Teacher Education - Mutual Experience

Quality in education, organisational development and action research with a special focus on teacher-student roles, culture and education, classroom research and teacher education are the hallmarks of the project. In the autumn of 2005, PTTC initiated a process of organisational development. The method used is called Appreciative Inquiry, which involves study and research into elements that create positive energy within an organisation or a social system. This work led to the creation of five work groups that are continually working towards achieving a set of ambitious goals that will raise the school to previously unattainable levels. Much of the teaching and supervision undertaken by the Norwegian participants has been directly linked to these objectives. The five work groups focus on:

• 

  Foto: Siren Vegusdal

  Knowledge, skills and attitudes
• Communication
• Providing our students with…
• Collaboration with national and international NGOs
• Positive environment

The project has received solid support from the Norwegian-Cambodian Friendship Association, Save the Children, The Archive Association as well as a network of schools which have established bonds of friendship with schools in Siem Reap.

Our objectives acknowledge the fact that internationalisation is not something that takes place “out there”, but “here at home” as well. With this in mind, we have involved several groups, such as the Norwegian-Cambodian community in Kristiansand and Vennesla as important resource groups with respect to our involvement in teacher training in Cambodia. Similarly, our international involvement is important in helping us build a better understanding of culture and education at home.

The challenge facing the faculty is to build bridges between the various activities while simultaneously maintaining their individual character. We feel it is important to see the connections between outward-oriented activity, domestic-based research and academic courses on offer at UiA. We see our involvement in international education and the development of our own programmes at UiA as two sides of the same coin.

Our international activities are therefore not merely something we do ”out there”, but an integral part of the international meeting place that is the University of Agder.

Managed by the Peace Corps
The project is funded by the Peace Corps Norway. The Peace Corps aims to aid in implementing the overall objectives for Norway’s cooperation with developing countries: contributing to permanent improvement within economic, social and political conditions for people in developing countries, with special emphasis on helping those who are the poorest of the poor. Therefore, the Peace Corps will particularly work towards realising the objective of a more just world based on human rights. With this goal in mind, the Peace Corps contributes to creating contact and cooperation between individuals, organisations and institutions in Norway and in developing countries, based on solidarity, equality and reciprocity.

Objectives of the project:

- Educational development
The project’s main objective is to develop and raise the educational levels at both institutions.

- School twinning
A second objective of the project is to develop international understanding and empathy among school pupils in Norway and Cambodia.

Participants:

Other partners in the project:
Save the Children Norway (Region South) has taken over the coordination of the school twining project in Norway. Contact person are Inger-Turid Tonstad or Brynjar Sagatun Nilsen, phone (+47) 38 10 74 40.

Archive Association: Members of the association want to learn more about - among other things - the experiences endured during the Khmer Rouge regime. In return they will relate knowledge gained from experiences in Norway during the Second World War. In sum this will contribute to increased knowledge of and appreciation for human rights in Norway and Cambodia. The contact person at the Archive Association is Bjørn Tore Rosendahl, phone (+47) 38 10 74 00.

The Norwegian-Cambodian Friendship Association: The Association is particularly involved in the integration of the Cambodian participants.

Results
By clicking on the links below, you will be able to some of the reports from the project (pdf files).

• An Appreciated Inquiry - report from the first year of the organisational developmental process in Siem Reap in the autumn of 2005.
• School twinning report 2005-2006
• Report 2007-2008 Siem Reap
• Report 2007-2008 Kampong Thom

PTTC, Siem Reap
PTTC is the Provincial Teacher Training College in Siem Reap. MOEYS (the Cambodian Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport) aims to turn PTTC into a model institution for teacher education in Cambodia. Twenty-six persons with administrative and academic backgrounds work at PTTC. The level of education among the staff vary. Just over fifty percent have a degree from the University of Phnom Penh, while others have trained at teacher training colleges similar to PTTC.The college caters for aproximately 500 students enrolled in a two year teacher education programme.

The average salary for a college instructor is between 30 and 55 dollars per month, depending on the instructor’s educational level.

Facts about Cambodia
Cambodia is a developing country. It is in the middle of reconstruction following the toppling of the Khmer Rouge regime, which was responsible for the murder of more than one-quarter of Cambodia's population between 1975 and 1979. Summary executions were rife, along with forced labour and a failure to dispense medicine. Factories, markets and schools were shut down. Religion and art were forbidden. The population was forcibly moved from towns to country villages, where people were forced to participate in the Khmer Rouge’s ultimately futile agricultural projects.

When the country was liberated from the Khmer Rouge in 1979, most of the country’s intelligentsia had been killed. The reconstruction phase into which the country entered into was therefore an extremely difficult one. Education, transport and healthcare lay in ruins. Today the country continues to struggle to build both its sense of nationhood and an independent knowledge base.

Share: