What challenges does one face when one crosses cultures in the field of education? How difficult is it to transfer knowledge in a setup which is completely different from what you are used to?
Edchat,. Wider Horizons - Four Go To Kenya. 2013. Web. 5 Oct. 2015.
In response to the video shown above as a part of my ongoing PGCEi course from the University of Nottingham I am responding to the questions stated above.
The video shown here is very relevant in the context of my own experiences which have actually undergone a radical change since the time I became educated till the present scenario. I have been a part of such didactic classroom setups in India myself as a student. Teacher was the centre of attaraction and copying and rote learning were the only mechanisms to score good marks, which was the method of assessment.
After my higher education, I taught as a teacher for seven years in a state board school with a static curriculum with little scope of application of information, but quite similar to what I had gained my education from. There was no chance of social interaction , let alone learning from them and neither were such theories valued in the school culture . I was asked to refrain from any kind of collaboration and learning from any of the international schools in the city as the school authorities felt that such connections would not benefit my teaching.
You are a good teacher if you can yourself memorize information and pass the same skills to students to help them achieve good marks. As shown in the video the concepts of teaching by the teachers from England were as allien to me as they were to the African teachers in the video.
Teaching the international curriculum for the last 8 years of my career has seen a radical paradigm shift to my teaching pedagogy. I can relate more to the English teachers in the video who were actually looking for signs of learning in the classrooms. The method used by the Kenyan teachers would leave the children with very limited scope of engagement with the key concepts of the content , as mentioned by the English teacher that the process of investigation was important rather that the result.
The teachers found it difficult to settle down in an atmosphere where students failed to comprehend the instructions given to them and hence generate suitable responses. In the context of China where I teach now , I am facing similar challenges and even to a larger extent. The students have very low language levels of English and hence fail to comprehend instructions. Thus it is difficult to generate the active and engaged learning atmosphere that one is looking for.The brain of the Chinese students is tuned to recieve knowledge imparted in a repititive manner, which makes them good scorers in Mathematics. However they fail to apply the same skills when it comes to critical analysis of content to a particular context as mentioned in the banking system of education by Friere (p.53).
However there exists a motivation for self achievement which needs to be tapped in for generating active involvement and engagement with classroom teaching and learning.
Freire, P. (1996). Banking v Problem solving methods of education. Pedagogy of the oppressed, pp.52-57.
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