Huw Lewis the education minister for Wales states that there are some fantastic professionals teaching in Wales but they are far too few. He also says that there are far too many people used to a way of working that assumes the world stands still. It really is difficult to see how he can drive up standards when there is an institutionalised fear of change. Surely all the evidence points to the source. Teacher training programmes must include an option for trainees to choose and follow the pedagogy of their choice and have experts on hand to deliver that training in that method. Students pay a lot of money for their training and it must be quite a shock to hear that after all that hard work and financial commitment that they are failing. If it were any other business service they would go and ask for their money back.
So what systems, what pedagogical approaches are the leading nations using. Incidentally, these nations are referred to as developing while Wales is considered developed.
China is looking towards Montessori as their main pedagogy Montessori In China
Constructivism and social constructivism (n=40 and 20 respectively) were the most frequently referred to theories. In some cases this reference outlined the approach underpinning the intervention itself. Examples included studies which explicitly drew on social constructivism to examine strategies for teaching argumentation in science teaching in South Africa (Braund et al., 2013), research which tied support and guidance for teachers in INSET to a Vygotskian social constructivist approach to adult learning in Namibia (O’Sullivan, 2001b) and donor-supported reforms encouraging active-learning pedagogies based on constructivist notions of teaching and learning in Nicaragua (Sanyal, 2009). However, in many other cases, references to these terms framed the theoretical orientation of the study rather than any actual initiative.
Source: Pedagogy, Curriculum, Teaching Practices and Teacher Education in Developing Countries, December 2013
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