Monastic schools take to ‘child-centred’ teaching

By Ye Linn Htut
Auguet 1 - 7, 2011

 

Students at Thone Htet Kyaung monastic school in Bahan township. Pic: Seng Mai

ATTEMPTS to replace a culture of rote learning with a child-centred style of teaching have been more successful in monastic than state schools because of their more flexible approach, participants in a workshop heard last month.

Organised by a local non-government organisation, the workshop, held from July 11 to 17 in Yangon, Mandalay and Sagaing regions, was attended by more than 20 people, including journalists, teachers from monastic schools and education experts.

Participants heard that enrolments at monastic schools have grown significantly over the past two decades and the sector is playing an important role in reducing illiteracy.

Many monastic schools are also employing new teaching approaches, particularly the child-centred approach (CCA) to learning, where students are encouraged to more actively participate in lessons, with little emphasis placed on rote memorisation.

International NGOs started introducing CCA through teacher training colleges about 10 years ago, and over the past five years local NGOs have been particularly active in promoting it in monastic schools.

“Previously, we asked students to learn a piece of writing using the traditional way and they did not want to come to school unless they could learn it,” said U Win Ko, a teacher at a free monastic school in Sagaing Region that was trained in CCA in 2009.

“Now when we give them homework we ask students to write what they think the answer is, rather than make them give an answer they’ve learned by heart through rote learning. They are encouraged to question each other and they have become happier to be in the classroom,” he said.

Daw Ei Mon, a teacher from another monastic school based in Sagaing, said: “When CCA was introduced, the students who were top of the class under the rote learning system were no longer at the top. The students who previously didn’t show interest in their schoolwork started taking part and achieved better results. As a result of CCA we also saw improvement among [ethnic minorities] such as Pa-O, Palaung, Wa and Shan, who are generally weaker than Myanmar students.”

The approach contrasts with that traditionally employed in state schools, where the focus is on performance rather than a student’s level of understanding. Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and United Nations Children’s Fund have been working to introduce CCA to state schools in Myanmar for about 10 years, with mixed results.

CCA is recognised in the government’s education policy and JICA is aiming to introduce the technique to 90pc of state primary schools by 2015. Officially it is being used in schools in 67 townships, although there appears to have been few evaluations conducted as to how effectively state school teachers are employing what they learn in CCA training programs.

One former teacher from the University of Education who now works for a local NGO said many state-school teachers either did not understand CCA or were reluctant to introduce it into their classrooms.
“I’ve found that it is often difficult to change the attitudes of the teachers [in the state schools]. They can be inflexible and unwilling to try new approaches,” he said.

“Some teachers do not understand the nature of CCA. One teacher said he didn’t understand it even after attending two training courses.”

He said the large class sizes in state schools – usually about 60 students per teacher – also hindered CCA uptake. “Teachers also have to request permissions from more senior officials to change their teaching methods. In monastic schools, the system is more flexible; it only depends on the head monk. Teachers don’t need to ask permission from anyone else to change their teaching style so it’s easier to implement CCA.”
Not all monastic schools are employing CCA, however, and sometimes attempts to change the teaching style are met with resistance from the monastic community, research conducted by Dr Marie Lall from the University of London has shown. Monastic school teachers who have received training in CCA often face logistical problems to employing what they have learned, such as high student-teacher ratios and a lack of space, teaching aids and time.

In many cases this is due to funding. Most monastic schools rely on contributions and many struggle to pay salaries to teachers and purchase learning materials. Monastic schools usually have two or three teachers appointed and paid for by the government, while the other positions are filled by locals who usually earn about K30,000 a month, which leads to large class sizes.

“We have no funds so we are going to ask students to contribute K1000 per month per head for the coming year,” said U San Htoo, a teacher at Pan Pwint Tahtaung monastic school in Taikkyi township, Yangon Region.

Despite their lack of funding, monastic schools continue to play an important role in providing education, particularly in rural communities.

Monastic education has its origins in the Bagan era and for centuries played a major role in nurturing children through the teaching of Buddhist literature. After the colonial occupation, the authorities permitted monastic education because they saw it as imparting moral values in students.

Following a lull during the socialist era, the government relaxed restrictions on the opening of new monastic schools in the early 1990s and the number has grown significantly since.

More than 200,000 students now attend some 2500 schools, of which about 1500 are formally registered to teach the state curriculum.

U Myo Tint, a retired deputy rector of the Institute of Education, which is responsible for training state-school teachers, said monastic schools reached hundreds of thousands of students who could not access the state system for geographic or financial reasons. The sector will be crucial in meeting Ministry of Education targets of 95pc enrolment of five-year-olds and 90pc primary school completion by 2015, he said. In 2009, enrolments of five-year-olds stood at 84.1pc.

“According to UNICEF, in 2006-2007 the drop-out rate for primary school students was 50 percent because of economic circumstances. The number of children who could not afford schooling nationally was between one and two million,” he said. “Significantly, 16pc of school age children now attend monastic schools, which are playing an important role in eradicating illiteracy.”