Teachers Helping Children Become Better Learners

Despite the increase in the number of students attending schools worldwide, the ndings of studies are that students are not necessarily learning at level. In spite the heavy investments made in education systems, certain groups of children are still being left behind despite attending school. Are children reading, writing, and doing arithmetic at level by Grade 2? Are they developing language and communication Learners Better Become Helping Children Teachers Learning skills early in life? Are they learning to read, write and do arithmetic (the 3Rs) in the early primary years? Data from many countries including more developed ones reveal large percentages of students not mastering these foundational competencies. More children may be attending school today, but are they, in fact, Learning? ese are stories of teachers from around Southeast Asia recognized by the Princess Maha Chakri Award Foundation. eir stories look at Learning their teaching journeys and how they dene Learning for themselves and their students. Teachers Helping Children Lim Soh Ngo, Brunei Darussalam Become Better Learners Dy Sophorn, Cambodia Encon Rahman, Indonesia Khuonvilay Khenkitisack, Lao PDR Saripah binti Embong, Malaysia Stories of the 2017 Princess an Tun, Myanmar Maha Chakri Awardees Jesus Catigun Insalada, Philippines Sarabjeet Kaur, Singapore Jirat Jamsawang, ailand Leopoldina Joana Guterres, Timor-Leste Phan i Nu, Vietnam Juan Miguel Luz Princess Maha Chakri Award Foundation LEARNING Teachers Helping Children Become Better Learners Stories of the 2017 Princess Maha Chakri Awardees Juan Miguel Luz Princess Maha Chakri Award Foundation LEARNING Teachers Helping Children Become Better Learners Stories of the 2017 Princess Maha Chakri Awardees ISBN 978-616-93648-0-1 Author: Juan Miguel Luz Layout: Ms. Umaporn Tangon @PMCA2020 Published by: Princess Maha Chakri Award Foundation Email: [email protected] Website: www.pmca.or.th Copyright: Princess Maha Chari Award Foundation and Juan Miguel Luz Photo Credit 1. Ministry of Education of ASEAN and Timor-Leste 2. All the 2017 Princess Maha Chakri Awardees 3. Dr. Santi Charoenpornpattana 4. Dr. Tinsiri Siribodhi ii About The Princess Maha Chakri Award On the occasion of HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn’s 60th Birthday Anniversary Celebration in 2015, the Princess Maha Chakri Award was established in recognition of HRH’s contribution, commitment and devotion to education and particularly the teachers. HRH herself is a devoted teacher at the Chulachomklao Royal Military Academy. HRH understands that teachers are an important key success factor to students’ achievement. Thus, HRH implements several educational projects that build capacity for teachers and improves the quality of lives of the people, particularly in the remote areas not only in Thailand but in other countries. Every two years, the Award is given to one excellent teacher from each of the eleven Southeast Asian countries namely Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste and Vietnam, who have made impact on their student’s lives and their communities. While the Princess Maha Chakri Award Foundation provides the general criteria for the selection of the teachers, the Ministry of Education of each country adds their own details and mechanism for selection based on their country context. The Award serves as a mean to promote best practices of teachers in Southeast Asia. Thus, a region-wide community of practice can be developed. The Princess Maha Chakri Award Foundation is aware of the need for continued professional development; therefore, the Foundation arranges and organizes enhancement programs for the Awardees after receiving the Award. The programs include study visits, professional development workshops, and funding of scale-up activities to benefit more students and teachers. The Princess Maha Chakri Awardees considers HRH as their guiding light. They follow HRH’s foot-steps and continue their teaching journey with passion for their students. These teacher-awardees are proof that they are teachers with great hearts who deserve the Princess Maha Chakri Award. iii Table of Contents About The Princess Maha Chakri Award . iii An Introduction on Learning . .vi Dr. Krissanapong Kirtikara Cooperative Learning . 1 Lim Soh Ngo Brunei Darussalam Diversified Learning . 16 Dy Sophorn Cambodia Learning with Media. 30 Encon Rahman Indonesia Learning Through Culture . 43 Khounvilay Khenkitisack Lao PDR Cumulative Problem-Based Learning . 52 Hajah Saripah Binti Embong Malaysia Structured Learning . 67 Than Tun Myanmar iv Culture-Based Learning . 79 Dr. Jesus Catigan Insilada Philippines Differentiated Learning . 94 Sarabjeet Kaur Singapore Technology-Based Learning . .108 Jirat Jamsawang Thailand Experiential Learning . .122 Leopoldina Joana Guterres Timor-Leste Learning Through Language . .135 Phan Thi Nu Vietnam LEARNING: How teachers can help children become better learners . 149 Juan Miguel Luz About the author. .174 v An Introduction on Learning Living organisms thrive and evolve by learning. Single cell microorganisms sense and respond to changing environmental cues and signals. If the organisms survive, information on what they have encountered and how they respond would be internalized, i.e. memorized, and serve them in subsequent encounters and form the basis of future actions. This is learning in its very simplest form. In some sense, learning assures survival and propagation of future generations. Taking this simplistic view of simple living organisms give clues to the fundamentals and basis for learning by individuals. Sense, respond, memorize, and the subsequent actions (responses) become more refined. Learning is key to cyclic and self-adaptive process driving survival, gene propagation, and evolution. Learning becomes, in some sense, selfish In more complex multicellular organisms, animals, and human being learnings, this is more varied, complex, and intricate. Apart from individual learning, one has communication and interaction between individual cells and animals. From fundamental ways of communication such as chemicals, later, on body language, pre-language vocal signals/ proto languages, and languages are developed. In addition to individual learning, collective and interactive learning emerged among herds of animals, social animals (such as elephants and lions), primates, and human. Signals are not just natural signals from the environment, but from multitudes of interactive individuals. Learning has become highly contextual in its contents and environment, and dynamic in interaction and communication. It is this highly contextual and dynamic learning that sets mankind apart from animals. In this sense, learning precedes education. Formation of socio-political structures from villages, towns, states, and countries, on one hand, and emerging of economic structure through industrialization and urbanization, on the other hand, gives learning a new paradigm and a new setting. Learning is no longer for survival and propagation. Learning was gradually transformed into a socialization and a vocation orientation process. Family-based learning, community-based learning and vocation-oriented learning followed. vi Learning in a structured environment is beyond sheer survival, but towards improvement of life quality through wealth accumulation, ensuring cohesive social structure and socio-economic strength, and ultimately, learning leads to power. Structured society leads to structured learning, what I would call education. In an education setting, content and processes are formalized, and, arguably with questioning by some, more rigorous. Education becomes more protocol-based from conceptualization, design, deployment, implementation, assessment, and testing. One would hardly imagine such a ruled-based approach to learning. Learning is by nature human-oriented, autonomous, individualistic, and can be self-directed. Education has less of these attributes. Learning takes place anywhere, any time. A child can definitely learn from playing alone, by himself, making his own toys, or even from tripping over a stone, falling, getting hurt, and getting up. A child has learned but is not said to be necessarily educated. A child is a learner, learning from his own experience. Within a standard “education” process schools become institutionalized places for learning. I have observed and noted on many occasions that the term “school”, presently used, has deviated from its origin. In the old days before industrialization and institutionalized education, a school was an assembly of scholars, a bastion of philosophers, and thinkers for learning, in a very broad sense. Schools were where dialogue took place and where interactions and intercourse prevail. We have the School of Athens, the School of Socrates, the School of Taksila, the School of Nalanta. A school in this context is not physical, but intellectual and spiritual. A school in today’s context, on the other hand, is physical, an established body or organization. Schools are no longer assemblies of scholars, but assemblies of teachers and students; those who teach and those who are taught. In present day schools, no dialogs take place; monologs do. Schools have become less interactive and more inactive; more of one-way discourse rather than intercourse or dialogue. In the standard education process, a teacher teaches so that students are supposed to “learn”. We have arrived at and reached a conflict vii in the dichotomy

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