カンボジアの「子ども中心」の教授法改革に対する教師の反応

―改革が内包する矛盾と教師の主体性に注目して―

抄録

  This paper clarifies complexities involved in the process of reforming teaching practices drawing on Cambodian instructional reform. Cambodia has worked on a series of instructional reforms since the 1990s, but it has been documented that traditional “chalk-and-talk” types of teaching practices are still prevalent at the classroom level. My interest in this issue evolved from a simple question: Why is there such a persistent gap between policy and practice?

  Research into student-centered reforms in the context of developing countries provides various explanations for the persistence of traditional practices, such as teachers’ misunderstanding or inability to understand policy, limited educational resources, and local cultures that are not easily reconciled with Western-originating pedagogies, for example. 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 rather are actively engaged in applying, interpreting, and sometimes contesting the policy. They add that we cannot assume that an instructional policy can and must be implemented and disseminated “as is”.

  In this paper, therefore, drawing on an ongoing instructional reform called Effective Teaching and Learning (ETL), I aim to understand how teachers interpret and implement national ETL policy and student-centered pedagogies. By examining official ETL documents, I found that this reform tries to bring fundamental changes in (1) how we understand teaching and learning and (2) the roles of teachers. ETL conceptualizes teaching and learning as an active, dynamic, and uncertain process rather than as a process in which teachers transmit knowledge directly into students’ heads. It also emphasizes creative and critical thinking as a result of such teaching and learning. Related to this new idea of teaching and learning, teachers are expected to play more active roles in current education reforms and to become life-long learners who learn and develop throughout their career. This shift can be understood as an effort to re-characterize the teaching profession from one comprising “experts” holding specialized knowledge and skills to one where “professionals” continue to learn and maintain high moral standards.

  However, ETL involves contradictions in itself. First, based on the idea of teachers as professionals, ETL defines monthly teacher meetings as forums where participants learn in a bottom-up and cooperative manner. However, there is very limited room for teachers to design their own professional learning because a top-down teacher management system is maintained. Another contradiction lies between student-centered pedagogies and how they are reified as scripted tasks. In ETL documents, student-centered pedagogies are represented as 26 tasks, which are applicable regardless of subject area and grade level. As these tasks are quite simple and scripted, teachers can implement these tasks without really considering students’ learning needs or their learning styles. In short, this reform tries to make teaching and learning more bottom-up and relevant to the needs of learners through highly top-down implementation processes. Given these contradictions and conflicts within reform, it is no wonder teachers interpret and practice this reform differently from its original intentions.

  By interviewing local stakeholders and observing monthly teacher meetings in Kratie province, it became clear that teachers reacted to the contradictions and made sense of ETL in ways that do not challenge their familiar practices. More specifically, I could categorize teachers’ responses into three patterns. The first pattern I could observe is that teachers saw ETL as techniques that are independent from student-centered philosophy. Teachers pointed (View PDF for the rest of the abstract)