpose of doing reflection is to think about the ways in which teachers can change their teaching practice to improve the learning of students. A list of questions that guide teacher reflection is provided as follows:

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• • • •

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Is everyone learning well? Which students are struggling? What are the causes of their difficulties? Is everyone in the class interested in the lessons? Are all the children attending school regularly and enjoying what they learn? (MoEYS, n.d.-b, p. 39)

This section also explains the cycle of reflection, in which teachers continuously plan, teach, and reflect on their teaching practices.

4.2 Tensions Arising in ETL The most fundamental idea presented in ETL is a student-centered philosophy, which stresses that every child should be assured his/her right to learn. Teachers are supposed to accommodate different learning styles and learning needs of their students. In the documents, ETL is presented as an ambitious reform that tries to replace traditional conceptions about teaching and learning, which can be summarized as a change from a transmission model to a transformation model of education. These two models have different orientations in how they perceive knowledge and learning. In the transmission model, knowledge is seen as invariable and universal. Thus learners are supposed to absorb knowledge. In contrast, the transformation model sees knowledge as constructed and social. Therefore, learning is a process where learners actively construct knowledge. By contrasting new ideas with traditional teaching practices, ETL emphasizes the transformation model as a high-quality more effective one. We can see examples of such contrasts in the following excerpts: Most effective learning can take place without formal teaching using textbooks and teacher manual, writing things down and so on. It is what might be called “natural learning.” (MoEYS, n.d.-a, p. 9) [We call it activity-based learning] when a child has to complete a task and produce a result to demonstrate learning. Listening to the teacher and copying from the blackboard are NOT activity-based. (MoEYS, n.d.-a, p. 48).

By promoting activity-based, cooperative, and hands-on teaching techniques as alternatives to the “chalk-and-talk” practices and as a teaching approach that fosters higher-level cognitive skills, ETL attempts to introduce a transformation model of education. In contrast to the transformation model of education envisioned in ETL, the policy process to achieve such a goal is designed based on the transmission of knowledge. Tasks in the Teacher Logbook and the checklist are the two major tools designed to facilitate and monitor pedagogical changes under ETL. The Teacher Logbook introduces prescriptive 26 tasks, with which teachers are supposed to learn new teaching techniques. These tasks are so prescriptive that teachers would be able to understand what to do—creating different types (matching, sequencing, and classifying) of learning game, for example—but not necessarily the overall goal of ETL and its

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student-centered principles. The tasks are also described in general terms regardless of grade levels and content areas, so they may not be helpful for teachers to understand why and how to apply learned techniques in classrooms, given the fact that Cambodian teachers have limited pedagogical content knowledge (CESSP, 2006c; Tandon & Fukao, 2015). The checklist also provides teachers with a prescribed and detailed to-do list with nearly 80 items, with items such as “questions are used in the same order as the lesson plan” and “teacher uses memory, understanding, and critical thinking questions in every lesson.” These items may strengthen a formalistic, inflexible image of teaching and learning by conveying a message that following predefined steps is valued more than a creative and flexible application of diverse techniques.4 Such a message contradicts ETL’s student-centered principles that stress the importance of accommodating different learning styles and learning needs of students. It is true that any education policy contains both transmission and transformation aspects, but the ways in which ETL’s policy process is thought and designed are so strongly tied to the existing top-down bureaucracy that it may sustain and strengthen, rather than transform, the transmission model of education. The tasks and checklist do not require much creativity or critical thinking on the part of teachers, while teachers are supposed to teach children how to think critically. Rather, teachers are expected to follow and complete prescriptive steps defined in the policy tools. The ways of thinking behind this intended policy process are the ones that value concrete commands as more acceptable than abstract principles, on which Cambodian society historically has heavily relied (Reimer, 2012). An NGO official described such policy process as a “dumbed down version” of its original intentions: (ETL was started), mostly, a dumbed down version of it, I would probably say, but it did help. I don’t know if it was right or wrong. (Interview, I15 )

Although this official said dumbed down version helped, Bernard (2008), in an evaluation report submitted to UNICEF, claimed that it was not going to bring fundamental changes: “the guidance [from the Ministry] has tended to be generalized and unidirectional, rather than tailored and interactive. This is leading to adoption of new procedures with respect to …… teaching, but without necessarily changing actual thinking and behavior” (p. 2). ETL’s policy process is, therefore, strongly tied to the Cambodian education bureaucracy that prioritizes transmission of knowledge more than transformation—the model that ETL attempts to introduce. These are the tensions in ETL—between its transformation orientation and its transmission-based policy process—that this chapter aims to unpack, in order to better understand the complexities involved in the education policy-making. Having such tensions as a scaffold, this chapter explores the following two questions: (1) What diverse perspectives have national and international policy actors brought in 4

See Chap. 5 for more detailed analysis of the checklist. In chapters that follow, all participants are numbered based on who they are (I: participants from international organizations or NGOs; N: ministry officials or national education consultants; S: provincial/district education officials or school principals; T: school teachers).

5

4.2 Tensions Arising in ETL Table 4.1 List of participants

85 Category National policy actors International policy actors

# Ministry

4

Consultant

2

Multi-lateral

4

Bi-lateral

4

NGO

7

Total

21

Source Developed by the author

developing ETL?; and (2) How were those multiple perspectives negotiated and reified as a policy? Fieldwork was conducted in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, from November 2012 until July 2013, where I conducted semi-structured interviews with 21 national and international policy actors. As summarized in Table 4.1, my participants include 15 officials from 10 different donor agencies including inter-governmental organizations, bi-lateral agencies, and international NGOs (international policy actors), two local consultants, and four ministry officials from different departments (national policy actors). My analysis is also based on the meeting minutes of several working groups, where major donors and ministry departments get together once in three months to discuss the progress of new and existing projects. Although I did not have a chance to observe actual meetings, I could get access to the meeting minutes that were archived in a library and open to the public. These minutes helped me understand how policy actors actually negotiated the meaning of student-centered pedagogies and engaged in the development of ETL.

4.3 Negotiating Multiple Meanings The following sections illustrate the complicated process of developing ETL policy in which multiple stakeholders negotiate their political, economic, and, to a lesser extent, educational agendas.

4.3.1 Motivation for Transformation Model: The NGO Perspective The importance of the transformation model is strongly associated with Cambodia’s recent history of civil war, especially among NGO staff who actually survived this period. As a local education expert, who was one of the writers of ETL policy documents, recalled,

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4 Whose Voice Got Reified I was not supposed to use my mind… During 30 years of civil war, my mother told me, “Keep silent. Don’t talk. Listen where the bullets come, where the enemies come.” This was the thing that parents taught to their kids. Don’t talk, listen. It was for survival. But you can imagine, from generation to generation, we trained our kids, trained our people, don’t talk, listen, for everything. If you tell them or give them a tool, they enjoy using it. They just follow [the instruction] exactly. But if you ask them to talk about their ideas, they don’t know because this was a kind of culture. We were trained by the regime. We were, and still are, trying to remove these. This cannot be done by training them, or telling them to do this or that. (Interview, I2)

As can be seen in the above quote, having an experience of being denied the right to have one’s own opinions for almost 30 years made the educated survivors desire a new type of education that does not tell children “to do this or that” but encourages them to have their own ideas and express themselves. The transformation model of education was regarded as a way to overcome scars left from the civil war and to build a peaceful and democratic society. Reflecting such desires, three donor agencies have piloted ETL projects since 2000 in six provinces. These pilot projects employed a “menu-based” approach, in which local actors could decide what they need and want, based on their own definition of child-friendliness, from a list of activities suggested by education experts in each project (Bredenburg, 2009). Another characteristic of the pilot projects was voluntary participation. Teachers themselves could decide whether they want to participate in the project, and once they completed a training successfully, the project gave them a small grant to renovate their classrooms. These approaches taken in the pilot projects and transformation model of education share many characteristics. For example, service recipients (local actors and students) were expected to participate actively, experts (the staff of an implementation body and teachers) played the role of facilitators rather than of providers of knowledge, and a bottom-up, rather than top-down, approach was taken. According to Bredenburg (2009), pilot projects were quite successful in the sense that locally developed programs were more relevant to the local needs. In a donor meeting held in January 2007, participants also reported that these projects were quite pragmatic and thus effective in enabling high-quality learning (EDUCAM, 2008). The CFS steering committee, established in 2007, was a mechanism that allowed these new experiences to be reflected in national educational discourse. The steering committee was chaired by the Minister of Education and consisted of representatives from UNICEF and NGOs as well as key departments in the Ministry. It was primarily responsible for overseeing the implementation of ETL and other dimensions under the CFS framework and ensuring their consistency with the broader education system (Bunlay et al., 2010). Success stories in the pilot projects reported by the committee members were definitely a driving force in convincing the Ministry

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about the effectiveness of ETL (UNICEF, 2009b; Reimer, 2012).6 In 2005, when thenMinister of Education, Im Sethy, decided to expand the CFS framework throughout the country, this committee took the authorship of ETL documents. Therefore, the policy documents strongly reflect the views of NGOs, where the motivations for the transformation model of education were most strongly advocated.

4.3.2 Transformation Model Contested: Exploring the Process of Political Decision-Making According to the original members of the CFS steering committee, the nature of ETL was radically changed in the process of making it a national policy. In short, the menu-based and voluntary approaches were abandoned and the transformation model of education was watered down to be embedded in a highly centralized, top-down bureaucracy (Bredenburg, 2009). The Ministry’s decision to abandon the menu-based approach reflects policy actors’ mistrust of teachers. They regarded teachers as objects of policies decided in Phnom Penh, rather than as active and autonomous professionals who can think and decide for themselves how they teach (Chae-Young & Rouse, 2011). A Ministry official explained that it is difficult to make sure that all teachers, even those with the lowest education level, are able to manage menu-based activities. A comment made by a representative of UNICEF at a donor meeting echoed this claim: “it is good that schools can choose from the activity menu, but it also increases the need for more and more varied capacity-building” (EDUCAM, 2008). This representative even suggested “prescriptive” tasks might help with some “electives.” Cultural aspects may also have affected this shift from menu-based activities to mandatory tasks. Cambodian society has historically prioritized oral communication as the major method of knowledge dissemination (Ayres, 2000), in which concrete commands are more valuable and more readily perceived as acceptable than abstract suggestions (Reimer, 2012). The logic of techniques (paccekteeh), which emphasizes the following predefined small steps to reach goals, also seems to have affected how national policy actors envisioned the policy process of ETL (Ogisu, 2016). These cultural aspects inevitably affect the ways of thinking among policy actors, and their views would have influenced this decision to abandon menu-based activities.7 A policy actor from an NGO, however, claimed this decision was essentially political, rather than educational. Having been a key advocate of ETL, he lamented that: 6

Various countries around the world have adapted this framework (UNICEF, 2009a). With respect to Southeast Asia, particularly, CFS’s success in Thailand pushed the governments of Southeast Asian countries to adapt this framework, and Cambodia is one of those countries (Interview, I2). After successful completion of CFS’s pilot projects, then-Minister of Education promised to expand CFS across Cambodia at the ASEAN Education Ministerial Meeting held in 2005 (Royal Government of Cambodia, 2007). 7 See Chap. 6 for more discussions on the logic of paccekteeh.

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4 Whose Voice Got Reified When the ministry found this out, they were very unhappy. Very unhappy that we were approaching in this way [voluntary participation]. How dare you tell the teachers that this is voluntary? They could do it or not do it. Now ETL is a policy and everyone has to do it. I was trying to explain that, I know that it is a policy that everyone must do it, but the problem is that they don’t do it. And they said they must do it. But [I said] they don’t do it. But [they said] they must do it. So no more voluntary approach. … Doing in the way we were doing was realistic, but it was politically incorrect. … I can understand the Ministry’s point of view, because if the ministry agreed to our approach, basically they acknowledge that they have no control over teachers. Publicly admitting that they have no control over these teachers. For the very centralized, hierarchical government culture that they have, it cannot, they can never accept that. … For the Ministry, it meant a political statement about the real situation in the schools, which they can never accept. … It is really hard to make an approach politically consistent and acceptable. (Interview, I1)

Having “control” over education, including teachers and schools, has a great significance in the Cambodian political context (Kusakabe, 2009).8 It was also the case in making ETL a national policy as suggested in the above excerpt. For the Ministry, securing external financial support for its operation and securing its jurisdiction were the two biggest political concerns. In order to maintain the Ministry’s legitimacy, delegating control to local offices of education, schools, or teachers was not “acceptable.” Therefore, although the original “menus” were maintained from pilot projects, these were altered to mandatory “tasks” all of which every primary school teacher needed to implement. Concerns about the shift from a menu-based approach to a mandatory approach were brought up several times by non-UNICEF actors, as reflected in the following comments made in meetings: pilot projects were small and high quality, but expanding it on a national scale might be challenging; mandatory tasks might be able to change only superficial things; and tasks might put the additional burden to teachers who are already overloaded (EDUCAM, 2008). However, as the main donor of the CFS framework, UNICEF did not insist on a voluntary participation and menu-based approach. This decision by UNICEF to compromise with the Ministry is somewhat understandable when we consider the relationship between a donor agency and the Ministry. UNICEF, one of many donor agencies to the Cambodian Ministry of Education, may have preferred to expand its signature CFS framework in Cambodia in a version that was relevant to the national context rather than insist on their approach and let the ministry not adopt the framework at all. Having its framework adopted in a national policy is itself considered as “success” for the international policy actors (Interview, I7). An education program officer in one of the donor agencies cynically observed that the CFS framework was a “channel for improving UNICEF’s presence” in the Cambodian education sector (Interview, I7).9 UNICEF agreed, willingly or unwillingly, on making a national policy based on the CFS framework with a “dumbed down version”. 8

Cambodian high-level politicians historically used education as a political “tool” to maintain their legitimacy, and such politics have undermined educational goals and commitments (Ayres, 2000). 9 This observation supports Steiner-Khamsi & Stolpe (2016)’s claim about visibility as one of the most significant “organizational concerns” that donors have in their international cooperation projects (p. 188).

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4.3.3 Two Stances Taken by Policy Actors Based on my analysis, the stances taken by international and national policy-makers can be placed into two categories: (1) Uncertainty about student-centered pedagogies and (2) ETL as a reference point. I argue that not all participants in this study embraced ETL as the best pedagogical approach, even though it was a national policy and thus all of them were supposed to work toward it. Rather, the range of perspectives toward ETL and its transformation model of education created a space that allowed diverse policy actors to participate, if not engage, in ETL.

4.3.3.1

Uncertainty About the Transformation Model of Education

Some people, especially those committed to expanding ETL, stressed the need for replacing teaching and learning that is based on rote learning and memorization with one that promotes creative and critical thinking, while others expressed uncertainty, or doubt, about such radical change. For example, ETL, to my understanding, is to teach children what they want to learn in order to achieve their goals, their ultimate goals. … Quality in our definition is to give education in which students apply what they had learned to their lives in the community. Quality of education does not mean that students know theories … just copying the board or answering questions are not the quality I’m talking about. Students should, we should encourage students to, think out of the box. Think out of the box. This is what we want to see in our students. (Interview, I9)

In the above excerpt, shared by a local education expert who works for an international NGO, the transformation model of education (“think out of the box” and application of knowledge in daily lives) is in sharp contrast with the traditional notion of teaching and learning, in which students learn theories and memorize what the teacher tells. For him, the transformation model of education is necessary to help individual students to “achieve their ultimate goals” and to “live productive lives.” In contrast, multiple participants from donors perceived the transformation model introduced in ETL as too radical and irrelevant to the Cambodian context: “in some cases, the student-centered approach is much better than lecturing. But lecturing is also important, so I cannot say which approach is better. A combination of all approaches is the best” (Interview, I12). Another participant complained about what he frequently witnesses when he visits schools, “I hate it when they do it, when I come into a classroom, they [teachers] all start moving around and shift the classroom setting just to show that they are doing some of the student-centered methodologies” and he contended that “for some parts of a lesson you have to do teacher-centered” (Interview, I13). Others went on to share uncertainty about ETL in a Cambodian context. For example, a consultant, who is originally from Cambodia, explained the cultural mismatch as follows: “in ETL, students feel they don’t learn anything from the teacher. They go to school to learn, not to share information among themselves.

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And teachers are supposed to teach students” (Interview, I14). Another participant shared his concerns about teachers’ insufficient knowledge about the contents and said, “as long as [teachers] don’t understand the content, it is very dangerous to use a participatory approach because it might confuse students” (Interview, I13). Furthermore, an education expert from a multi-lateral agency questioned the relevance of pursuing such higher-level skills at the primary level. For him, improving more basic aspects, such as instructional hours and teacher salary, should be prioritized to meet the international standards: I think it is too early to think about these things [critical and creative thinking] in ETL. Rather, we should first work on more basic things, such as making sure teachers come to school every day. Seriously. Cambodian children have only 600 to 650 instructional hours per academic year… this is too low compared to the international standard. You see, in this week, we had the Water Festival [national holiday] from Tuesday to Thursday, but many schools were closed for the whole week… (Interview, I3)

He even suggested, “the transmission approaches might be more effective to teach basic knowledge that is needed to enhance this country’s technology.” These comments reveal that even those who take part in ETL, not to mention less involved ones, shared uncertainty about ETL and its transformation model of education because of the institutional, cultural, and human resource contexts in which Cambodian schools exist.

4.3.3.2

ETL Meets Effectiveness Discourse

Participants from the ministry departments took a more nuanced position regarding pedagogies. A ministry official made sense of ETL as a broader idea that subsumes both transmission and transformation models of education: “ETL is more than just student-centered pedagogies. It includes whatever methods that are effective, effective in terms of learning achievement” (Interview, N1). Ministry officials described ETL as a means to improve students’ cognitive learning outcomes, which they emphasized as the most important agenda in education. “Effectiveness” was strongly emphasized by all ministry officials whom I interviewed. Effectiveness gained momentum in Cambodia, especially after the results from the 2005/06 reading assessment were declared.10 The World Bank supported the assessment as the nation’s first-ever attempt to unveil how many students learned in primary schools. The result was quite shocking: only 40% of the Grade 3 students answered correctly in reading and 41.7% in writing (CESSP, 2006). It also unveiled a huge gap between students in large urban schools (highest) and small rural schools (lowest). Although this assessment was limited to reading instruction, its results actually placed effectiveness—in terms of students’ learning outcomes measured by test scores—at the center of educational discourse in Cambodia.11 10

It is based on EGRA (Early Grade Reading Assessment), which has been implemented in Latin America with strong initiative by the World Bank. 11 Similar reading assessments have been conducted for Grade 6 in 2007, Grade 9 in 2008, and Grade 3 in 2009. Cambodia also started to join international assessment initiatives such as OECD’s

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Such unsatisfactory results in the 2005/06 assessment exposed student-centered teaching approaches that had been associated with modern (and therefore good) methods to teach students to critical eyes from the ministry. Actually, then-minister Im Sethy announced that “The teaching of reading would be a national priority, and that it would be taught according to the Chet Chhem method” which he had been taught in primary school and which enabled him to read for life (Seymour, 2012, p. 3). Chet Chhem’s method is, according to a ministry official, “an indigenous method” that “most of the literate Cambodians in my age (mid 40s) and above had been taught” (Interview, N4). The method, named after Mr. Chet Chhem, who was a teacher educator and the author of several teaching guides during the 1950s, is an approach to teach letters focusing on their shapes, rather than their sounds (phonetics), on which Khmer teaching was based under French protectorate. Although Courtney and Gravelle (2010) described the method as a “didactic approach” that emphasizes rote learning as the primary method to teach reading and writing (p. 9), as my analysis reveals (see Chap. 3), it bases literacy teaching on characteristics of Khmer language—with intricate shapes and combinations of letters—and focuses on teaching students to distinguish letters to write and combine them correctly. A comparison between Chet Chhem method with ETL’s approach to reading and writing can be summarized in Table 4.2. Although the Chet Chhem method had not officially been used since the 1990s, since the rise of “teaching for meaning” type methods that involve activities and Table 4.2 Comparison between Chet Chhem method and ETL Chet Chhem method

ETL’s approach to reading and writing

Reading: – Helping students identify each letter contained in a word/passage – Making students read to recite Writing: – Helping students distinguish different letters in their handwriting by teaching them similar-shaped letters – Helping students learn to combine letters, or coding skills (rather than decoding, like phonetics-based teaching does) – Making students dictate passages they have recited – Helping students compose an essay with introduction, body, and conclusion on the topics related to their daily lives

Reading: – Helping students understand general rules about reading (conventions of print) – Helping students analyze the whole text—rather than focusing too much on each letter and word—by asking who, where, when, what happened, how it starts, and how it ends, and by making them think about why certain texts were written and who they are written for Writing: – Helping students express their own ideas and produce original writing – Making students work in a group to improve their writing based on peer feedback

Source Developed and translated by the author based on Chet Chhem (1955) Sakday Naenoam: Kruu Bongrien Nau Sala Bothomsoksah and Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (n.d.) ETL Training Manual PISA for development in 2017 and The Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics (SEA-PLM) in 2019. See Chap. 3 for more discussion on the results of these assessments.

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games, which are associated with student-centered pedagogies, growing consideration of effectiveness as a result of 2005/2006 assessment brought it back to education discourses. The minister’s announcement was, therefore, not only to prioritize effectiveness in teaching and learning but also to revive “indigenous” methods for Khmer literacy teaching. It also indicates the ministry’s anxiety about the “effectiveness” of student-centered pedagogies—“ministry was not convinced enough about it” (Interview, I8). Quite interestingly, however, ministry officials did not necessarily abandon ETL that emphasizes student-centered principles. For one official, the Chet Chhem method falls under ETL if it produces better learning outcomes: I think, the method [Chet Chhem method] and ETL, there is no contradiction between them at all. But from 1979 up to now, Cambodian students have difficulties learning the Khmer language. Many students don’t meet the minimum standard. We did not have such problems before [with the Chet Chhem method]. In the classrooms, as you know, we need to help children practice more in the classroom. We take our familiar method just because it helps students learn how to read and write. So that is a part of the objectives of ETL. (Interview, N4)

Based on the comparison between the past and present, this informant assessed that the Chet Chhem method was effective in producing better students’ learning outcomes (in this case, students’ ability to read and write). Because of this, she regarded it as consistent with ETL—Effective Teaching and Learning. Another official from the Curriculum Department considered any effective methods as ETL: We don’t really care how the curriculum is taught, by Chet Chhem or other methods. But we do care whether students actually learn it. Then we call it effective, ETL (Interview, N3).

Although he did not necessarily claim that the Chet Chhem method was effective per se, he certainly did not problematize the different orientations between the Chet Chhem method and ETL. The case of Chet Chhem’s method indicates that studentcentered, transformation orientation in ETL was not at all brought up by ministry officials who I interviewed. Instead, they used the term ETL to indicate any methods that produced good learning outcomes. In other words, the epistemological substance was mostly detached from the discussion about teaching methods within the ministry, who concerns effectiveness the most. The above analysis clarifies a wide range of perspectives held by the policy actors involved in ETL. It is striking that some participants of this study expressed uncertainty about pursuing student-centered pedagogies and critical thinking, contrary to the common assumption that they became the norm in global education discourses, as we have seen already in Chap. 2. The question then becomes how can people engage in ETL with such diverse perspectives?

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4.3.3.3

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ETL as a Reference Point

Cambodian education is known as very successful in “coordinating” policy actors with such diverse perspectives (Government-Donor Partnership Working Group, 2004), but not necessarily in engaging them in ETL policy. A mechanism called the Joint Technical Working Group, in which representatives of the Ministry and major donors get together once in every three months, is an arena to discuss coordination of development projects within the education sector. This mechanism allowed various policy actors to implement pedagogical projects without an overlap—coordination—but they did not necessarily construct a shared understanding about ETL. I argue that this norm of coordination created a space that enables policy actors with diverse perspectives to participate in the pedagogical reform. ETL is a national policy and thus serves as a reference point for all policy actors in education. But at the same time, because CFS (and ETL, of course) is so strongly associated with UNICEF, it is not more than a reference point for many other donors. One participant clearly stated, “We regard this CFS thing as a UNICEF project. I don’t think other major donors are proactive to do this policy, if not overtly oppose it. We just try not to make our projects inconsistent with the policy” (Interview, I7). Her claim was supported by many other participants such as an official from the Curriculum Department in the ministry: We develop the national curriculum, which all departments, including the Primary Education Department, need to follow. ETL was developed by them in alignment with the national curriculum … the curriculum does not define how things should be taught (Interview, N3).

This participant perceived ETL as something beyond the jurisdiction of his department, so he just knew about it. Those donor agencies that worked on pedagogical reform tried to find a “niche” in ETL so that they could be more visible (Steiner-Khamsi & Stolpe, 2006). An expert from a bi-lateral agency, for example, expressed the view that his agency promotes its specific student-centered approach by differentiating it from ETL. According to him, their approach bridges subject content (mainly science) and pedagogy, whereas ETL focuses primarily on pedagogy and falls short in strengthening teachers’ content knowledge, which has been reported as weak across subjects (Khmer and Math: MoEYS, 2005; Science: JICA, 2009; Math: Tandon & Fukao, 2015). His bi-lateral agency, therefore, implements projects that aim to strengthen and upgrade teachers’ knowledge on science subjects—which is their niche—so that teachers can effectively apply student-centered pedagogies in their classes (Interview, I13). Another expert from another bi-lateral agency stressed the importance of pedagogical content knowledge, in which his agency has strength, in his program based on studentcentered principles. He explained that their program is unique for its emphasis on Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge, which incorporates ICT into pedagogical content knowledge (Interview, I8). These two donors, therefore, implemented their pedagogical projects in line with ETL, but with different focuses and emphasis.

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By doing so, donors worked hard to improve the visibility of their projects and programs by finding a niche in the ongoing pedagogical reform, rather than directly engaging in ETL policy. The coordination mechanism did not necessarily lead various policy actors to construct a shared understanding about ETL and its transformation orientation. The Cambodian education sector is often referred to as exemplifying best practices of the ministry’s ownership and interaction among donors (Hirosato & Kitamura, 2009). Having a mechanism (such as Joint Technical Working Group), however, does not necessarily ensure that different actors hold an engaged discussion about the reform process and that the government and the ministry “owns” a policy, at least in the case of ETL. One participant shared his concerns in this area by characterizing what they did in the Working Group as just information sharing and said, “there is no one taking the lead and putting their noses to the same direction” (Interview, I8). The flip side of such loose coordination, however, is to allow diverse actors to operate their own projects and programs harmoniously on the surface. It also helps diverse policy actors participate in the pedagogical reform—not necessarily ETL per se, though—while pursuing their own agendas, such as visibility.

4.4 Education Policy-Making as a Social Process In this chapter, the process of making ETL was examined drawing on the notion of policy as practice. Tensions in the policy—on the one hand, its overall goal is to introduce the transformation model of education, while this goal is strongly tied with existing ways of thinking based on the transmission of knowledge, on the other—was used as a scaffold to unpack the complex web of politics in the policymaking process. Although the idea of ETL was originally introduced by UNICEF, the policy itself was developed based on the domestic student-centered project experiences, and its orientation toward the transformation model of education stemmed from these experiences. In fact, the written policy strongly reflected the perspectives of those advocates of fundamental change in Cambodian education. However, there were other policy actors who held uncertainty or even doubts about ETL’s orientation and approach, including those inside the ministry. Having these different perspectives coordinated through negotiation channels such as a steering committee and donor meetings, ETL’s transformation orientation was changed into the one that rather conforms to the bureaucratic practices that prioritize transmission of information. The findings highlight that these tensions have arisen over primarily political, not educational, stances held by the policy actors. Reflecting historical, social, and cultural factors, such political decision alters the overall nature of ETL. These findings suggest that an education policy cannot be fully understood without closely examining the meanings constructed around a written policy. As this study shows, even policy actors themselves held quite diverse—even contradictory— perspectives toward a policy and thus engaged in the policy to different extents, albeit not overtly opposing it. Such diverse perspectives and attitudes stemmed primarily

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from the political motives held by the policy actors rather than from their educational visions. Having a beautifully written national policy—such as ETL—does not necessarily ensure that the whole education community is eagerly engaged in enacting such a policy as it was originally intended. Rather, a written policy can be used just as a reference point within which policy actors would find a niche to pursue their own political interests. As a result of such practices, an education policy may be watered down and left just as flowery words. These insights pose a critical question about the practice of coordination among policy actors. Coordination among multiple donors and harmonization of development projects with the national policy frameworks, along with ownership, are the norm of effective development assistance (OECD, 2005). Coordination is very important to avoid overlaps and conflicts among the development projects that different donors implement. However, in the case of ETL, this norm of coordination actually limited the possibility of the policy actors having serious discussions about the goals of ETL and Cambodian education as a whole. Such limited negotiation and consensus building among the policy actors resulted in reducing the intended significance and momentum of ETL as a national policy. These facts vividly illustrate that just having a coordination mechanism is not enough for effective policy-making. The findings of this study also illustrate the danger of comparing a written pedagogical policy and local teaching practices as if a written policy has one single meaning. So far, we know a lot of barriers that hinder pedagogical changes, such as material constraints, school culture, and teachers’ lack of capacity (Fuller & Clarke, 1994). These barriers, mostly found at the local level, have been identified based on the assumption that a written policy could be practiced as it is. However, as in the case of ETL, an education policy itself can contain multiple—even contradictory—meanings. Simply taking the consistency of a policy for granted may risk putting too much blame on the local level. Instead, we should try to reveal the competing messages woven into an education policy that potentially serve as a barrier or a scaffold for the local actors to make sense of the policy. Policy implementation is also a complex, sociocultural, and even political practice. As Sutton and Levinson (2001) contended, we cannot assume an education policy can be implemented as it is, because all actors involved in the policy process necessarily negotiate and construct its meaning in the contexts within which they work. Every actor, including teachers who have been treated as the biggest obstacle of pedagogical reform (Chae-Young & Rouse, 2011), strategically chooses the meaning of a policy in the way that makes the most sense to them. Existing research also suggests that such sense-making by the local actors cannot be detached from the social and cultural contexts in which they work (Reimer, 2012; Ogisu, 2016). Therefore, in order to better understand the roles played by the actors at more local levels, it is further necessary to explore how multiple meanings made from a written policy are conveyed to teachers, what meanings these teachers actually make out of multiple and even controversial messages they may receive from a written policy, as well as how teachers put such policy into practice. These sociocultural analyses are necessary to shed light on the active roles played by teachers in the process of pedagogical reform, which will potentially deconstruct the image of teachers as obstacles to pedagogical change and

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reconceptualize them as active agents in an education policy. Such a narrative may reduce mistrust of teachers among policy actors, which lay at the core of the tensions in ETL. This is one of the areas where I now turn to discuss in the following chapters.

References Ayres, D. M. (2000). Anatomy of a crisis: Education, development, and the state in Cambodia, 1953–1998. University of Hawaii Press. Bernard, A. (2008). Evaluation of the processes, impact and future strategies of the Child-Friendly School Programme. UNICEF. http://119.82.251.165:8080/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/ 188/Evaluation%20of%20the%20Processes,%20Impact%20and%20Future%20Strategies% 20of%20the%20Child-Friendly.pdf?sequence=1 Bredenburg, K. (2009). The Child-Friendly Schools movement and its role in promoting stakeholderdriven development throughout the Southeast Asian region. In 53rd Annual Meeting of the Comparative and International Education Society, Charleston, SC. Bunlay, N., Wayne, E. W., Sophea, H., Bredenburg, K., & Singh, M. (2010). Active-learning pedagogies as a reform initiative: The case of Cambodia. American Institute for Research. CESSP. (2006). Student achievement and education policy: Results from the grade three assessment—Final report. Education Sector Support Project. Chae-Young, K., & Rouse, M. (2011). Reviewing the role of teachers in achieving Education for All in Cambodia. Prospects. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-011-9201-y Chet, C. (1955). Sakday Naenoam: Kruu Bongrien Nau Sala Bothomsoksah (Manual for Primary School Teachers). Courtney, J., & Gravelle, M. (2010, November 19–20). Switching sides: The battle between globalised pedagogy and national identity in the development of an Early Literacy Programme in Cambodia. In Education and citizenship in a globalising world. Institute of Education, London, UK. EDUCAM. (2008). EDUCAM minutes, 12 December 2008. Internal document compiled by Education Research Center. Hun Sen Library. Fuller, B., & Clarke, P. (1994). Raising school effects while ignoring culture? Local conditions and the influence of classroom tools, rules, and pedagogy. Review of Educational Research, 64(1), 119–157. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543064001119 Government-Donor Partnership Working Group. (2004). Practices and lessons learned in the management of development cooperation: Case studies in Cambodia. Cambodian Rehabilitation and Development Board and Council for the Development of Cambodia. Hirosato, Y., & Kitamura, Y. (Eds.). (2009). The political economy of educational reforms and capacity development in Southeast Asia: Cases of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam (Vol. 13). Springer. Honig, M. I. (2006). New directions in education policy implementation: Confronting complexity. State Univ of New York Pr. JICA. (2009). Science Teacher Education Project (STEPSAM2) baseline survey report. Hiroshima University. Kusakabe, A. (2009). Education policy in Cambodia, 1991–2006: A study of political power and policy stability. Studies in Politics, 40, 1–32. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge university press. MoEYS. (n.d.-a). ETL training manual. MoEYS. (n.d.-b). Teacher Logbook. MoEYS. (2005). Child friendly school framework.

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OECD. (2005). The Paris declaration on aid effectiveness and the Accra agenda for action. http:// www.oecd.org/dac/effectiveness/parisdeclarationandaccraagendaforaction.htm Ogisu, T. (2016). Pedagogy in Cambodian schools: A logic that governs teaching and learning. In Y. Kitamura, D. B., Edwards, C., Sitha, & James. H. Williams (Eds.). The political economy of schooling in Cambodia: Issues of quality and equity (pp. 57–75). Palgrave Macmillan. Royal Government of Cambodia. (2007). Child friendly school policy. Reimer, J. K. (2012). Local negotiation of globalised educational discourses: The case of child friendly schools in rural Cambodia. University of British Columbia. https://circle.ubc.ca/handle/ 2429/43691 Seymour, J. M. (2012). Final report: Cambodia EGRA (Early Grade Reading Assessment) test results for 2010 and 2012. Steiner-Khamsi, G., & Stolpe, I. (2006). Educational import: Local encounters with global forces in Mongolia (1st ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. Sutton, M., & Levinson, B. A. U. (2001). Policy as practice: Toward a Comparative Sociocultural Analysis of Educational Policy (1). Ablex Publishing Corporation. Tandon, P., & Fukao, T. (2015). Educating the next generation: Improving teacher quality in Cambodia. Washington, DC: World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/ 21002 UNESCO Institute for Statistics. (n.d.). UIS statistics in brief: Education (all levels) profile— Cambodia. Retrieved April 30, 2012, from http://stats.uis.unesco.org/unesco/TableViewer/doc ument.aspx?ReportId=121&IF_Language=en&BR_Country=4060 UNICEF. (2009a). Child friendly schools programming: Global evaluation report. UNICEF. (2009b). Child-friendly schools manual. UNICEF.

Chapter 5

Making Sense of Contradictory Policy Messages

Chapter 4 reveals the tensions in ETL—between its transformative orientation and transmission-based implementation—and among different policy actors. If there is no common or shared understanding about ETL among the policymakers, how local actors can make sense of the policy anyway? This is the central question that this chapter tries to unpack. In order to achieve this objective, I want to understand how tools mediate local actors’ understanding and practice of the ETL policy based on the analysis of policy tools produced to promote ETL. In co-constructing the meaning of a policy, tools play a significant role in mediating the process. Cognitive psychologists who take a sociocultural perspective suggest that cognition is distributed not only to individuals but also to various artifacts, such as physical and symbolic tools, and that these tools are an integral part of activities (Putnam & Borko, 2000). For example, Putnam and Borko (2000) refer to Hutchins’s (1990) example of the navigation of the US Navy ship: Six different people with three different job descriptions and using several sophisticated cognitive tools were involved in piloting the ship out of the harbor. The distribution of cognition across people and tools made it possible for the crew to accomplish cognitive tasks beyond the capabilities of any individual member (Putnam & Borko, 2000).

Tools play important roles in accomplishing cognitive tasks, such as piloting a ship. Wenger (1998) further posited that cognitive tools do not just assist people to do activities, but they are the “reification” of a meaning that gives fixed forms to the meaning negotiated in social interactions or “participation” (p. 59). He conceptualized participation and reification as indivisible and interplaying with each other because tools shape and define how participation can be organized. These perspectives are very helpful to illuminate sociocultural and even political meanings that are embedded in and extracted from policy tools, such as manuals, worksheets, checklists, and so on. This chapter draws, firstly, on the analysis of two policy tools—checklist and manual—to unpack what policy messages are actually reified in these tools and, secondly, on interview data with local actors to understand how the tools navigate © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 T. Ogisu, Reforming Pedagogy in Cambodia, Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects 62, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6750-3_5

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local actors’ sense-making regarding ETL.1 I argue that two policy tools involve paradoxes in their transformation orientation and transmission approach, which actually hinder, rather than enhance fundamental pedagogical changes.

5.1 Meanings Reified in Policy Tools Reification is a very useful concept to discuss the process of negotiation of meaning in the pedagogical reform. According to Wenger (1998), reification refers to “the process of giving form to our experience by producing objects that congeal this experience into ‘thingness.’ In so doing we create points of focus around which the negotiation of meaning becomes organized” (p. 58). In the case of ETL, certain understanding about ETL is given form as various cognitive tools, which become “a focus for the negotiation of meaning,” and people use them to perform an action (p. 59). The notion of reification sheds light on the social process through which the tools were created. It helps us understand policy tools as a process in which multiple meanings are negotiated and then certain meaning gets legitimized, as we have seen in the previous chapter. At the same time, policy messages must be translated into accessible and concrete language in order for local actors to understand and implement the policy. In this sense, these tools actually define how ETL can be understood within local contexts. In the sections that follow, I discuss how multiple meanings are negotiated and mediated by the tools, drawing on the perspectives shared by the participants.

5.1.1 Checklist The first policy tool that I want to discuss in this chapter is ETL checklist. Teachers, school principals, and the District Training and Monitoring Team (DTMT) use this comprehensive checklist to monitor and evaluate the improvement of the quality of teaching and learning. This checklist plays a vital role in presenting the ETL’s desirable teaching practices for local actors in an accessible and measurable manner. In other words, it mediates between policy statements and practices. With Wenger’s words, the checklist shapes the experiences of the people who use it. Therefore, examining the checklist is a necessary step to understand what aspects of ETL policy are emphasized, undermined, or even twisted, and how it shapes and is shaped by local realities and practices.

1

In addition to the interviewees listed in the previous chapter, the analysis presented here is informed by a series of interview I conducted with 12 provincial and district education officials, 10 school directors, and 13 classroom teachers in Prey Veng province, Cambodia.

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Courtney (2008) has already pointed out that the checklist used in Cambodian schools is inconsistent and misleading. According to her, it only helps inspectors check which activities (group work, questioning, lectures, etc.) are implemented but does not allow them to see the quality of a lesson as a whole. Therefore, she argued that school inspectors would get only a superficial understanding of instructional practices with this checklist. This study directly speaks to the issue of reification that hinders people from making sense of what this reform actually tries to do. My analysis supplements Courtney’s claim with evidence about what meaning local actors actually make out of the checklist.

5.1.1.1

Design

The checklist takes form of a comprehensive table, that is 10-page long. This huge table is made up of two dimensions: the first dimension is classroom organization and administration, which consists of 3 main activities with 27 detailed activities, and the other dimension is divided into 10 main activities with 52 detailed activities related more directly to teaching and learning. Four to five items are provided for each detailed activity in the next row, as many as 345 items in total! For example, under the dimension of classroom organization and administration, one of the main activities is classroom decoration and display. Nine detailed activities fall under this category, one of which is “displaying the national motto and the King’s photo.” Next to this activity, four items are listed: (1) The national motto is written correctly; (2) There is a photograph of the King; (3) The photograph is displayed properly, and (4) This photo is well maintained and cleaned. Inspectors are supposed to first check whether a teacher implements each item and then rank the activity based on how many items a teacher implements (A: four or more; B: three; C: two; D: only one) in the right column. At the very bottom of the checklist, there are columns in which inspectors provide a total performance result. For these columns, they need to put total scores of A, B, C, and D. Finally, on the last page of the checklist, there is a space where inspectors can provide a paragraph of written feedback. In principle, inspectors visit classrooms repeatedly until teachers reach an A or B grade in all activities. At that point, teachers are regarded as fully student-centered and advanced.

5.1.1.2

Content

Looking closely at the content of the checklist provides us with some insights into how the meanings of ETL policy are reified. Table 5.1 shows the results of my interpretive analysis of 79 detailed activities listed in the checklist. Three categories emerged from the analysis: material/physical conditions, process, and content/quality. It is clear that arranging physical conditions and preparing necessary materials (such as lesson plans and teaching aids) are regarded as significant elements that constitute high-quality teaching and learning.

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Table 5.1 Types of activities listed in the checklist Types of activities

# of activities Examples

Material/physical conditions 37 (10)

Displaying students’ work Teacher uses simple environmental resources as teaching aids

Teaching processes

27 (27)

Teacher spends time as appropriate to the content of the lesson Teacher uses various activities (learning games, role plays, songs) in teaching

Content/quality

15 (15)

Teacher links the lesson with the community’s livelihood Teacher uses a standard curriculum

Source Created by the author Note Numbers that appeared in parentheses are those in dimension 2

In contrast, activities related to content/quality, including the content of a lesson plan, content of a question, or content of homework, are not emphasized as strongly as the other two types. For example, out of five detailed activities under “use of materials in teaching and learning,” two activities are about materials (teacher prepares teaching aids; teacher uses simple environment resources) and all the remaining three activities are related to processes (students use the materials; students understand how to use the materials; teacher explains and facilitates the use of the materials if necessary). This means the checklist sets standards for using materials in particular ways, but does not necessarily include criteria for evaluating the content and quality of such materials.

5.1.1.3

Underlying Assumptions

The checklist uses a lot of student-centered terminologies such as “real-life experience,” “critical thinking,” “facilitate,” “pair or group work,” “role play,” “games,” “reinforce students’ answers and good work,” and so on. However, as I explain below, assumptions that underlie this checklist are more based on the fixed, predictable, and transmission images of teaching and learning. Assumption 1 (Teaching as no more than a set of activities) This checklist frames teaching as a set of activities or actions essentially initiated by teachers. Teachers must listen to the students, think of various ways to present the content, and make decisions before actually taking actions. However, the checklist allows its users to focus only on the activities and thus undermines the complexities, uncertainties, and interactive nature involved in teaching. Verbs used in the checklist are also indicative of this point: to arrange, to explain, to summarize, to question, to help, and so on. Teaching is framed with active verbs. In contrast, among the few items that hold students as the subject, verbs include to understand, to complete,

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to work, etc., which indicates that students are expected to wait until the teacher gives them instructions. For example, the checklist does not expect students to raise questions or to share ideas other than answers to the questions posed by the teacher. It conveys a highly predictable image of teaching and learning, in which teachers hold most of the control. Assumption 2 (To be student-centered, the teacher has to implement ALL the activities on the list) Student-centered teaching is defined as a set of activities on the list, and a practice is not regarded as student-centered if some activities are absent. This means that not implementing the listed activities is regarded as a problem that needs to be fixed. It leaves no room for teachers to choose, but they have to implement all 79 activities and 345 items on the list, regardless of the subject content or the students they teach. There is also no incentive for teachers to practice what is not listed in the checklist. It has a strong inclination to standardize teaching practices in great detail, and teachers would automatically be regarded as student-centered if they complete all the activities. Assumption 3 (Certain materials and resources in the classroom are essential to student-centered teaching) The checklist defines physical and material conditions as a prerequisite for studentcentered teaching. Because all activities are valued equally by determining the total performance, teachers who do not have colorful posters, teaching and learning materials, and time and money to make or buy these materials would never be considered advanced or good. One teacher who works in a remote school in a poor neighborhood lamented, “My teaching is not student-centered yet… You see, my classroom doesn’t have walls. Where should I put posters? I can’t!” (Interview, T1). Assumption 4 (The deficit-oriented linear approach is key to teacher development) Finally, the checklist takes a deficit-oriented approach to teacher learning and development. The basic logic underlying the checklist is that identifying shortcomings is necessary for “helping improve the performance of teachers” (MoEYS, 2008a, p. 7). Information collected with this checklist is to be used to identify training needs, which are predefined in the list rather than emerging from the challenges teachers face in daily practice. Moreover, it implies that teachers who are able to implement all activities at one point have already overcome their problems and mastered studentcentered teaching. The checklist assumes a linear process of teacher learning, in which teachers would never have problems again once they master student-centered teaching.

5.1.1.4

Perceived Limited Teacher Capacity

All four assumptions, i.e., teaching as activities; good teaching as an implementation of all activities; physical and material conditions as a precondition for good teaching;

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and teacher development as a linear process imply that teachers are the objects of this pedagogical reform that is decided in Phnom Penh, rather than active and autonomous professionals who can think and decide how they teach. The following comment made by a ministry official sharply illuminates how Cambodian teachers are perceived as barriers: You know, I think in the context of Cambodia they [teachers] are different from other places, because after we started from 1979, we employed people with more knowledge to teach people with less knowledge. People with less knowledge taught people without knowledge. Until now, teachers who completed just Grade 4 still teach in schools. … So the quality of teachers varies. … Improving teacher quality is essential to improve quality of education, and ETL is one way to achieve it. (Interview, N3)

According to him, it is important to make sure that all teachers, even those with the lowest education level, are able to apply student-centered pedagogies. Similar concerns about limited teacher capacity were shared by many national and international actors. Education experts in donor agencies and a ministry official who is in charge of teacher training were particularly concerned that Cambodian teachers, in general, do not have enough content knowledge necessary to make proper decisions in teaching. A university-based, domestic consultant further stressed that teachers did not possess higher order thinking skills with which to interpret the policy messages and put them into practice and which they should actually teach to their students. Such perceived limited teacher capacities may have contributed to the the above discussed assumptions in the checklist. However, there were participants who were skeptical about the effectiveness of the checklist to translate the policy message: It [the checklist] is extremely long … and many of which are about physical aspects, right? It asks whether they put posters, prepare lesson plans, or use teaching aids. They are all important, but can we say checking all of these equals student-centered teaching? I don’t think so. There are more … I mean, deeper changes should occur. But in this country, in the centralized education system, many teachers still misunderstand student-centered as checking all the items, and it became priority. (Interview, I7)

She criticized that the checklist leads to misunderstandings and becomes a barrier for “deeper changes.” This claim parallels Brodie, Lelliott, and Davis’s (2002) claim: activities “can be enacted in ways in which the substance of learner-centered teaching … is not a focus” (p. 544). The checklist runs this risk by describing student-centered pedagogies as a list of activities. One of the participants from an NGO also described the checklist as a “dumbed down version” of the ideals of ETL: (ETL was started), mostly, a dumbed down version of it, I would probably say, but it did help. I don’t know if it was right or wrong. (Interview, I5)

But she admitted that simplifying the theoretical and philosophical ideas into a concrete list of activities actually helped to make changes at the local level. This is what Wenger (1998) warned as a double edge of reification. The tools make policy messages succinct, portable, persistent, and more focused on the one hand, but it has a risk of ossifying or masking what the policy actually means, on the other (p. 61).

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5.1.1.5

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Paradox

There mismatches between the student-centered principles that underlies ETL and the assumptions that inform the design and content of this checklist. ETL policy conceptualizes learning as active participation in the process of constructing knowledge, whereas the checklist focuses on teachers’ activities rather than students. Teachers are supposed to make decisions in class based on the students’ learning needs and different learning styles, while the checklist predefines what every teacher must do in great detail. ETL policy emphasizes the importance of materials and teaching aids, but as supplemental resources, not a precondition, to teach diverse students. Teacher development is defined as a continuous and cyclical process that is based on reflection according to the policy, rather than as a linear process. It is even paradoxical that teachers are evaluated on their student-centered teaching with this checklist. It lacks the necessary flexibility to teach diverse students who have different learning needs and styles. Also, its design and content are to impose activities on teachers without stimulating their critical and creative thinking, which they are supposed to teach to their students under ETL. These characteristics are mostly informed by the positivistic, transmission approach, from which ETL policy tries to bring changes toward transformative, constructivist approaches.

5.1.2 Helping Slow Learners Manual Another tool that I want to discuss in this chapter is the manual called Helping Slow Learners, which was disseminated to all school principals and classroom teachers in 2008 after a year of implementation of the CFS policy. The CFS steering committee created this 33-page booklet as supplementary material for ETL. Although this manual is for reference rather than use as a daily tool, it is an important tool that identifies what problems there are and how these problems should be addressed under ETL. In this sense, it is also a cognitive tool with which policy messages are negotiated.

5.1.2.1

The Problem

Helping Slow Learners is, as the name suggests, a manual about how to teach slow or weak learners to catch up with others. It defines high repetition and dropout rates as “the major concerns of MoEYS” (MoEYS, 2008b, p. 1) in its effort to improve the quality of education. Repetition and dropout rates remain high, according to the manual, because there are many slow learners, especially in Grades 1 and 2, and “they are not helped on time” (MoEYS, 2008b, p. iii). The manual summarizes the benefits of providing timely support to slow learners as follows:

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Students to remain hopeful and motivated in their learning because they are supplemented knowledge to help them pursue their interests and continue their study; Teachers to reduce the number of slow learners in their class and school, thereby reducing dropout rate and increasing the promotion rate as planned; Families to be happy with their children’s performance at school and to save money and time by avoiding the repetition of classes (p. 2).

Helping them to perform better and survive was expected to contribute to achieving the universal primary education by 2015, as stated in the National Plan on Education for All. Therefore, it states that all the stakeholders, including school principals, teachers, community members, and even students themselves, are supposed to take responsibility to help slow learners. This manual describes the ways in which different actors can help them. There are important twists, however, in how the Helping Slow Learners manual sets out the problem. First, it narrows the idea of different learning needs and styles down into “slow learners.” According to the policy, all students are different and teachers must employ various teaching methods to fulfill every student’s right to learn. Equity is one of the key principles of ETL, as discussed in the previous chapter. In contrast, Helping Slow Learners focuses only on slow learners, who have difficulties in learning, rather than attending to the differences that each student has. The manual identifies different reasons students learn slowly. These reasons include students’ physical impediments, students’ psychological traits (nervous or negligent), family situations, and teachers’ inappropriate teaching, such as not having lesson plans or not employing student-centered teaching approaches. This way of framing the problem dismisses the fact that culturally and socially diverse students are often disadvantaged structurally and institutionally, such as in schooling. Rather, it frames the problem at the personal level, such as students’ physical impediments and psychological traits. By focusing on difficulties instead of differences, the manual undermines the principle of equity in ETL. Helping Slow Learners also frames the problem in economic terms. It uses repetition and dropout rates as indicators of educational quality, which are common to many low-income countries that face strong pressure to show the improvements with measurable evidence to the donors. The manual states that reducing repetition would contribute to improving efficiency and thus families can “save money and time” (MoEYS, 2008b, p. 2). However, ETL and the overall CFS framework are based on the notion that education is a human right. Although it is understandable that ensuring the minimum learning standards in early grades is important to retain students in later grades, and in this sense, it is to ensure students’ right to learn, the manual does not make this point explicit and it never refers to learning as a right. Rather, it frames the problem in economic terms, such as effectiveness and efficiency. Strong emphasis on the basics is another twist that we can see in Helping Slow Learners manual. The manual identifies difficulties that slow learners may face, especially in early grades (see Table 5.2). As the list illuminates, it only focuses on basic cognitive skills rather than higher order thinking and critical thinking, which ETL policy states as important as reading and writing skills. There is no discussion

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Table 5.2 Difficulties slow learners may face, identified in the manual Khmer

Math

– – – – – – –

– Do not know the real numbers – Do not know how to add or subtract – Do not know how to add or subtract numbers by vertical line method – Cannot remember multiplication tables – Do not know how to multiply – Do not know how to divide

Cannot distinguish letters correctly Cannot distinguish sounds correctly Cannot combine sounds and spell correctly Cannot read words and sentences correctly Read without understanding the content Write letters incorrectly Spell many words incorrectly and give wrong meanings (know little vocabulary) – Cannot write phrases, sentences, and articles well (ideas are not clear)

Source MoEYS (2008b). Helping Slow Learners, pp. 8–14

about non-cognitive aspects of learning as well, even though the policy emphasizes the need to develop students’ attitudes to be able to live together (MoEYS, 2005). The manual, as well as other materials, fails to explain how to achieve critical thinking and non-cognitive development, which comprise the central components of the ETL.

5.1.2.2

Solutions

Three types of solutions are discussed in the Helping Slow Learners. The first type provides special support to slow learners according to their learning needs. It includes avoiding insulting language or punishment, allocating front seats to slow learners, assigning them appropriate homework or exercises, and not forcing them to participate but encouraging voluntary participation. It also includes offering special review sessions on Thursdays.2 The manual states that Thursday teaching should be focused on slow learners so that they can get opportunities to practice what they have learned in regular classes. It is advised that teachers give practical exercises and tasks rather than lecturing in these sessions, so that slow learners can “fill their gaps” (MoEYS, 2008b, p. 5). When assigning tasks, teachers should divide students into groups based on their ability and provide more support to the slower group. The second type of solution is to help slow learners outside study time. “Studenthelping student activities” are the major solutions discussed in this section. These activities include assigning Student Council members from Grade 4, 5, and 6 to work with slow learners in the lower grades during breaks. Elder students are supposed to provide hands-on support, such as holding slow learners’ hands to practice writing letters or helping them read textbooks. Lastly, the manual discusses helping slow learners outside school, by organizing learning clubs and self-study. Learning clubs refer to groups of students who get together to help slow learners in the village. The club should be led by the leader 2

Before 2009, public schools were closed on Thursdays as these were kept for professional development days.

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of the Student Council with help from teachers, parents, and volunteers. Self-study is another solution, basically done at home, with direct assistance from parents and siblings. These solutions can be characterized by the involvement of various actors in solving the problems of slow learners. Teachers, school principals, parents, and even students are supposed to take responsibility for helping slow learners. This echoes the core idea of the CFS framework, in which “participation” is one of the core principles. However, compared to the notion of participation in CFS that assumes an equal and democratic relationship among actors, the involvement of various actors in helping slow learners is based more on the dichotomous relationship between elder-younger or faster-slower. I should also point out that the solutions are basically described as techniques to be employed in addition to daily practices, rather than as alternative methods that could replace existing practices. For example, Thursdays are added to the normal school days, and student-helping-student activities and learning clubs are new initiatives introduced to the existing school operation. Given that ETL policy tries to change the existing education system into a more transformative and constructivist system, solutions provided in the manual are rather strengthening the existing system and thus status quo.

5.2 Local Meaning Made out of Policy Tools When policy messages got reified in the way that narrows down the possibilities to bring intended changes or even involves paradoxes, it is no wonder teachers and other local actors would understand the policy as totally different from its original intentions. The reified messages in policy tools (such as checklist and Helping Slow Learners manual) need to be decoded within local sociocultural and material contexts. In the following sections, I discuss how policy messages already narrowly reified in the checklist and manual got further filtered through severe material constraints in schools and the difficulties associated with slow learners. I also argue that it is not so much the actual material constraints or slow learners that hinder pedagogical reform, but how these difficulties are addressed in policy tools and perceived by local actors.

5.2.1 Local Meaning Made from the Checklist Working with this checklist helps teachers improve their practices. If teachers want to improve, they can see what they should improve… from the list. I think teachers gradually improve their teaching. They improve year by year, and someday they would complete all of them (Interview, S9).

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As this comment by a school principal suggests, completing the checklist became an end rather than a means to achieve deeper changes. In other words, local actors considered the checklist as a set of activities that suffice for student-centered teaching rather than as minimal standards. In the case of physical/material conditions for teaching, they saw materials as a parameter of teaching quality, not as a precondition for good teaching as the checklist implies. This seems like a very slight difference, but it represents a disjuncture between the checklist and the meaning assigned to it by local actors. Eight District Training and Monitoring Team (DTMT) members are responsible for inspecting 10 schools in the cluster of the city of Prey Veng. Each semester, two or three members are grouped together and visit schools for inspection. They basically spend half a day in a school and observe each classroom to make evaluations based on the checklist. Because of the time limitation, they sometimes cannot spend the whole lesson (45 min) in each classroom. They also cannot check all 345 items on the list within that short period of time. Therefore, they select and focus on certain more important activities. One of the DTMT members listed activities related to physical and material aspects as his priority: When I go to observe [for inspection], … I see materials that the teacher uses. Does the teacher have a lesson plan? … All teachers need to have lesson plans. They cannot teach randomly. Then I see teaching aids. Does he have teaching aids? What kind of teaching aids? (Interview, S1).

As this comment illuminates, DTMT members particularly emphasized lesson plans and teaching aids. These two aspects were always grouped together and considered the most important elements for good teaching, compared to other activities listed in the checklist. However, what material conditions mean for DTMT members is slightly different from the checklist. DTMT members are the ones who understand the local contexts very well, and thus they know the difficulties that teachers face in preparing various materials listed in the checklist. Even preparing lesson plans and teaching aids requires a lot of energy in the reality of teachers’ working conditions. DTMT members were therefore sympathetic with teachers: That is the barrier for them. They have to prepare teaching aids by themselves for every subject. So we [district education office] help schools to buy materials, and school principals should take care of them. They have money to buy materials and they have to help teachers. …Children of rich people come to this school [the largest school located in the city center] and parents help the school. But in School #3 [the school in the poorest neighborhood] people are not so rich and they don’t contribute much money to the school. These problems, most of them, are not the problems of teachers. (Interview, S6) For teachers who do not have enough materials, it [implementing activities] is difficult. They have to prepare their own stuff… But for those who already have materials, it is not difficult. If you have teaching aids and lesson plans, then it is not difficult. (Interview, S4)

In the cluster, schools do not have enough resources to be used for teaching aids, except for School #6 in the city center, where the community donates a lot of resources. Moreover, most of the teachers hold second or even third jobs to

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complement their salary, which leaves little time for them to prepare for the class.3 DTMT members emphasized that barriers for ETL implementation stem from local contexts—not from teachers’ education levels or limited capacity. Given these difficult local realities, having lesson plans and teaching aids signals the effort that a teacher makes for their job, according to DTMT members. In such context, preparing lesson plans and teaching aids is regarded as a parameter of how well teachers teach, and thus the actual quality of these materials is not as important. Teachers further internalized these expectations as their mandates, both through using the checklist by themselves and through inspections given by DTMT and school principals. In the cluster, school principals are responsible for distributing the checklist to all individual teachers in order for them to self-evaluate their own teaching. Teachers are supposed to complete it before DTMT members come to observe, and DTMT members refer to the checklist completed by teachers. Therefore, the checklist is a tool that teachers frequently referred to and worked with. This was particularly evident from the fact that all 13 teachers I interviewed referred to the checklist when I asked what they do for ETL. A teacher who taught Grade 1 commented, “We have to have lesson plans. We also have to prepare teaching aids, such as in Khmer, we have to prepare consonant cards. We also have to have posters. These are all stated in the list” (Interview, T13). This teacher clearly perceived preparing materials as her mandates, or what she has to do, rather than as what she thinks important to do in order to teach her students well. Only a few teachers could share why they thought these materials were important in their teaching: I think preparing teaching aids is the most important [in ETL]… because not all students can see textbooks together. If a student doesn’t have textbook, that students cannot learn. I have a lot of such students in my class. With these aids and posters, students can see them at once… they all can learn with these materials. (Interview, T11)

For her, teaching aids are to overcome the shortage of textbooks that affect many of her students. In such difficult conditions, teaching aids are necessary to ensure that all of her students can learn. She, like other teachers, placed such material resources like textbooks at the center of teaching and learning. The centrality of materials was very apparent in a sample checklist I obtained, the first round of which had been completed by both the teacher in question and DTMT. It was for an experienced female teacher who taught Grade 1 (T13). Quite interestingly, all the activities ranked C or D fall under the category of material/physical conditions in my analysis, and all activities in process and content ranked A. It suggests that her teaching had been evaluated having several problems in physical/material aspects, like she did not file students’ portfolios or write report cards daily, the process and content of her teaching were considered as student-centered enough. The teacher evaluated in the checklist was one of the most eager to employ ETL techniques, yet to my eyes, she implemented them only superficially. She prepared and used various posters and teaching aids, but did not necessarily implement the 3

For more detailed discussion about teachers’ working conditions, see Chap. 6.

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substance of ETL—from transmission to transformation model of education. Therefore, in my observation, her class was scored higher in material conditions than in process and contents. I tried to look for the substance behind her teaching. The users of this checklist, in contrast, looked for concrete activities the teacher actually implemented. In this sense, she completed most of the activities over time and thus got As in many categories. The checklist itself enhances such simple interpretations of ETL policy messages. Given that getting Cs or Ds is considered low quality and thus a problem, such evaluation can also be seen as an expression of local actors’ understanding about ETL, in which they are concerned more about the existence of tangible objects (physical/material conditions) than the process and content of their teaching practices. In a more controversial case, one teacher actually devoted a lot of energy to design and prepare worksheets for groupwork. It was a Grade 1 math class, where students studied subtractions between 2-digit and 1-digit numbers. The teacher was very creative in preparing the worksheets, which presented eight subtraction problems on the left side and a 3-by-3 table with nine possible answers on the right side of the paper. Students were supposed to calculate eight problems on the left and find the answers from the table. They then needed to find the fake answer from the table. This game was very well designed and a good way for the students to practice what they had learned. The teacher highly evaluated this activity, stressing how much effort she had devoted to preparing worksheets. On the checklist, these activities could be identified in nine detailed activities on the checklist. These are: students complete activities in groups; boys and girls work together; the teacher provides instructions before activities; teacher takes part in facilitating student activities; teacher prepares to teach aids; students use the materials; students understand how to use the materials; teacher explains and facilitates the use of the materials; and teacher uses various activities in teaching and learning. However, “due to time limitation and the cost to make photocopies” (Interview, T1), the teacher prepared only three worksheets for a class with 37 students. What happened was, as we can easily imagine, only some students actually worked on the calculation and others just observed (Fig. 5.1). Even though the teacher tried to use the worksheet—a teaching aid—in a more participatory manner, and she liked it a lot, she did not necessarily consider how students experienced the worksheets as much as the efforts she made to prepare them. Overall, local actors in my study actually placed a high priority on completing the checklist. However, completing the checklist did not necessarily bring the substantial changes that ETL policy tries to achieve. This is partly due to the design and content of the checklist itself. Policy messages were oversimplified or dumbed down in the process of reifying them into the set of activities on the checklist. The checklist was further recontextualized at the local level. Local actors perceived the checklist as something like a wish list that is sufficient for student-centered teaching, rather than as necessary elements of it. Completing the checklist was regarded as an end unto itself rather than as a means for teachers to change their teaching practices.

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Fig. 5.1 Students working in a group with worksheet. Source Photo taken by the author, May 4, 2013

5.2.2 Koon ot ceh: Helping Slow Learners “Oh, he doesn’t know how to write. He is slow.” (Observation, May 20, 2013) One day when I observed a student practicing spelling a word in a Grade 2 class, the teacher said this to me in front of her class. I was embarrassed and deeply regretted that I tried to observe this particular student, but that was when I started to understand what slow learners actually mean in the local context. Cambodian teachers described their students using the dichotomy between koon ceh (a child who knows) and koon ot ceh (a child who does not know) or between koon puukae (smart child) and koon ksaoy (weak child). Based on his ethnographic study about Cambodian communities, Kobayashi (2011) pointed out that Cambodian people frequently use dichotomous languages, and they have significant implications in people’s daily lives.4 The divide perceived with such dichotomous languages felt as obvious, predetermined, and unchangeable—these are seen as calma, or consequences of people’s previous lives. People act upon the perceived difference and construct patterns of social relationships based on it. These dichotomous language, therefore, by themselves represent people’s worldviews (Kobayashi, 2011, p. 492). Therefore, the distinction between koon ceh and koon ot ceh can be used as a window through which we explore teachers’ worldviews. 4

One of the well-known dichotomies is between neak mien, people who have or rich people and neak ot mien, people who do not have or poor people.

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It gradually became clear that koon ot ceh does not simply mean students who achieve less. It includes students who are frequently absent or who do not have necessary stationary such as pencils and notebooks, and thus do not (or cannot) fully participate in class. Some participants explicitly linked the problem of koon ot ceh with students’ socioeconomic backgrounds. For instance, a school principal admitted that her school has a lot of koon ot ceh, mainly because there are many students from poor families who tend to be absent frequently and do not have educated guardians who can tutor at home (Interview, S14). Koon ot ceh therefore enbodies mostly negative expectations that people hold for students with low socioeconomic backgrounds. In this sense, koon ot ceh should be understood as a social construct with which socioeconomic disparities in Cambodian society are manifested and acted upon in the classroom. In many cases, teachers referred to koon ot ceh as a barrier to teaching. Teachers employed similar rhetoric to the Helping Slow Learners manual for this problem. For example, a Grade 1 teacher pointed out how difficult it is to help koon ot ceh within class time: [I have] problems… koon ot ceh. I usually try to help them, but they still cannot read and write. I try to help them every day, every class. … But they still cannot write anything … If I can use a lot of time to help them, they would be able to write… there are too many of koon ot ceh in my class. (Interview, T10)

The teacher described koon ot ceh as difficulties that need to be addressed, similar to the Helping Slow Learners manual. For her, and for many other teachers as well, it is a question of efficiency rather than that of equity or social justice. This also echoes the manual’s rhetoric. However, teachers’ concerns were mostly about whether they could cover lesson content within given teaching hours rather than about the loss that repetition and dropout may cause. Teachers’ concerns about efficiency are understandable because they are under strong pressure to teach at a certain pace and finish the national curriculum by the end of the academic year. Teachers partly admitted that it is impossible to teach without failing some koon ot ceh, not because of their teaching but because of the students’ socioeconomic backgrounds. Teachers conceptualized koon ot ceh as mostly static and unchangeable deficits students bring to classrooms. Furthermore, koon ot ceh has strong implications for teaching. Many participants, not limited to the local actors, indicated that koon ot ceh is frequently brought up as a topic of discussion during teacher meetings. In such sessions, teachers “discuss techniques to help koon ot ceh” (Interview, T5). One such technique is pairing koon ot ceh with koon ceh in the same group, just like student-helping-student stated in the manual (MoEYS, 2008b). When I asked a Grade 2 teacher to reflect about her practice, in which she led the students read a short text in pairs, she said. [The objective of the activity was] to let the students read the text, even koon ot ceh. I paired them with koon ceh, who can read and help them. Students need to help each other because [there are] many koon ot ceh in my class. (Interview, T11)

It is interesting that the teacher said “to help each other” in the excerpt. But she actually meant that koon ceh is expected to be like a student tutor for koon ot ceh. Many

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other teachers similarly said that they usually group slow learners with fast learners so that students “help each other,” and as a result they can teach faster. These practices were already part of teachers’ repertoires, most probably because of the Helping Slow Learners manual, although such practices may create particular relationships among students and potentially have negative psychological consequences, particularly for koon ot ceh.5 Here, I observed an example of very important recontextualization (or appropriation) of ETL in local sociocultural contexts, mediated by the Helping Slow Learners manual. Preventing slow learners from dropping out and repetition the same grade was perceived as one of the central components of ETL policy. However, Helping Slow Learners narrows the idea of differences in the ETL policy into difficulties, while stating that all students can learn if teachers teach well. At the local level, however, the idea about slow learners was incorporated and connected to generally low expectations teachers hold of koon ot ceh, which connotes socioeconomic background, not just academic performance. It is therefore perceived that koon ot ceh cannot be helped, and moreover, that the very existence of koon ot ceh in class is a huge obstacle against the implementation of ETL. It directs, therefore, to strengthen and fix the divide between koon ceh and koon ot ceh rather than overcoming it. What should also be noted again is that teachers were not against the idea of helping slow learners, but rather, most of them were eager to implement some recommended activities to help slow learners.

5.3 Policy Tools Mediate Appropriation Examining two policy tools, i.e., the checklist and Helping Slow Learners manual, reveals the common characteristics of how problems are addressed in these tools and how these problems are actually worked out at the local level. First, both policy tools take a deficit-oriented approach, in which they first lead the users to identify their problems and then suggest solutions. Both tools set out the problems and their solutions in very concrete ways, and as a result detach given activities from the substance of the ETL policy—a transformation model of education. Second, because tools are detached from the transformation orientations, they do not successfully enhance local actors’ understanding about why and how they are supposed to use the tools. Although I did not observe overt contestations from local actors to the policy, and local actors actually took the policy seriously and tried to implement what they were supposed to do, tools enhanced superficial understanding about the policy among local actors. Third, the deficit-oriented approach taken in the policy tools promotes the idea that material constraints and slow learners are the obstacles to good teaching, even though the policy tools are supposed to help teachers resolve such difficulties. 5

One of the Cambodian informants explained, “I think teachers assume that koon ot ceh would work harder when they know they are thought as koon ot ceh. They have no ideas about psychological aspects of learning” (Mar 26, 2014).

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Contrary to what many of my informants said, these characteristics suggest that it is not so much the actual material constraints or slow learners that hinder pedagogical reform, but the bigger barrier is how these difficulties are addressed in policy tools and perceived by local actors. Local actors were also very active in constructing the meaning of this policy, mainly in the ways to prevent the policy tools from having actual impacts on their daily practices. Considering the checklist as a to-do list rather than as minimum expectations, for example, was one of the strategies taken by teachers, so that the checklist does not interfere with their business as usual. In this way, teachers could practice activities on the checklist without significantly changing their familiar teaching practices. Local actors also switched the idea of helping slow learners from issues addressed through teaching to the ones that are socioeconomic and therefore not their business. These minimal commitments were possible, firstly, by local actors’ active and skillful participations in the sense-making processes, and secondly, by perceived limited teacher capacity among all involved actors—including teachers themselves—and their severe working conditions. These findings reaffirm the importance of understanding reification and participation as inseparable. Both checklist and Helping Slow Learners manual define, to a significant extent, what meanings local actors can make about ETL while at the same time local actors’ perceived material and socioeconomic contexts also significantly shape how such policy tools should be understood and worked on. It was in these processes where the contradictory policy messages of ETL—its transformation orientation and its transmission-based implementation—were further filtered, watered down, and even twisted to minimize the substantial impacts of the policy on the local actors. In so doing, ETL’s transformation orientation was transformed into practices that rather perpetuate the status quo. At this point, we should acknowledge the fact that local actors are very active and skillful in negotiating various—sometimes contradictory—meanings of a policy. But why local actors, especially teachers, seem so obstinate about changing their practices? The following chapter explores this question by approaching the worldview of Cambodian teachers.

References Ayres, D. M. (2000). Anatomy of a crisis: Education, development, and the state in Cambodia, 1953–1998. University of Hawaii Press. Bredenburg, K. (2009). The child-friendly schools movement and its role in promoting stakeholderdriven development throughout the Southeast Asian region. In Presented at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Comparative and International Education Society, Charleston, SC. Brodie, K., Lelliott, A., & Davis, H. (2002). Forms and substance in learner-centered teaching: Teachers’ take-up from an in-service programme in South Africa. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(5), 541–559.

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Courtney, J. (2008). Do monitoring and evaluation tools, designed to measure the improvement in the quality of primary education, constrain or enhance educational development? International Journal of Educational Development, 28(5), 546–559. Kusakabe, A. (2009). Education policy in Cambodia, 1991–2006: A study of political power and policy stability. Studies in Politics, 40, 1–32. Kobayashi, S. (2011). Kanbojia Nosonshakai no Saisei (Reconstruction of Cambodian Rural Communities). Kyoto University Press. MoEYS. (2005). Child Friendly School Policy. MoEYS. (2008a). Roles and tasks of district training and monitoring teams. MoEYS. (2008b). Helping Slow Learners. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 6

A Logic that Governs Teaching and Learning

Many comparative education researchers have tackled the question of how we could understand the relationship between social and cultural contexts and education. Based on the criticisms of School Effectiveness research that prospered during the 1980s, researchers started to pay closer attention to the embeddedness of education in the broader contexts (e.g., Fuller & Clarke, 1994). It seems that pedagogy has a rather stronger relation with the contexts than other aspects of education. Actually, pedagogy itself cannot be defined without referring to the social, political, and cultural aspects of teaching, as it is contingent upon them. According to Robin Alexander’s definition, pedagogy “encompasses both the act of teaching and its contingent theories and debates—about, for example, the character of culture and society, the purposes of education, the nature of childhood and learning and the structure of knowledge” (Alexander, 2001a, p. 53). Building on the Alexander’s notion of pedagogy, an international research group led by Frances Vavrus and Lesley Bartlett developed the notion of contingent pedagogy (Vavrus, 2009; Vavrus & Bartlett, 2012, 2013). By examining learner-centered pedagogy in a Tanzanian context, they revealed Tanzanian teachers’ pedagogical practices are shaped by their working conditions such as noise, class size, and preparation time, and by their views about knowledge and how students should learn. They contended that “pedagogy is deeply influenced by the cultural and material conditions in which teachers teach” and by “perspectives on knowledge production and dissemination” (Vavrus & Bartlett, 2012, p. 636). They contended that constructivism, on which learner-centered pedagogies are based, is not universally applicable nor relevant, and thus we should examine it from the perspective of epistemological diversity. These research help us understand the extent to which pedagogies (both its theoretical and pragmatic aspects) are inseparable from the local contexts. Therefore, in this chapter, I want to unveil the situated nature of a pedagogy that narrows down (or opens up) the possibility to bring changes. More specifically, I explore an underlying logic and teaching conditions that govern local practices and

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 T. Ogisu, Reforming Pedagogy in Cambodia, Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects 62, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6750-3_6

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thus define what meanings can be made out of ETL. By doing so, this chapter aims to draw some implications for the Cambodian pedagogical reform.

6.1 Unpacking the Logic that Governs Local Meaning It is now widely acknowledged that pedagogy—both theory of knowledge and the act of teaching—cannot be separated from political, social, and cultural contexts because they constitute fundamental assumptions about education. Although pedagogy has not been the major topic of comparative inquiry, there exists a line of research that explored how pedagogy is culturally embedded. For example, Preschools in Three Cultures is an innovative comparative study that unveiled how much culture, which is implicit and unconscious, informs day-to-day practices in the US, China, and Japan. It examined culture as an alternative to “social and political forces” in explaining each nation’s systems of early childhood education (Tobin et al., 2009, p. 224). Employing “video-cued multivocal ethnography” (p. 5), they revealed “implicit cultural logic” (p. 19) that shapes national characteristics of early childhood pedagogies. Alexander’s famous book, Culture and Pedagogy, is another attempt to unveil the contingency of a pedagogy to broader contexts by examining primary education in five countries (England, France, India, Russia, and the USA). His comprehensive analysis revealed “cultural models of pedagogy” (Alexander, 2001b, p. 556) that are a creation of political, historical, social, cultural, and organizational characteristics. For example, he characterized Russian values in primary education as “teaching as competitive yet collaborative”, “teaching as both individualistic and collaborative” in England, and “teaching as individualistic” in French primary education (p. 223). Shedding light on the “logic” or “model” that governs local practices not only helps us understand the national characteristics of a pedagogy, but also allows us to explore the ways in which local actors make sense of and enact a globalized pedagogy. For example, in her study about reading lessons in Guinea, France, and the US, Kathryn M. Anderson-Levitt clarified that lesson structures are deeply rooted in national cultural differences even though the local teachers in three countries have similarly adopted global mixed method in reading lessons (Anderson-Levitt, 2004, p. 229). Informed by this line of research, I explored a logic that governs discourses about education as well as the act of teaching based on ethnographic fieldwork in 10 primary schools in the Prey Veng cluster.

6.1.1 Paccekteeh as a Political–Social–Cultural Logic Paccekteeh, meaning technique or technical in Khmer (Headley, 1977, p. 473), is one of the most frequently heard terms in discussion but at the same time one that troubled me most during the fieldwork. Participants in my study held that teaching is a technical process to transmit knowledge from teachers to students. The term

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paccekteeh has its root in paccek, a Pali word that means single, different or individual, used in words such as paccek-piek meaning separate or individual parts. In the context of teaching, it is similar to repertoire but paccekteeh particularly focuses on problem-solving. For example, one of the youngest participants of this research mentioned, “I have difficulties to manage my kids. I need to have paccekteeh to keep my kids be quiet and listen to me” (Interview, T15). Paccekteeh is a set of legitimate steps that lead you to arrive at the solution to the problem.

6.1.2 Paccekteeh as a Means to Transmit Knowledge In order to unpack the idea of paccekteeh, I need to touch upon the importance of religions (Hindu and Buddhism) in the history of Cambodian education.1 From earlier than the late thirteenth century toward the French colonial occupation, children of the laity were educated by monks at temples in Cambodia. Written texts were stored in temples and monks orally transmitted written poems and proverbs. As a result, temples monopolized written texts and played “a significant role in determining what texts were worth knowing” (Ayres, 2000, p. 14). This tradition defines education as “predominantly moral enterprise” rather than equipping people with basic literacy and skills that are applicable to people’s daily lives (Reimer, 2012, p. 289). Oral transmission of knowledge also defined the proper teacher–student relationship as the storyteller and the audience (Needham, 2003), in which the audience was expected to receive and recite information correctly. Paccekteeh is a set of techniques to enable such effective knowledge transmission. This type of thinking is still in effect among many of the participants in this study. The question about what counts as knowledge is a question of power. In the pre-colonial Cambodia, monopoly of knowledge, together with the oral mode of teaching, perpetuated the hierarchical social order having a God-King on the top (Ayres, 2000). Currently, the national curriculum defines knowledge that is worth teaching. According to a MoEYS official, “The national curriculum states what should be taught in schools. You can find more detailed knowledge and skills to be taught in the curriculum standards. All teachers must teach based on these standards” (Interview, N1). The curriculum embodies knowledge and teachers throughout the country are supposed to teach it as it is. Actually, “very little outside the taught curriculum has value as learning” (Pearson, 2011, p. 14). In this system, teachers are expected to transmit predefined knowledge in the curriculum effectively and correctly. At the same time, possessing legitimate knowledge is regarded as power. A slogan hung on the wall in one primary school classroom read “Cheap things are in your hands, Expensive things are in your mouth,” which exemplifies a norm that values possession over the application of knowledge. In this sense, teachers are associated with power because of their familiarity with paccekteeh. According to Pearson 1

See Chap. 3 for more detailed discussion on the pre-colonial education in Cambodia.

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(2011), teachers try to prevent others from acquiring the same or higher level of knowledge by taking “know 10, teach 7” approach, as in the Cambodian adage (p. 14).

6.1.2.1

Paccekteeh and Teaching Occupation

Teachers are assigned technical (paccekteeh) or even mechanical roles in this system. Pearson, reflecting on her experience of working with teacher trainers, described Cambodian teaching culture as follows: Trainers expect, indeed are hungry for, new tools, techniques, and materials, but their expectations are of a conveyor belt approach, within which they will receive new content or rules from someone who already knows it and then they will transfer it to others in the same way. There is no perceived need to analyze, or practice the use of, learning in order that delivery be based on real understanding and practical experience. (Pearson, 2011, p. 14).

Teachers are expected to be like a “conveyor” that does not need creativity and flexibility. This theory of knowledge has implications for the preferable relationship between the teacher and the students. A member of the District Training and Monitoring Team (DTMT) defined the roles of teachers and students as follows: “Teachers give (aoy) knowledge to students. Students receive (totuul) knowledge” (Interview, S-1). A consultant suggested, in this context, … parents would say, children go to school to learn from the teacher, not from their peers … [in] child friendly school, student-centered approach, students feel they don’t learn anything from the teacher. They go to school to learn, not to share information among their group. … Teachers are supposed to teach students. (Interview, I14)

With the traditional theory of knowledge that is quite different from constructivist epistemology, people may feel it is useless to discuss among children who do not possess legitimate knowledge nor the techniques to transmit knowledge. The theory of knowledge also has implications for teacher learning and development. A ministry official described Cambodian teacher training as equipping teacher candidates with paccekteeh to teach. By comparing it with Japanese teacher education, he said, We have quite different pre-service training from Japan, because in Japan you train teachers at universities, right? But in Cambodia, no. We train teachers at teacher training centers. This is quite different because we call in Cambodia, teacher training, not teacher education like you do in Japan. … teacher education and teacher training are quite different. In Japan you use teacher education because, before teaching in the classrooms, the candidates apply to the universities to become a teacher. In the university they don’t focus on the teaching techniques, but mostly focus on upgrading their [content] knowledge. What we do is teacher training, so we don’t focus so much on [content] knowledge, but we focus more on techniques to teach, so that they can teach after two years [of training]. (Interview, N3)

Contrary to our understanding about “pedagogical knowledge” and “pedagogical content knowledge” (Shulman, 1987) as important knowledge domains that teachers

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need to have, this official does not count teaching techniques (paccekteeh) as knowledge. For him, subject content is the body of knowledge that all teacher candidates are supposed to have when they enter teacher training centers. Paccekteeh are the ways to enable such transmission of knowledge effectively, which teacher candidates need to learn during their two years of training. Professional development is also organized based on paccekteeh. In-service teachers have school- and cluster-based professional development opportunities where teachers get together in their own school or in the school cluster. In fact, these teacher meetings are called procham paccekteeh (technical meeting). The primal objective of this meeting is to provide professional development opportunities more frequently and at closer to classrooms, and to nurture collegial relationships among teachers. During the meeting, teachers are supposed to reflect on their teaching experiences and exchange ideas about teaching and learning (Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, n.d.). Usually, technical meetings are organized without having someone who can provide professional consultation, and teachers rarely have opportunities to observe each other’s classrooms. Therefore, technical meetings tend to work as a platform where familiar paccekteeh is transmitted from experienced teachers to novice teachers (Wheeler, 1998). Investigating the discourses about knowledge and teaching makes it clear that paccekteeh is a logic that provides a basis for the fundamental assumptions about education. It is not just rooted in the local culture, but also in the power structure and the norms of social relationships. Paccekteeh is, in some sense, a means to maintain the existing power structure where those who control knowledge are at the top, those who possess legitimate knowledge in the middle, and those who have less access to knowledge are at the bottom. It also sustains and strengthens existing social relations such as that of teachers and students.

6.1.2.2

Paccekteeh in the Act of Teaching

The technical (paccekteeh) view toward teaching and learning is also apparent in the other aspect of pedagogy, i.e., the act of teaching. I want to unpack how this logic underlies actual practices by examining three vignettes. Vignette 1: Professional Development Day After I observed a cluster-level technical meeting, in which teachers created exam problems, I noted, “It was a complete division of labor, one teacher worked on Khmer, the other on math, and the rest three teachers on science/social studies,” … three teachers started working on creating science/social studies exam. Because the textbook is written in open-ended style, the teachers must create their own questions that are accessible to their kids. It seemed that teachers found this quite difficult and they discussed it a lot. They were quick to choose the topic/unit that they wanted to put in the exam. The topic they chose was about chicken. But the problem was how they make exam questions out of the topic. A teacher first wrote an open-ended question, “What do chickens eat?” and showed it to the leader teacher. The leader teacher said, “This might be too difficult. We

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should give choices so that students can choose the correct one. How about putting like, A: Chickens eat worms and grains, and B: Chickens eat meats.” The three teachers agreed and started writing them on the paper. But still they found it difficult to format these choices and finally created two “true” statements! (Observation, May 30, 2013)

Technical meeting was officially institutionalized in 1993, along with the organization of cluster school system. Although teachers were paid daily allowance when they participated in this meeting before 2009, MoEYS stopped providing monetary incentives because the participation became a mandate. This negatively affects the motivations of teachers to bother to spend a day in school, when they could earn money elsewhere. As a result, only about two-thirds of teachers in the cluster actually showed up in both of the two meetings that I observed. Usually, DTMT organizes technical meetings on the last Thursday every month in one of the schools in the cluster, and all other schools are closed the whole day. It lasts about three hours, in which all teachers first get together to share schedules and information, then work in grade-level groups, and finally come back to the whole group to wrap up. In the grade-level groups, teachers are supposed to develop a “teaching program” for each subject that provides a rough idea about what content they should cover in the following month. Sometimes teachers need to work on other tasks, such as generating exams, in addition to teaching programs, or need to participate in training sessions offered by DTMT. The vignette described above is from the scene where Grade 2 teachers just finished generating teaching programs and worked on the additional task to generate exams that would be used in all Grade 2 classes in the cluster at the end of the semester. The name “technical” is a perfect descriptor of what I observed—teachers worked on practical tasks (in this case creating exams) by division of labor most of the time. They talked about the questioning techniques, such as multiple-choice or openended. What they might have learned in this meeting were procedural techniques to convert statements in the textbook to exam questions. What surprised me most during the meeting was that there were very limited interactions among teachers. One of the teachers worked on preparing Khmer exam completely by herself, although other teachers were physically in the same room. She even did not check whether others were okay with the topic she chose. She passed her draft to the lead teacher for check, and left the room without waiting for the other teachers to finish. No group discussion that involved all of the five teachers was initiated when they were working. Although teachers engaged in more casual chatting when DTMT members distributed lychees for a snack, the topic was mostly about the election scheduled in July. In the end, therefore, teachers did not talk about their own teaching or about their students at all. Even when they interacted, the discussions centered around procedures (how to) rather than on the content (what) or the purpose (why) of the exam. It was as if content and purpose were given a priori, or just creating exam questions itself was the purpose of this meeting. Three teachers who prepared science/social studies exam did not discuss what knowledge and skills of their students they want to assess with this exam, what certain questioning techniques allow students to think about, or why understanding chicken’s feeding behavior is important for the students, for

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example. All the questions they created were what they call “memory questions” to make students recall what they have been taught. No possibilities were discussed to put “critical thinking” or even “understanding” questions—which is one of the most significant assets to the ETL. Such technical view toward teaching and learning is woven into their daily classroom practices, which I now turn to discuss. The following two vignettes are from math and Khmer classes. One is based on a more traditional teaching approach mainly based on lecturing, whereas the other is more activity-based and ETL techniques were applied. But both vignettes equally illuminate how much procedures are emphasized in the daily practices. Vignette 2: A math class The teacher (T3), a young male teacher, who taught 29 students in his G2 class, first wrote an exercise problem from the last period:

456 – 278 The teacher asked the students to solve this problem by themselves on their slates (there were around eight students who did not have their own slates and they worked it on their notes). Some students used their fingers, or wrote bars on the slate, in order to calculate subtractions between two-digit and one-digit numbers, such as 16–8 and 14–7. Because in doing 16 minus 8, students need to write 16 bars and cross 8, and then count the remaining, some students got confused in the process.

Some students forgot to reduce one when they borrowed from the five in the tenth digit or four in the hundreds digit. Students around me, therefore, did not get correct answers at first. After a while, the teacher led the students to put up their slates so that he could see whether students got correct answers or not. He looked around the classroom and nodded, then appointed a girl (Neth) to come up to the blackboard and show what she got.

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3 14 1

4 56 2 78 1 78

The teacher started to explain the procedures step by step while posing short questions: T: “Okay, thanks Neth. Do you remember how to solve this? Where should we see first? From left or right?” Unknown (S): “From right.” T: “Correct. So at first, we should calculate 6 minus 8. Can we subtract 8 from 6?” Unknown (many): “No!” T: “No, so we should borrow one from 5. We should change 5 as 4. Now we have 16. 16 minus 8 equals?” S (in the front): “Eight.” T: “Okay, so I write 8 here. Next, can we subtract 7 from 4? No. So we should borrow one from 4. Here we should change 4 into 3, because we borrowed one, and now we have 14. What is 14 minus 7?” S (in the front): “Seven.” T: “Yes, so we write 7 here. Now we subtract 2 from 3 and get 1. So the answer is 178. Clap your hands for Neth!” T: “Okay, before moving on to other exercise problems we should tackle, I want to make sure that you know how to calculate this problem. I explain the procedure once again, and you should repeat after me. I start from the right.” All students: “I start from the right.” T: “Eight cannot be subtracted from six. I borrow one from five and change it into four.” All students: “Eight cannot be subtracted from six. I borrow one from five and change it into four.” T: “Now I calculate 16 minus 8 and I get 8.” All students: “Now I calculate 16 minus 8 and I get 8.” T: “Seven cannot be subtracted from four. I borrow one from four and change it into three. Now I calculate 14 minus 7 and I get 7.” All students: “Seven cannot be subtracted from four. I borrow one from four and change it into three. Now I calculate 14 minus 7 and I get 7.” T: “Now I calculate 3 minus 2 and I get 1. My answer is 178.” All students: “Now I calculate 3 minus 2 and I get 1. My answer is 178.” T: “Very good! Now we are moving on to other exercise problems. You can solve these problems unless you follow the steps we just learned.”

This class was one of the most traditional in terms of how the content was delivered. Tables were arranged in raw and students sat straight-faced to the blackboard, where the teacher stood most of the class time. But there existed a clear and logical link between the purpose (students become able to calculate subtractions between 3-digit numbers) and the flow of the lesson (review and exercise), which I did not

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see in many more activity-based classes. The teacher succeeded in making a good classroom atmosphere by praising students and letting students to praise others. He also involved students in the process by posing a lot of questions. It was intriguing to see the teacher made the students verbally express all the steps they should take in the calculation. It was very strange for me at first because it sounded like a song and the students murmured it while calculating other exercise problems. But after I spent some time in various classrooms, I learned that this is a quite popular strategy taken across grade levels and subject areas. This practice is called sourt, to recite or to chant, which consists of the core of teaching method used in temples known as soutrien, meaning to learn by heart (Needham, 2003). An informant cynically pointed out that Cambodians learn chants to access to the highest knowledge, Buddhism, but in many cases people chant a mantra without knowing what it means. The perspective underlies the practice of chanting is that knowledge is primarily transmitted verbally. Needham (2003) pointed out that repetition, memorization, and verbal performance are the norms of classroom practices, based on her ethnographic study about Khmer literacy lessons. She observed, “recital elicitation” as the dominant form of learning activities, in which “students are called on to recite an extended portion of the lesson by repeating after the teacher” (Needham, 2003, p. 33). Although this observation is about Khmer literacy, it also applies very well to the math teaching described above. The teacher spent almost half of the lesson hour (about 20 min) for the recital elicitation about the calculation procedure, which was much longer than the time students actually worked on exercise problems. The chant also indicates the centrality of procedural knowledge in doing mathematics. As Gu et al. (2004) contended by examining Chinese mathematics teaching, repeating procedural teaching is not necessarily a rote drill when it involves “procedural variations” (p. 322).2 The chant involved procedural variations that help “students arrive at solutions to a problem” (Gu et al., 2004, p. 322). It transformed a challenging problem (456 minus 278) into a set of familiar problems (such as 18 minus 8) as the small steps (paccek) that guide students to arrive at solutions to the problem. Yet it is limited in its ability to develop students’ conceptual understanding because no explanation was provided in the chant (and in the lecture) about why the problem should be calculated from the right to left. It also left no room for the students to think, or be aware of, possible approaches to calculate 456 minus 278 differently. Therefore, the chant reduced the amount of mathematical thinking that is required to solve the problem by dividing the procedure into small steps. Vignette 3: A Khmer class A female teacher (T2) in her late 30’s taught her 36 students in one of the two G1 classes in the school. Below is an excerpt from one of her Khmer classes.

2

Teaching with procedural variation is to introduce multiple methods to solve a problem in order to help students “form a hierarchical system of experiencing process through forming concepts or solving stages of problems” (Gu et al., 2004, p. 324).

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The class worked on composing words in groups. They worked on creating a word with given cards, on which letters (sometimes a combination of a consonant and a vowel, or a consonant alone) were written. Each group got three cards that are necessary to create a word. The students were divided into three groups, each group with more than 10 students. Students got together around a table, which was too small for 11 or 13 students to fit, and they had only one set of cards. In one group, which worked on the word book, siavpau, students started identifying the cards one by one: S1: “Is this consonant វ / vou /?” S2: “That is វ / vou /. This one is consonant ស / so /.” S3: (looking at the letter table) “Vowel /,

/ ia /. Consonant ស / so / and vowel

/ ia

/ sia /. What is the next one?”

S1: “Consonant… ភ / pou /?” S3: “And vowel… S1: “So

/ au /.”

/ pau /. Isn’t it

/ siavpau /?”

Students succeeded to identify all the cards and the word they were making. They started to look for the word on the blackboard and in the textbook, so that they could know where the consonant វ fits in. After each group successfully found what the word was, the teacher asked them to read the word aloud. After class Takayo: So, what were the things that you wanted them (students) to learn in the game you did today? Teacher: The game I used today was to make sure that my kids are able to decompose combinations of consonants and vowels in order to read words. Takayo: How do you evaluate? Teacher: It was good. Good, because they enjoyed and all of them could read words in the end. They like to study in that way and also learn a lot when they are happy, you know.

Managing a relatively large class, compared to 27.4 students per class on average in Prey Veng city, the teacher succeeded to create an organized but warm learning environment in her room. The teacher employed one of the ETL methods—working on a game in groups—and led the students practice what they had learned. In the group I was with, at least some of the students initiated discussion and worked together to figure out the word. Because Khmer language has a phonologically based writing system with 67 letters including 21 vowels, early grade Khmer reading instruction is generally based on phonics teaching. Students first learn the shape and sound of each of the consonants and vowels, and then learn the combinations of them (Courtney & Gravelle, 2013; Needham, 2003). Students followed the steps they had been taught—first to decode

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letters into sounds, and then combine them together—and finally figured out the word siavpau. Things actually happened as the teacher intended. Furthermore, even though vignette 3 looks a lot different from vignette 2, in terms of grade level, subject matter, and teaching approach, the core ideas about teaching and learning are surprisingly similar: Procedures were at the center of teaching and learning. The game was designed to establish procedures to read words that involve decoding letters and combining sounds. This fits very well with the overall objective of this lesson, which was “to make sure that students are able to read words that contain consonant–vowel combinations” according to the lesson plan. Students were to follow the steps to read, relying on their memory about letters (or a letter table). In fact, the game left no room for students to construct knowledge together even though it took the form of groupwork. This parallels what I observed in the math class (vignette 2) as well as in many other classes. Another important aspect of vignette 3 is the teacher’s high evaluation of the activity. As noted, there were many students who could not, or did not, join the discussion during the group work. It was partly due to the lack of the cards that the teacher prepared by herself. She “wanted to prepare additional card sets” at least for five or six groups, but she could not because there were no thick papers left. As a result, each group had more than 10 students including both koon ceh and koon ot ceh. In the group I was with, three koon ceh dominated the discussion and others just observed. But the teacher evaluated, “all of them [students] could read words in the end.” The above three vignettes sharply illuminate the fact that the logic of paccekteeh (technique) underlies local practices. Creating an exam (vignette 1), doing subtractions between 3-digit numbers (vignette 2), or reading words (vignette 3), were all divided into small steps (paccek). It also allows teachers and students to arrive at solutions with less thinking. Such techniques, often presented as the only effective and thus correct method, make teaching and learning predictable and even mechanical processes.

6.2 Making Sense of ETL with the Logic of Paccekteeh Paccekteeh is a logic that provides a basis for the fundamental assumptions about Cambodian education. This logic also worked as a hidden frame of reference within which ETL could be understood and practiced at the local level. Interestingly, local actors are the ones who most strongly supported what they think as student-centered principles and thus seriously engaged in what they think as ETL, compared to international and national actors. They held the idea that student-centered teaching involves a lot of questions, activities and games, and groupwork that is based on a well-written lesson plan. It is also to ensure that students know (ceh) the basics: “before we just cared about whether teachers cover the content, but [in student-centered teaching in Khmer subject] we care more about whether students know how to read and write” (Interview, S2). Student-centered teaching was placed at the opposite end of

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teacher-centered teaching, which a teacher described, “[classroom discourse was] all dominated by teachers and students listened to the teacher all the time. [This was a] typical teaching approach 30 years ago” (Interview, S8). But ironically, the way local actors constructed ETL was so fundamentally based on the logic of paccekteeh that their serious commitment directed to sustain, not to change, their pedagogies (both theoretically and pragmatically). In particular, local actors constructed ETL as (1) a set of techniques that automatically lead them to student-centered teaching and (2) additional tasks rather than alternative to their familiar practices. Local actors understood that ETL is a set of techniques. According to a district education official, “ETL helps teachers. It helps teachers identify problems in their teaching and also gives them paccekteeh to improve their teaching” (Interview, S6). Teachers further connected ETL techniques to student-centered teaching. For example, one of the participants evaluated her teaching as student-centered because she knows “how to use ETL techniques for many years” and has “completed all the items on the checklist already” (Interview, T7). In relation to the first point, local actors also perceived ETL as additional techniques. This meaning is expressed in the following excerpts from interview: “now that we have ETL, we have to implement all the items on the checklist. We have more things to do but get the same amount of money” (T3), “I try to use different types of games at least once in a day. Sometimes I cannot, especially when I am behind the schedule” (T11). These comments suggest that teachers perceived ETL as techniques that they need to add to their day-to-day workload, which is already quite heavy, rather than replace their familiar teaching. Local actors constructed these meanings of ETL fundamentally based on the logic of paccekteeh. They focused more on the procedure and small steps rather than conceptual understanding about ETL or multiple ways to arrive at student-centered teaching. This parallels with what underlies the mathematics lesson I discussed in vignette 2. The second meaning also represents resilience against change that is also a characteristic of the logic of paccekteeh. Therefore, although local actors embraced what they think as student-centered teaching, they ended up sustaining and strengthening transmission approach rather than replacing it with transformation approach.

6.3 Unpacking Teaching Conditions that Shape Local Meaning Examining teaching conditions is established as an approach to explore how teaching and learning are conceptualized and enacted. Lortie (1975), in one of the classics of this approach, identified the nature of teaching profession by examining various aspects of teaching conditions. Kennedy (2005) also found that school organizational rules and norms hinder effective teaching both physically and culturally. Especially regarding low-income countries, researchers have identified large class size, lack of

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basic facilities, and limited availability of teaching/learning materials as obstacles to teaching. Those who study pedagogical changes have claimed that student-centered pedagogies are not relevant to the difficult working conditions for teachers in lowincome countries (Guthrie, 1990; O’Sullivan, 2002, 2004). Although it is clear that these obstacles similarly narrow the possible teaching options that Cambodian teachers can employ in their classrooms, situative theory further suggests that their implications are much more fundamental to pedagogical changes. The theory posits that sense making—not just decoding the information— cannot be independent from social and physical contexts in which it happens (Putnam & Borko, 2000). It means, teaching conditions close down (or open up) the possible meanings that people can make about certain stimulus. In order to understand better the local meaning and practice of ETL, it is necessary to unpack how local actors make sense of ETL in their world of work.

6.3.1 Teaching Conditions as a Basis for Expectations for Teachers In Chap. 5, I have discussed that local actors held only minimum expectations to teachers, which had significant implications for how ETL is understood and practiced. It turned out that teaching conditions, especially low salary and resource constraints, had significant implication for the ways in which local actors, as well as some national and international actors, understood what teachers must do in this pedagogical reform.

6.3.1.1

Low Salary

As it is the case for any places, salary is an important factor to motivate or demotivate teachers extrinsically. According to the study done by NEP (NGO Education Partnership) and VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas), with 213 teachers, salary was nominated as the biggest cause of dissatisfaction in their job (NEP & VSO, 2008, p. 23).3 Participants in my study also complained about their low salary. For example, a school principal described the situation as follows. “They [teachers] don’t get enough salary. Only 10,000 Riel for one day, it is only 2.5$. They have children to feed and they need to fill the gas for their motorbike to come to school… And they have to prepare teaching aids out of their own pocket” (Interview, S8). An NGO official also explained how low salary negatively impacts teaching: 3

The Cambodian Independent Teachers Association (CITA) is “the only independent, nonpartisan, non-profit, non-governmental teachers’ union” in Cambodia, which was established in March 2000. It advocates for “a living wage, safe and sanitary working conditions, continuous professional development, for legal and democratic rights” of teachers (CITA, 2010, p. 3). They report that Cambodian teachers made from US$50 to US$80 every month, which was not enough for them to support their daily living.

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The problems is their [teachers’] salary is too low. I know this is something what people say again and again. Nobody wants to listen to it but it is important. It’s important. If people, when you are talking about the basic needs, and when you don’t have things to eat or money to send your ill child to the hospital, how can you think about [your job]? … If teachers don’t have money to send their own kids to school, or if they don’t have enough food, how can they think about teaching and learning, or effectiveness, or student-centered? They don’t even use their time to prepare for class. Because they already have lesson plans that they made two or three years ago. Just use it. How can they spend 500 or 1,000 Riel [10–25 cent] to buy books to read? No. With 1,000 Riel they can buy a cup of coffee. (Interview, I9)

This comment makes a case that low teacher salary is not just a problem of motivation but it is about survival and maintaining a basic living. Low teacher salary brings problematic consequences such as second job and corruption (CITA, 2010). Aside from these pragmatic issues, low salary is a basis for the minimum expectations to teachers. As exemplified in the comment cited above (I9), some national and international actors held that the current level of teacher salary is already low for what teachers are doing, and expecting more to them is “not realistic and appropriate” (Interview, I7). Local actors also had the same concern. For example, a teacher complained, “we don’t get much salary but there are a lot of work!” (Interview, T4). School principals and DTMT members were very sympathetic to teachers and emphasized the most basic tasks such as preparing a lesson plan and teaching aids, because preparing these materials itself actually requires a lot of efforts in this condition: “They [teachers] usually have one or two jobs other than being a teacher. Some of them do farming, others sell stuffs at the market, or drive a motodop [motor taxi]. So they don’t have time to prepare lesson plans” (Interview, S3). Therefore, expecting less is a kind of norm that is shared among local actors due to the low salary that teachers receive.

6.3.1.2

Resource Constraints

As I have discussed in Chap. 5, mediated by policy tools, local actors made sense of ETL with placing particular emphasis on material aspects such as posters, lesson plans, and teaching aids rather than on the aspects of process or content. This is because they perceived materials as the prerequisite for learning, as a teacher suggested in the following comment: “if a student doesn’t have textbook, that student cannot learn” (Interview, T11). Lack of textbook or necessary materials for creating teaching aids was perceived as the biggest barriers for student-centered learning. Given the centrality of materials in the local meaning and practice, resource constraints also provide a basis for the norm of minimum expectations. This results from the idea that teachers are not responsible for addressing resource constraints because that is the job of school principal. Particularly the roles of school principals were stressed not only by local actors but also by international and national actors. A participant explained that school principals are at the top of the pyramid, and they take top-down approach and not willing to see changes from teachers (Interview, I3). Therefore, in general, school principals take responsibility to address

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resource constraints rather than teachers themselves explore resources available outside schools. In contrast, principals themselves perceived that material constraints in their schools are due to the limited contributions from the community they serve. Every public primary school has a community organization that is called sahakaa, or school support committee, consists of administrative officers, teachers, community leaders, and volunteers (Kambayashi, 2008). Sahakaa shares responsibilities with its supporting school especially in mobilizing resources.4 Resources are usually raised through bon pukaa, literally translated flower festival, in which the school offers light snacks and drinks and community members donate money in response. The amount of monetary contribution from sahakaa makes a difference in school resources, such as library and classroom construction or facility repairs. I could participate in two such festivals in different schools (School #1 and #6), and my fieldnote reads, Compared to the last one [held in School #6], there were fewer people and monks. Last time I met the head of Provincial Education Office but this time he didn’t show up. The principal [of School #1] came to me and said this bon pukaa is for building new library but he needs much more money. (May 27, 2013)

The gap I observed in the two schools was also pointed out by the principal of School #1 in the interview. “They [School #6] do much better than us [in terms of school conditions]. They have a good sahakaa that contributes a lot to the school. We don’t have that strong support” (Interview, S12).5 In any case, teachers are not expected to take initiative to address resource constraints that they perceive as the biggest barrier. They are expected to do what they can do with the resources available to them inside the school, contrary to the ETL policy and policy tools that encourage teachers to bring in locally available resources in order to supplement resources. Together, teaching conditions provide a basis for low expectations for teachers, which actually work as a filter that narrows down the possible meaning of ETL into a set of minimum things to do.

6.3.2 Practices in Different Teaching Conditions As it was confirmed by the participants of this study, teaching conditions have significant negative impacts on local practices. But my observation suggests, although teaching conditions (especially resources) are important, their impacts are not as 4

As Kambayashi (2008) explained, people perceived that schools cannot collect money directly from students, but they can raise money from community. As a result, monetary contribution from communities shares as much as 40% of Cambodia’s total education expenditure. 5 In School #3, which was described as the poorest by a DTMT member, the principal complained: “In my school, sahakaa contributes very little. They donate a lot of money to the temple not to this school. I always ask help but they care about their next lives but not about educating kids” (Interview, S3).

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deterministic as people may imagine. Rather, I observed much more flexibility and creativity in “difficult” classrooms where there were more students but fewer resources than in classrooms in the city school, which people typically described as wealthy and thus the best primary school in the province. By comparing these two classrooms, I want to shed light on the complex—even contradictory—realities that I have observed. Classroom A in the “advanced” school (School #6). Prey Veng people, ranging from Provincial Education Office staff to my landlord, said this is one of the best primary schools in the province. Actually, its appearance is quite different from other schools because it has a big school gate and a lot of colorful animal statues. It has more than four school buildings, a big playground, and an assembly hall. The school offers 23 classes and caters for 788 students in total. It is particularly unique for its after-school English classes that most students take for US$5 per month (out-of-curricular program). One morning I observed one of its four Grade 2 classrooms. Twenty-eight kids fit in 15 tables and each has his/her own chair, with which they can move. The class started exactly on time: no late show up is accepted and students who come late should go to see the principal, according to the teacher. She showed me the “official” copy of a lesson plan, which her co-worker made and got approval from the vice principal. She said, “I have to follow this because I cannot teach faster or slower” than other Grade 2 classes. It was a Khmer class, in which students learned to spell words that appeared in a text that they learned the day before. The teacher led the kids prepare their slates for the dictation. There were two or three students who did not have slates, but she did not take care of them even though medium size chalkboards were stocked in the cabinet. She pronounced a word slowly for the kids to write it on the slate, and made them raise slates high enough, so that she could check if there are students who spelled it wrong. When she found mistakes, she just pointed the students and led them correct with help from nearby students. After these mistakes were corrected, students “chant” how they spelled it. (Feb. 23, 2013)

Classroom B in a “basic” school (School #8). This school is located in the middle of a vast rice field, with only eight teaching staffs. 206 students were packed in a two-story building. The rain often floods its playground and roads to the school especially during the rainy season, and makes it difficult for both kids and teachers to come to school on time. The principal described his school as “basic,” because the school is categorized C (basic or below average) according to the DTMT evaluation. After a heavy shower, I visited the school and observed Grade 1 classroom. There were 36 students at the beginning, but the teacher was not there yet. Five minutes later the teacher arrived and she made the students sing two songs and welcomed three more students who came late. Ten minutes late from the schedule, she started a Khmer class by showing a poster that shows all consonants (the only laminated poster in her class) and said, “Today we are going to study consonant yo” and pointed the consonant on the poster. Then she took her earrings (royaa) off and asked what these were, then taped her earrings and a piece of paper on which she wrote the word on the blackboard. After similarly introducing three more words, she removed papers and asked students to put them under the objects that they represent. She was reluctant to show me her lesson plan (she did not call it a lesson plan), which was as simple as the unit name and the list of questions that she planned to ask and of course there was no stamp from the school principal. (Feb. 13, 2013)

It is clear that classroom A is more rigid and follows the norms of Cambodian education. Such rigidity does not allow teachers to mobilize resources to the kids

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who are in need, even though there are things that can be used more flexibly (such as spare chalkboards). In contrast, classroom B and the school are in difficult conditions that restrict how teaching can be organized. But the teacher cared about her students more than the norms and rules and effectively used available resources. These examples suggest that it is not so much the availability of resources that limit the range of teaching methods that teachers can take in classrooms. Rather, teachers’ creative and flexible use of available resources is an important determinant about how things can be taught. Comparing these two classrooms confirms the fact that the teaching conditions constitute an important aspect of Cambodian pedagogy, but it is just one of many aspects. We should pay attention to the teachers who work in severely under-resourced classrooms but managed to teach in ways that engage students in teaching and learning processes, and vice versa. Pedagogy is contingent on teaching conditions but they are not absolute. I should also note that for many local actors classroom A is more effective and advanced. This even applies to the teacher of classroom B, who does not evaluate her own teaching very high, “It is worthless to observe my class. I don’t teach well” (Interview, T9). For the local actors, rigid and structured practices such as in classroom A are valued as effective than creative and flexible practices like in classroom B. The logic of paccekteeh (techniques) informs such evaluation. As discussed, paccekteeh is to provide step-by-step procedures in order to reach the solution with minimum uncertainties. Flexibility and creativity, which are necessary to respond to uncertainties, are placed at the opposite end of rigidity and structure, and thus regarded as ineffective. Discussing the difficult teaching conditions as if teaching practices cannot be changed without overcoming such difficulties runs the dual risks: (1) undermining the active and creative roles played by the local actors who somehow manage to teach in such conditions and (2) ignoring the logic that governs how teaching and learning should be operated and evaluated at the local level.

6.4 Is Pedagogical Change Possible? It turns out that both logic of paccekteeh and severe teaching conditions play important roles to determine what kind of meaning can be made about ETL and how such meaning can be expressed in practice. Although it is impossible to conclude which is the more important “barrier” for Cambodian pedagogical reform, I would argue that these two factors are strongly intertwined and make Cambodian pedagogies resilient in the face of change from the top. On one hand, teachers’ working conditions provide a rationale to the logic of paccekteeh. Chanting and recitation, which are rooted in political social, as well as cultural norms, are also the practices to address resource constraints. This must particularly be so when there are only limited textbooks available. Low teacher salary also provides explanations about why simple, even “dumb down” procedures should be provided. That is to say, teachers are not necessarily expected to do much in ETL, mainly due to the minimum amount of money they earn. With such low expectations,

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it is better not to let teachers have the autonomy to think and decide by themselves. Rather, it is safer to make things “teacher-proof” as much as possible. The logic of paccekteeh is, to some extent, a consequence of difficult conditions in which Cambodian teachers work. On the other hand, it is also true that the logic of paccekteeh shapes how people perceive teachers’ working conditions. As discussed, local actors discussed that teaching conditions including low teacher salary and limited resources are the major barriers for “effective” teaching, meaning rigid and structured. Teaching conditions are barriers for them because they prevent teachers from performing all the small steps and procedures as planned, or from making things organized and structured. From another angle, the status of NOT having these conditions enables local actors to exercise autonomy—by changing school timetable or producing original teaching aids, because there are no paccekteeh to deal with such situations. But again, flexibility and creativity are perceived as inferior or incomplete where paccekteeh is much appreciated. In this sense, teachers’ world of work is very strongly governed by the logic of paccekteeh. It is unlikely that improving teaching conditions alone leads teachers to employ more creative and flexible teaching methods. It is likely rather to strengthen rigidity and enhance practices based on paccekteeh. It is also difficult to imagine changing the logic of paccekteeh, which is deeply held by teachers, without improving teaching conditions. If we seriously try to replace “traditional” teaching practices that emphasize recitation and reproduction of knowledge with the one that values critical thinking and production of knowledge, what do we need? Or would it make any good for Cambodian education? The next concluding chapter takes up these issues drawing on the evidence presented so far in this book.

References Alexander, R. J. (2001a). Border crossings: Towards a comparative pedagogy. Comparative Education, 37(4), 507–523. Alexander, R. J. (2001b). Culture and pedagogy: International comparisons in primary education. Wiley-Blackwell. Anderson-Levitt, K. (2004). Reading lessons in Guinea, France, and the United States: Local meanings or global culture? Comparative Education Review, 48(3), 229–252. Ayres, D. M. (2000). Anatomy of a crisis: Education, development, and the state in Cambodia, 1953–1998. University of Hawaii Press. CITA. (2010). Teachers’ salary and terms & conditions position paper 2010–2012. Phnom Penh: Cambodia Independent Teachers Association. Courtney, J., & Gravelle, M. (2013). Switching sides: The struggle between national identity and globalized pedagogy in the development of an early literacy programme in Cambodia. Citizenship Teaching & Learning, 8(3), 309–325. Fuller, B., & Clarke, P. (1994). Raising school effects while ignoring culture? Local conditions and the influence of classroom tools, rules, and pedagogy. Review of Educational Research, 64(1), 119–157.

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Gu, L., Huang, R., & Marton, F. (2004). Teaching with variation: A Chinese way of promoting effective mathematics learning. In J. Lianghuo, J. Cai, & N.-Y. Wong (Eds.), How Chinese learn mathematics: Perspectives from insiders (pp. 309–347). World Scientific. Guthrie, G. (1990). To the defense of traditional teaching in lesser-developed countries. In V. Rust & P. Dalin (Eds.), Teachers and teaching in the developing world 8, 219–232. Garland. Headley, R. K. (1977). Cambodian-English Dictionary. Catholic University of American Press. Kambayashi, S. (2008). What promotes community participation in school management? A case study from Siem Reap Province. Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan. Kennedy, M. M. (2005). Inside teaching: How classroom life undermines reform. Harvard University Press. Lortie, D. C. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study (second edition). University Of Chicago Press. MoEYS. (n.d.). ETL training manual. Needham, S. (2003). “This Is Active Learning”: Theories of language, learning, and social relations in the transmission of Khmer Literacy. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 34(1), 27–49. NEP, & VSO. (2008). Teaching matters: A policy report on the motivation and morale of teachers in Cambodia. Phnom Penh: NGO Education Partnership and VSO. O’Sullivan, M. (2002). Reform implementation and the realities within which teachers work: A Namibian case study. Compare: A Journal of Comparative Education, 32(2), 219–237. https:// doi.org/10.1080/03057920220143192 O’Sullivan, M. (2004). The reconceptualisation of learner-centred approaches: A Namibian case study. International Journal of Educational Development, 24(6), 585–602. https://doi.org/10. 1016/S0738-0593(03)00018-X Putnam, R. T., & Borko, H. (2000). What do new views of knowledge and thinking have to say about research on teacher learning?. Educational Researcher, 29(1), 4–15. https://doi.org/10.3102/001 3189X029001004 Pearson, J. (2011). Creative capacity development: Learning to adapt in development practice. Kumarian Press. Reimer, J. K. (2012). Local negotiation of globalised educational discourses: The case of child friendly schools in rural Cambodia. University of British Columbia. Retrieved from https://cir cle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/43691 Shulman, L. S. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57(1), 1–22. Tobin, J. J., Hsueh, Y., & Karasawa, M. (2009). Preschool in three cultures revisited: China, Japan, and the United States. University of Chicago Press. Vavrus, F. (2009). The cultural politics of constructivist pedagogies: Teacher education reform in the United Republic of Tanzania. International Journal of Educational Development, 29(3), 303–311. Vavrus, F., & Bartlett, L. (2012). Comparative pedagogies and epistemological diversity: Social and materials contexts of teaching in Tanzania. Comparative Education Review, 56(4), 634–658. Vavrus, F., & Bartlett, L. (2013). Teaching in tension: International pedagogies, national policies, and teachers’ practices in Tanzania. Rotterdam; Boston: SensePublishers. Wheeler, C. W. (1998). Rebuilding technical capacity in UNICEF/Sida supported school clusters: A study of UNICEF’s capacity-building (education) project 01. UNICEF.

Chapter 7

Conclusion

Reforming teaching practices is a challenging mission. In this vertical case study, I aimed to understand the complexities inherent in a pedagogical reform by shedding light on the dynamics and tensions within and across three levels—international, national, and local—in the case of an ongoing pedagogical reform implemented in Cambodia. I was particularly interested in the social processes in which various actors take part in constructing this reform, i.e., ETL. It turned out that actors did not necessarily agree on what ETL means, and ETL covers a wide range of pedagogical approaches rather than signifies student-centered pedagogies. Moreover, it was constructed not only as a matter of renewing pedagogies, but also as a matter of political, social, and cultural change. In other words, actors employed political, social, and/or cultural rationales to make sense of ETL. In this concluding chapter, I want to take a step back and discuss what picture I can draw by combining small pieces of findings. In addition to presenting the bigger picture, I want to achieve three more goals in this chapter. First, by revisiting the literature on which this research draws, I want to discuss how my findings could speak back to the existing discourses. I will also discuss the theoretical contributions of this research to the field of comparative education and teacher education. Second, I want to reflect on and explore how the knowledge presented in this book was constructed through interactions with the participants in my study. This serves as a discussion about methodological issues, especially focusing on the possibilities and limitations of the vertical case study. The last goal of this chapter is to provide practical implications to the current and future pedagogical reforms in Cambodia.

7.1 Multiple Rationales of Cambodian Pedagogical Reform In previous chapters, I revealed that actors involved in Cambodian pedagogical reform made sense of it with political, social, and/or cultural rationales, and actively constructed and reconstructed its meaning through social interactions with others © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 T. Ogisu, Reforming Pedagogy in Cambodia, Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects 62, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6750-3_7

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and policy tools. I first want to revisit and summarize my findings in these chapters, then turn to discuss the bigger picture of this reform.

7.1.1 Revisiting Findings As I described at the beginning, my research interests emerged from a question about why it is so difficult to change teaching practices even when nicely written policies exist. There exists an extensive amount of research that reveals failures and difficulties that various low-income countries have experienced in the process of reforming pedagogies based on student-centered principles. Several scenarios could be drawn from this body of research. The most frequently seen and probably the most persuasive scenario is that local cultural and physical conditions are not necessarily compatible with student-centered pedagogies. This also applies in the literature on the pedagogical reforms in Cambodia (Bunlay et al., 2010; Wheeler, 1998). However, I clarified my stance in this book by claiming student-centered pedagogies have very different epistemological and thus ideological traditions from teacher-centered pedagogies, and therefore I do not try to offer technical implications regarding how best we can renew pedagogies in Cambodia. Rather, what I tried in this book is to examine Cambodian pedagogical reform as an essentially political project and how different actors have engaged with it. In Chap. 2, I tried to compare Cambodian ETL transversally and examined the phenomena of globalization of student-centered pedagogies by tracing their philosophical grounds as well as historical contexts in which they became legitimized at different levels. The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was the turning point for student-centered pedagogies, when unipolar political circumstances after the Cold War enabled the former Western bloc to endorse particular educational and pedagogical approaches more openly. Although it was also revealed that various actors emphasized different aspects of the pedagogies and employed different rationales, the pedagogies’ liberal and democratic connotations underpinned this “climate” (Phillips & Ochs, 2004, p. 776). Such a global climate inevitably affects the Cambodian ETL. It is, therefore, necessary to examine ETL in such a global ideological climate, not just as a renewal of teaching approaches in a country. Chapter 3 presents another transversal comparison of the current pedagogical reform and situates it in historical and political contexts of Cambodia. Since as early as the seventh century, different rulers of Cambodian society have tried to control pedagogy—in terms of both what knowledge is and how it should be taught— to legitimate and sustain their power. French protectorate, for example, devoted a significant effort to removing religious influence on education and pedagogy. Chet Chhem, under Sihanouk with growing nationalism, tried to decolonize teaching and learning and worked on the Khmenization of pedagogy. Even the Khmer Rouge, who dismantled a large part of the public education system, also skillfully utilized public pedagogy to transform society, nature, and people. After the civil war, studentcentered pedagogies were brought by many different donors echoing with the public

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desire for freedom and peace. It was also pointed out that the Cambodian government adopted student-centered pedagogies primarily for political and economic intentions, rather than for educational purposes. This transversal analysis points to the fact that there has been such a strong tie between power and pedagogy, but in the current student-centered reform such political nature is depoliticized as a technical solution to the issues such as low student retention and unsatisfactory academic performance. Issues surrounding teachers—from recruitment, preparation, working condition, to professional development—also have profound implications for ETL. Chapter 4 sheds light on the dynamic interplay particularly within and between international and national levels. I first examined the policy itself and then explored working groups and networks to unveil whose voices were reified and whose voices were silenced in the policy dialogue. At the international level, I found that there were a lot of development partners involved in the current pedagogical reform to a different extent. For many donors, they supported ETL only indirectly—by making their own projects consistent with the basic student-centered principles of ETL but not necessarily implementing ETL itself—because ETL was so strongly associated with UNICEF. In contrast, from the perspectives of advocates of ETL like UNICEF, ETL was understood as a pathway to transform Cambodian society into a peaceful and democratic one. I also pointed out that such desires could also be situated in the Child-Friendly School (CFS) movement in Southeast Asia and other places. In this sense, ETL is not only a pedagogical, but also a sociopolitical project that was shaped under the global and regional forces that promote student-centered principles. The norm of coordination within the donor community allowed many aid agencies to be involved in the current reform, without seriously negotiating and constructing shared understandings about new pedagogy. At the national level, because of the growing concerns about effectiveness, ministry officials including the minister of education are not convinced enough about student-centered pedagogies in terms of producing good learning outcomes. In response, the indigenous teaching approach called the Chet Chhem method, which was developed as a nationalistic teaching method and involves a lot of didactic teaching, got revived. What was intriguing here is that ministry officials did not see ETL and the Chet Chhem method as contradictory with each other, but they expanded the range of ETL to include any teaching approaches that are effective to produce good learning outcomes. These findings make it clear that the ministry was very active in constructing globalized pedagogies by making “politically correct” decisions, which resulted in inconsistencies and paradoxes within a policy. In Chap. 5, various meanings that different actors held about ETL policy were mapped out. Sociocultural theories, especially Wenger’s theory about the community of practice helped us understand how such various meanings were negotiated and reified into policy tools through the mechanisms such as Education Sector Working Group, Joint Technical Working Group, and EDUCAM. As exemplified in the checklist and Helping Slow Learners manual, the fundamental message of ETL, which is to replace the transmission with a transformation model of education, was narrowed down and even twisted in the process of reification. It turned out that although, in principle, ETL tries to introduce a transformation model of education that promotes

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critical thinking and individualized teaching, two policy tools took a transmission approach that does not value creativity and flexibility in teaching and learning. In schools and classrooms, these policy tools were used to pinpoint “problems” rather than to support actors to solve them. Local actors perceived these tools as sets of tasks that are sufficient for good teaching—not the minimal expectations— and thus material constraints and slow learners were perceived as barriers against implementing tasks and becoming effective teachers. School principals and DTMT members were sympathetic to teachers and held very basic expectations of them. Teachers’ perspectives toward slow learners further unveiled the fact that there existed a huge gap between policy intentions (to help slow learners to catch up with others) and teachers’ expectations (slow learners are not solely based on their academic performance and therefore they cannot be helped to some extent). In such minimalistic circumstances, it is quite difficult to expect dynamic changes to happen at the local level. Chapter 6 closely examines the act of teaching and learning in Cambodian primary schools. It reveals that local practices are governed by a cultural logic with which student-centered principles were directed to sustain and strengthen the transmission model of education rather than promoting the transformation model. Based on the interview and observation, I revealed that paccekteeh (techniques) is a logic that underlies Cambodian pedagogy. This logic is based on the idea that knowledge should be transmitted and absorbed as it is, and that paccekteeh are the methods that help make knowledge transmission easy and correct by minimizing the room for each individual to think by oneself. The logic of paccekteeh, however, hinders pedagogical changes from transmission model to transformation model. Also, from local actors’ perspective, teaching conditions—in terms of both low teacher salary and bad school management—are the major barriers to change practices. However, comparing teaching practices in different conditions further revealed the fact that improved conditions (such as with more materials and better school management) do not necessarily result in more creative and flexible teaching. Rather, just improving material conditions may strengthen and reproduce practices that appreciate rigidity and reproduction of knowledge. Similarly, because culture, i.e., the logic of paccekteeh, has been strongly linked to teaching conditions historically, intervening in this logic without changing material and monetary conditions for teaching may not produce substantial change.

7.1.2 Multiple Rationales Based on the summary of findings above, I could identify three rationales—political, social, and cultural—that actors used to construct the meaning of ETL. The shape and scope of ETL are defined based on these rationales. (A)

Political: ETL is a political project for every participating actor. Donors strategically take part in ETL having political agendas such as improving presence

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(B)

(C)

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in their community. For the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC), it is a political project to legitimize itself both domestically and externally. These politics have significant implications for the twists and paradoxes involved in the policy tools. Teachers and other local actors are also active in constructing the meanings of ETL to minimize its impacts and thus maintain their daily practices. Social: ETL is also a social project. For international and national actors, it is to promote the economic and social development of the country. Also, especially for the advocates of student-centered pedagogy in the early years, it was an embodiment of their desires to make Cambodian society democratic and peaceful. Making and doing ETL reform is also a social process in which various actors negotiate and reify its meaning within the complex web of social realities. In this sense, ETL has never been a linear process. Cultural: ETL is a cultural project that challenges traditional Cambodian epistemology, which values correctness and rigidity over flexibility and creativity. The logic of paccekteeh governs various aspects of local practice and in the course of the reform, it actually was sustained and strengthened rather than changed.

Each of the three are important rationales that define how ETL could be understood and practiced, and things get more complex because these rationales are entangled with each other. Figure 7.1 visualizes such complexity. In political–social intersection, there exist goals and objectives of public schooling that strongly reflect both political and social circumstances. They have strong implications for a pedagogical reform by defining what kind of education should be offered

Epistemological

Goals and objectives of schooling

PEDAGOGICAL CHANGE

Norms of teaching and learning Fig. 7.1 Multiple milieus of Cambodian pedagogical reform. Source Developed by author

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in order to prepare students for contributing to the maintenance and advancement of the society. In social–cultural milieu, there exist norms of teaching and learning that are primarily defined by the clear relationship between the teacher as a storyteller and students as the audience. New pedagogies introduced by ETL are filtered through the social–cultural logic that supports and sustains social structure and culture. I put epistemology—a theory of knowledge production and dissemination—in the intersection of cultural–political milieu because knowledge has been so strongly linked to power. Such epistemology governs what knowledge and skills should be taught and how, which sometimes hinder pedagogical changes. Together, these three logics strengthen with each other and define the shape and scope of ETL.

7.2 Revisiting Literature With the findings discussed above, this research can speak to the existing literature mainly on three points. First, this research contributes to developing our knowledge about globalization in education by further complicating the phenomena. Second, based on the social constructivist theory, my findings speak to the literature on the gap between education policy and practice. Related to the second point, my findings also build on what we know about the nature of changing pedagogies in a more general sense.

7.2.1 Globalization in Education This research is primarily informed by theories of globalization in education. In Chap. 1, I have discussed that this research is to investigate “conflict within” a single pedagogical reform (Anderson-Levitt, 2003) by unpacking “politics and economics” over student-centered pedagogies. With vertical, horizontal, and transversal comparisons, this research provided evidence that complicates the relationship between global and local. The dynamic interplay between different levels is evident in the case of ETL. But the relationship between donors and the ministry was not as simple as postcolonialists have imagined—as oppressive donors and an obedient recipient. This is because MoEYS did not passively adopt external support. Although the ChildFriendly School model was originally brought by UNICEF, social and political circumstances in the 1990s as well as experiences in nearby countries also prepared the Cambodian ministry to introduce it as a means to improve the quality of education. MoEYS was also very strategic in adjusting the model and its student-centered principles by making “politically correct” decisions, rather than simply adopting it. Donors also had to be strategic in selling their projects/program to MoEYS to improve their presence in the donor community. Under the norm of ownership and coordination, donors and the ministry had to be wise enough to achieve their political

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and economic interests—by not overtly opposing ETL while not seriously engaging with the policy itself. Moreover, especially at the international level, it turned out that student-centered pedagogies were not necessarily perceived as the best pedagogies per se, but uncertainties were shared by the informants from development partners. This kind of dynamics between and within different levels prepared a condition where even contradictory ideas could be subsumed under ETL. This research also reveals an interesting phenomenon that ambiguity of a policy enabled actors with various political/social/cultural backgrounds and interests to be involved without seriously agreeing on what it actually means. In the case of ETL, MoEYS has been using ETL as a symbol of effective teaching but actually twisted its political orientations from transformation to transmission. In this sense, ETL is a “multi-vocal symbol” on which multiple donors and the ministry can get involved while maintaining different understandings and different agendas (Rappleye, 2006, p. 233; Takayama, 2010, p. 67). Conflict within ETL can be understood as a consequence of a lack of committed negotiations among multiple actors. My findings suggest the resilience of local practices to the global forces even though there was no overt contestation or denial by the local actors. Although the impact of the globalized student-centered pedagogies was evident in classrooms (because I observed many teachers employed groupwork and games), local practices were primarily governed by a cultural logic that was very local and traditional. Local actors did not oppose or complain about ETL. Rather, they actually worked hard to complete all the tasks listed in the checklist. But still, local actors did not simply accept globalized pedagogies. They constructed and reconstructed them through interacting with others and policy tools in ways that minimize ETL’s actual impacts on their daily business.

7.2.2 Gaps Between Policy and Practice As I repeatedly mentioned throughout the book, this research draws on the social constructivist theory. Informed by this theory, I conceptualized Cambodian pedagogical reform as a complex social practice, not a normative text, in which various actors construct and reconstruct meanings of teaching and learning. I also conceptualized actors involved in the reform—from donors to local teachers—are all active agents who contribute to constructing ETL through negotiating and reifying the meaning. Given that negotiation and reification take place in a socially situated manner, this perspective posed an important question to the basic assumption of an education policy: Is it really possible to implement an education policy as it is written? Researchers in this tradition have focused on the situated nature of policy appropriation and have contended that a written policy cannot be conveyed as it is because personal/collective experiences and repertoire work as a filter (Braun et al., 2011; Coburn, 2001; Spillane et al., 2002).

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My findings suggest that this line of research makes an incorrect assumption—a written policy always has its messages straightforward—and underestimates active roles that all the actors, not only teachers, play in constructing and reconstructing the meaning of a policy. In the case of ETL, policy messages are not only filtered down, but ETL subsumes many meanings that are even contradictory to its original goals. For example, in addition to the student-centered principles advocated in the written policy, ministry officials stretched the meaning of ETL to any teaching approach that produces better learning outcomes in the context of growing consideration about effectiveness in education. Local actors also made a twist to the checklist by considering it as a set of techniques that suffice as effective teaching instead of minimum requirements. These findings suggest that actors play more active roles than just taking up certain meanings from a written policy. They engage in constructing the meaning of a policy by adding emerging issues in the scope and reconstructing the policy by selecting, twisting, or changing key messages as well as by reinterpreting and attaching new meanings. This research also highlights the significant roles that tools play in a policy. As Wenger (1998) pointed out, cognitive tools do not just assist people to do the activity, but they define what meanings can be made about the activity itself. In the case of Cambodia, Courtney (2008) examined the observation checklist and contended that it hinders changes in practice due to its bad design. My findings develop this point further and suggest that policy tools would let actors construct a policy in a way that is quite opposite to the original intentions of a written policy. Policy tools used in ETL, such as the checklist and manual, were developed to promote the transformation model of education. But their content was based on a transmission approach and thus conveyed very contradictory ideas. Mixed with minimalistic circumstances at the local level, the design of these tools also led local actors to use them to strengthen rigidity and correctness (transmission) rather than to promote flexible and creative practices (transformation). Therefore, rather than just hindering changes, a policy tool could promote adverse meaning especially when its design and content are not well developed. It is, therefore, not at all surprising that a gap emerges between the written ETL policy and practice.

7.2.3 Pedagogical Changes In relation to the second point, my findings also speak to the existing literature about pedagogical changes. Many researchers have revealed the difficulties in changing local teaching practices (Braun et al., 2011; Cohen, 1990; Cuban, 1998) and identified a range of obstacles to pedagogical changes (American Institutes for Research, 2006; Brodie et al., 2002; Guthrie, 1990; O’Sullivan, 2002). These obstacles include: (a) teachers’ lack of capacities to use new pedagogies appropriately; (b) mismatch with local cultural and physical conditions; and (c) lack of incentives to encourage teachers to use new pedagogies. So far, we know a lot about difficulties and barriers, but not

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much about the nature of pedagogical changes. One of the objectives of this research was therefore to unveil the nature of pedagogical changes. Comparative education researchers have revealed that pedagogy is contingent on local culture (Alexander, 2001a, b; Tobin et al., 1989, 2009) and local physical contexts in which teachers work, especially in low-income countries where only limited materials are available (Brodie et al., 2002; O’Sullivan, 2002; Vavrus & Bartlett, 2012, 2013). My findings reaffirmed the contingency of pedagogy to local culture, but further suggested that culture is not the only factor that is resilient and thus hinders pedagogical changes. Rather, a pedagogical change is multifaceted by nature. ETL is not just a pedagogical project; political, social, and cultural milieus define the scope and shape of this reform. Throughout Cambodian history, pedagogy has strongly been linked to political circumstances, socially appropriate relationships, and cultural norms and values. Also, these milieus are closely entangled with each other and they work as a mechanism through which student-centered principles are changed and twisted to be incorporated into local practices. This suggests that we need to re-conceptualize a pedagogical change not as a technical process but as a political, social, and cultural enterprise that requires revisiting fundamental assumptions in education, ranging from the theory of knowledge, the socially appropriate relationship between teacher and students, and more fundamentally to the purposes of education. My findings also reaffirmed the contingency of pedagogy to working conditions of teachers in the research sites, where the range of teaching approaches possibly taken by the teachers was limited due to the scarce material conditions and low teacher salaries. But this research also provided evidence that suggests improved material conditions by itself does not necessarily foster pedagogical changes. Rigidity and correctness were sustained and strengthened in some of the classrooms where more resources were available, whereas difficult conditions necessitated flexible and creative practices in others. It suggests that local material conditions and a political– social–cultural logic that governs local practices are very closely intertwined and that we need to address both the logic and conditions at the same time, if we wish to foster substantial changes in teaching and learning.

7.3 Revisiting Methodology I now turn to discuss and reflect on methodological aspects of this research.

7.3.1 Vertical Case Study As I explained in Chap. 1, this research employed a vertical case study approach to explore the policy–practice gap in ETL. I designed this research based on three levels—international, national, and local—and compared within and across these

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levels, together with transversal comparisons in which I situate ETL in global–local as well as historical axes. One of the strengths of the vertical case study I found in this research is its power to capture both global convergence and local divergence simultaneously. First, transversal comparison enabled me to analyze the political nature of ETL by situating it firstly in a global climate in which student-centered pedagogies are globalized (Chap. 2), as well as in Cambodian history that proves an indivisible tie between power and pedagogy, of which ETL is also the case (Chap. 3). These two types of transversal comparisons particularly speak about the global convergence, in which Cambodian student-centered reform was almost inevitable because of the global and national circumstances after the Cold War. ETL did not take place by chance. Second, the mixture of vertical and horizontal comparisons helped me investigate the whole processes of policy-making and implementation that contain full of twists and turns. This is particularly helpful when we conceptualize policy as practice, as this research did. In this research, vertical comparison provided me with the insights on how actors from different levels participated in constructing the meaning of ETL, on the one hand (Chaps. 4 and 5). Horizontal comparison, on the other hand, helped me shed light on individual actors who participated in ETL and understand the multiple meanings expressed within and across levels, which represented the ambiguity of ETL (Chaps. 4, 5, and 6). Also, as Vavrus and Bartlett (2009) contended, a vertical case study opens up a possibility for further comparisons “through the juxtaposition of cases” (p. 14). Although the juxtaposition of cases is not in the scope of this research, employing vertical case study allowed me to compare my findings with existing studies, such as a chapter written by the paradox involved in “participation”, another globalized norm in education, in Tanzania (Tayler, 2009), which become relevant to this research only when considered from the perspective of a vertical case study. These covert comparisons helped me deepen my understanding of the processes in which local actors actively construct and reconstruct the meaning of a policy. It also suggests that this research has the potential to be the basis for future comparisons with different cases, which may contribute to understand better the nature of pedagogical reform in low-income countries. Another more practical strength is its clear structure. Because levels are the basic unit of comparison in the vertical case study, I could manage data based on levels. This helped me deal with a large amount of qualitative data throughout the process of collecting, organizing, and analyzing it. I prepared a common interview protocol that I could address to all informants, and this helped me explore how actors make sense of ETL similarly or differently across levels. Also, before analyzing data, I organized all the data based on levels. Levels could be used as an important descriptor of each interview and observation data. In the analysis, I first applied codes on the data and started with a horizontal comparison within each level, and then moved on to vertical comparison across levels. Such a clear structure of vertical case study is particularly helpful when we want to analyze the processes of education policy in an organized manner.

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This strength can also be a challenge, however. Because the vertical case study is clearly structured, it was quite a challenge to go beyond it in writing. In fact, I first planned to structure this book with international–national–local, but I decided not because I wanted to discuss cross-cutting themes that emerged from the data rather than using predefined levels. I am not quite confident about to what extent I succeeded to organize chapters effectively, but this is where I struggled most in the writing process. As I mentioned in Chap. 1, levels were not clearly divided in reality, which is another challenge of this approach. Many actors belonged to different levels simultaneously, such as an international official from a donor agency with rich experiences as a project manager in the local schools. I also needed to make decisions about whether I should assign Cambodian participants who work in donor agencies to the international or national level. I decided to assign these participants to an international level based on their primary affiliations. But if I decided differently, the results of this research might be different. Although not many researchers have pointed this out, defining levels require careful methodological considerations, particularly in this globalized world.

7.3.2 Positionality Social constructivism informs how I understand my role as the author of this research. The knowledge produced in this study cannot be separated from myself, as a researcher, and the social interactions I had in the research sites. Because I have been educated both in Japanese and US universities, being exposed to two interrelated but different academic cultures shaped my unique positionality as a comparative education researcher. For example, how I relate to teachers is strongly influenced by Japanese culture in which, generally, teachers are more socially respected than in the US. My undergraduate training was in a Japanese university where educational researchers have traditionally identified themselves as learners who accompany teachers, not advisors, helpers, or evaluators. Studying in one of the leading teacher education programs in the US for my doctorate helped me become aware of this unique stance and the importance of understanding academic cultures that may produce and value different kinds of knowledge. These experiences helped me acquire a perspective that enables me to understand educational phenomena in comparison to both Japan and the US, as well as helped me realize the contingency of pedagogy to local cultural contexts. Therefore, the knowledge generated in this study is unique to me and not reproducible by others. My experience in Cambodia also shapes how I interpreted and represented the stories I heard. There were only a few things in the field that went as I had planned in the research proposal. It was various people I met in the field who guided me, by connecting me to unexpected but important informants and sharing stories that were not originally within the scope but caught my interest. Sometimes I got so irritated by the ways teachers treated students, but these phenomena frequently gave

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breakthroughs in the fieldwork and data analysis. People who were not included in this research, such as the landlord of my apartment in Prey Veng province or a young lady who was my neighbor and happened to be a student–teacher, also played an important role to help me understand how ordinary Cambodians think similarly or differently about education from those inside the education system. I always felt that this research itself was constructed through the interactions I had in the field with various people.

7.4 Moving Forward As I made it clear from the beginning, I am not a proponent of student-centered pedagogies, particularly in the Cambodian context. This is mostly because of the strong tie between power and pedagogy. I do not think it is possible, nor a good idea, to replace the logic of paccekteeh under the current political system where a oneparty rule has lasted for more than 30 years. The logic of paccekteeh matches with and is proved quite effective in legitimating the current political structure. Studentcentered pedagogies have strong liberal democratic ideologies, and thus a pedagogy backed by these ideologies inevitably contradicts Hun Sen’s rule. If critical and creative thinking cannot be a “politically correct” outcome of education, studentcentered pedagogies should not be an option.1 In this sense, I am pessimistic about the Cambodian student-centered reform in the current circumstance. Even when the political system changes, I still do not have enough evidence to support the superiorities of student-centered pedagogies over the logic of paccekteeh. There is no rigorous evidence that shows transmission models of education, in which the logic of paccekteeh has been very effective, are worse or fall behind transformation models of education, as Nguyen et al. (2009) argued. Rather, international assessments like TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) and PISA have repeatedly proved countries known with transmission models of education—such as those in East Asia—not just rank higher, but also produce fewer learning disparities, than those with transformation orientations. If this is the case, there is no reason for Cambodian education to rush to replace its transmission model with a “modern” transformation model of education.

7.4.1 Implications for Future Pedagogical Reforms Even though I argue against promoting student-centered reform in Cambodia, I still can draw some practical implications for future pedagogical reforms in Cambodia 1

Several cases have been reported on how ideas, such as democracy, political participation, and citizenship, have been depoliticized to sustain Hun Sen administration (Hagai & Ogisu, 2019; Noren-Nilsson, 2018).

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and other contexts. First, we must reconceptualize the roles of actors—especially teachers—in the process of policy-making and implementation. As Chae-Young and Rouse (2011) pointed out, Cambodian teachers have been referred to as instruments and obstacles for quality education and their voices have been left unheard in the policy-making process. This research further reaffirmed that internationaland national-level actors emphasized teachers’ limited capacity as the major issue in quality of teaching and learning, and moreover, as the major barrier to pedagogical reform. Such perception promoted the idea that teachers need teacher-proof, scripted tasks, and techniques with which they can transmit subject contents to their students like a conveyer belt. However, as this research revealed, teachers are very active and wise enough to enact a policy in ways that minimize its impacts on their daily teaching practices. It is important, therefore, to acknowledge teachers as active agents in a reform who also engage in constructing the meaning of a pedagogy within political, social, and cultural circumstances in which they work. Re-conceptualizing teachers as active agents of a pedagogical reform, not as implementers or as obstacles, helps us be aware of the importance of seriously listening to the voices of teachers. Related to the first point, this research implies the necessity of more direct and committed interaction among actors. Although actors participated in different communities of practice where they negotiated the meanings of student-centered pedagogies, it turned out that there were only superficial interactions. Opportunity for the direct interaction between levels—particularly between international actors and local actors—was limited to very few occasions. Such limited interaction within and between levels made it more difficult for the actors to construct similar—albeit not the same—understanding about new pedagogy. It is particularly important to involve teachers from the beginning of developing a policy, which has often been dominated by international and national actors. Third, in order to bring substantial changes in local practices, we should rethink the fundamental assumptions about education. Pedagogical changes cannot be achieved by just intervening in teaching and learning inside classrooms, because they are so strongly entangled with political, social, and cultural circumstances outside the walls of the classroom. In the case of ETL, although there are interventions to improve material conditions inside classrooms and the capacity of teachers, no intervention has focused on surrounding conditions that necessitate the political–social–cultural logic that governs their practices, nor on helping teachers reflect about the existence of the logic. Such reflection, of course, must be done by all stakeholders— donors, ministry officials, politicians, teachers, parents, students, as well as civil society—who consists of Cambodian education. The lack of such serious reflection resulted in structurally strengthening “traditional” teaching practices rather than enhancing pedagogical changes. Therefore, if we seriously want to see substantial changes in local practices, it is necessary to address both specific issues of teaching and learning and broader political, social, and cultural assumptions about education simultaneously.

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7.4.2 What Different Actors Can Do to Prepare Enabling Conditions To conclude this book, I want to discuss what each group of actors can do to prepare conditions for pedagogical changes. These implications are essentially intended for actors involved in Cambodian pedagogical reforms, but they may apply to contexts other than Cambodia.

7.4.2.1

Researchers

One of the most important academic implications of this research is for researchers to accumulate knowledge about the processes of globalization of pedagogies. This body of knowledge can include critical examinations of the ideological nature of globalized pedagogies, political-economy of pedagogical policy-making, contextualized and nuanced understanding about the material contexts within which teaching and learning take place, ethnographic explorations of the worldviews that govern education system as a whole, the phenomenology of change brought by new pedagogies, and most importantly, analyses of a range of voices and perspectives held by different stakeholders—particularly teachers, I would say. Without such knowledge, it is impossible to interrupt an uncritical adherence to globalized reforms and help policy-makers make evidence-based decisions.

7.4.2.2

International Actors

Donors also have tremendous impacts and thus huge responsibilities in preparing enabling conditions for future pedagogical reforms. They first and foremost need to engage with OECD DAC’s five principles of aid effectiveness more seriously, particularly on the principle of coordination. It is important to admit that their job is essentially political, and that politics is not a bad thing, and then all donors and international actors must establish communities of practice where all the participating actors can hold serious political discussions, not just a technical information sharing.2 These communities must also be open to actors from national and local levels. In the course of such discussions, their definitions of “success” and “failure” must also be re-examined, because educational development project does not stop at the central

2

There seem to be serious dialogues among donors on other topics. Auld et al. (2019), for example, revealed that ESWG, UNESCO and UNICEF in particular, expressed strong objection against the World Bank and OECD, who insisted Cambodia’s participation in PISA-D. UNESCO took a potion that supports country-driven assessments, whereas for UNICEF, “Cambodia was better served by regional assessments and should deepen its commitment to the Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metric (SEA-PLM)”, in which UNICEF took a leading position (Auld et al., 2019, p. 206). ESWG must be a platform where serious political discussions like above are facilitated.

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ministry but does have visible and invisible consequences for teachers, who have always been blamed as an obstacle to the “success” of the projects.

7.4.2.3

National Actors

For national policy-makers, opening policy-making processes to the broader stakeholders is quite important. Hearing diverse voices from media, parents, teachers, students, as well as civil society is ideal. At least involving teachers in policymaking processes is the major premise for any pedagogical reforms. But in order to do so, nurturing professionalism among teachers themselves is inevitable. MoEYS has already started its efforts by enforcing a comprehensive Teacher Policy in 2013, and a wide range of professionalization measures have been taken in the areas of recruitment, preparation, working conditions, and professional development. But such top-down professionalization is not enough. Teachers must recognize themselves as professionals and develop professionalism in their own practices, otherwise they will never be able to speak up. In this sense, interventions for nurturing teacher professional identity during preparation are quite important. These interventions include, for example, providing preservice teachers with opportunities to examine their cultural myths about teaching (Britzman, 1991; Sumara & Luce-Kapler, 1996) and to observe, experiment with, and evaluate provisional selves to craft a new professional identity (Ronfeldt & Grossman, 2008). It is equally essential to ensure and expand teachers’ professional autonomy over lesson planning and professional learning, even under the national curriculum. To nurture teacher professionalism, teachers must belong to communities of practice that focus on professional learning. These may be similar to learning communities (Gee & Whaley, 2016; Mee & Oyao, 2013; Saito & Tsukui, 2008) and professional learning communities (Grossman et al., 2001; Lieberman, 2009; Thomas et al., 1998), which help teachers reflect about their practices and continue to learn and grow throughout their careers. It is also important for national policy actors to become more knowledgeable about existing research and analytic methods. There exists a wide range of information available on Cambodian education, but most of the information is produced by donors, not by the ministry herself. Particularly data on teaching and learning is quite limited, which makes it almost impossible to make evidence-based decisions about pedagogy. For this issue, the Education Research Council (ERC) under the minister of education and its biannual publication Cambodia Education Review must take a leading role in producing, accumulating, and disseminating new data and knowledge on teaching and learning, as well as in evaluating the effectiveness of different policy interventions. ERC is also expected to be a center for capacity building among ministry officials.

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Civil Society

Although this research did not explore much about the roles of civil society in Cambodian pedagogical reform, some civil society organizations became very powerful policy actors in recent years. This is confirmed by Edwards and Brehm (2016), who identified civil society as the newest member at the policy-making in Cambodian education. They also contended that civil society has generated new geometry of power among education policy actors. In the case of ETL, it was evident that both international and local NGOs played important roles to try out their versions of student-centered pedagogies in post-conflict Cambodia. As their strengths lie in strong local knowledge and a rich network with actors from different levels, it is important for civil society organizations to strengthen horizontal ties among them, keep their voices heard by international and national actors, and lead public discussions on the future of education. Teacher unions, in particular, must play more significant and leading roles.

7.4.2.5

Teachers

Finally, for teachers, they must also stop pretending to be an obedient, weak, inferior, and miserable public worker in society. I met many teachers who worked very hard to help already disadvantaged students learn as much in unbelievably difficult conditions, and I saw true professionalism in them. There is no sense, therefore, to compare them with those privileged with safe and comfortable teaching conditions. What they need to do is to stop lamenting the lack of supports but to start discussing their difficulties and challenges with colleagues more openly and exploring new possibilities, so that they could build their own knowledge base and professional language (Lortie, 1975). It is where teachers can start recognizing their work as a profession and themselves as professionals, and finally providing professional inputs to policy-makers. They must first recognize themselves as agents of change and step up to take professional responsibilities.

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