The merit of the new curriculum and teaching styles being introduced into Teacher Education in Myanmar

by By Myint Ko Ko (MMEDC)

The Myanmar Education System has changed because the 25 education Colleges will be upgraded with four-year education degree colleges, and training courses for pre-service teachers. Our education curriculum is also new and both the approach to teaching learning has been modernized. With the help of foreign experts and local CCT members with the help of STEM Project and UNESCO. It started on 26 November 2019 and it is based on the new curriculum for the four-year degree colleges. It is very important for our education sector because it improves the teaching skills of teachers at the Primary and Middle school levels.
The National Education Strategic Plan (2016-21) aims at improving teaching quality by developing teachers’ aptitudes. The plan is to increase teacher qualification before entering the workplace. The Ministry of Education will arrange the curriculum and any issues regarding human resources. The new curriculum promotes gender equality, soft skills, social skills, life skills and inclusive education for all ethnic groups in Myanmar. Education Degree colleges have been opened in all the States and Regions in our country allowing everyone to learn. One result of the new curriculum seeks to introduce the option of specialization tracks at the Primary and Middle school level. There will be
-to better prepare students and teachers to manage classes of any size and students with different needs.
-an increased amount of supervised practical classroom experiences that student teachers will have will allow them to develop these skills.
For example, after attending the course, they will get a BA or BSc (Education) degree and they will be Primary and Middle school teachers with high qualifications. Average Myanmar class sizes are huge and students will learn how to reduce class size and manage the classroom well. All student teachers will be experts in the local curriculum. They are very professional about their co-curriculum subjects such as PE, Local Curriculum (Home economics, Agriculture), Fine Arts, Morals & Civics and Life skills which are connected with the Primary and Middle School curriculum in The Basic Education Sector. All are so sophisticated and modern for fostering teaching and learning strategies. Why? Our products will be the best pioneer teachers for future generations.
We never forget to teach the Practicum and Reflective Practice and Essential Skills are so master keys in our Degree College Curriculum. They are essential needs for student teachers who know how to teach what to teach on the ground level and how to reflect their teaching-learning style.
The second point is that teacher educators in our degree colleges are trained by foreign teacher trainers on STEM projects with funding through UNESCO. STEM addresses four fundamentally important aspects of pre-service teacher education. The best outcomes are formulating a policy framework for pre-service teacher education and providing technical advice on developing teacher policies and a teacher competency standard framework (TCSF).
-improving the system and operations of Education Colleges (EDC) by restructuring and developing the curriculum and building networks amongst them for knowledge and experience sharing.
-developing institutional and human resource management capacities of EDC and
-mainstreaming inclusion and equality issues in teacher education.
For example, the teacher can gain communication skills and the knowledge of how to draw up lesson designs with inclusion ideas incorporated. The traditional teaching methods have been replaced the new strategies and teaching styles. The other positive change is that of the assessment method. Our course is based on assessment of learning, assessment for learning and assessment as learning. Construction of how to assess our students is needed. For example (formative or summative assessments are given.). In this course, learning through assessment is so efficient for the four-year degree. The student teachers are submitted by term papers and mini papers. Projects, home assignments, creating one-act plays, poster creation, portfolios and other latest assessments for their semester of courses respectively.
Secondly, in my opinion, the curriculums are all based heavily on methodology. They have to learn ICT skills to cater for lesson design with technology. For third-year students, they have to learn Chemistry, Physics and Biology for Science Students. For Arts students, they must learn History, Geography and Economics. The subjects are linked with teaching methodology.
The impact is that the student teachers are already known for creating blended learning and flipped classrooms. So, our MOE supports teaching materials and resources such as books, solar systems etc. We must change to a flipped classroom, which is an instructional strategy and a type of blended learning focused on ensuring students’ engagement and active learning. It is the best result for using flipped classrooms. The students are going to learn new teaching technology as digital learning systems and other ways of learning on the internet, mass media and so on.
In the last part, our Department of Teacher Education plans to run drawing PPTT courses (Pre-service Primary Teacher Training Course) two times a year. It is the way of solving the teacher shortage at the Primary level and they do not need to learn Academic content but they learn to focus on pedagogy only because they have only degree holders from Arts and Science University. Our student teachers should have to learn Academic skills because they should be experts in both Academic knowledge and Methodology. In the flipped classroom, the focus is on depth-teaching methods, skill development activities and developing problem-solving skills. Moreover, the student teacher’s collaboration in the flipped classroom becomes more personalized and this enables the students to show interest and effectively involve themselves in learning.

References
Year1 semester1 Teacher Educators Training Manual
Year1 semester2 Teacher Educators Training Manual
National Assessment Policy for Basic Education (NAP)