Challenging ideological environments: international teachers’ experiences in an outside-of-country teacher training programme

Abstract

Teacher training for developing nation contexts is often conducted in short, intensive inside and outside-of-country programmes. Concerns have been raised in relation to the uncritical take-up of the western-centric material provided by these programmes, which are usually funded by national and international government organizations. This paper explores an approach used in an outside-of-country teacher training programme funded by an Australian government grant. The research focused on teacher trainers from the Monastic education system and their reflections on whether critical literacy approaches could be incorporated into curriculum in Myanmar. It used a Bakhtinian framework to analyse the teacher trainers’ ideological environments and their hybridizations of critical literacy discourses for their own contexts. It was found that while the teacher trainers were passionate about the worth of developing critical literacy skills for their teachers and pupils, they struggled with a range of constraints that existed for them within their country. The research illustrated the importance of providing spaces for participants in programmes such as these to critically reflect on the relevance of non-government organization (NGO) and international non-government organization (INGO) training programmes, especially in light of the multiple challenges that are a part of their everyday lives.

Keywords:

• critical literacy
• developing nations
• hybridization
• ideological becoming
• politics of knowledge
• teacher training

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Burnet Institute team, Karl and Sue Dorning in Myanmar and Lia Burns in Melbourne for their support and of course the Myanmar teacher trainers for their insightful comments and enthusiastic involvement in the programme. Finally, I would like to thank Professor Kristina Love and Professor Terri Seddon for their comments on my paper while in the draft stage.

Additional information

Funding

I would like to acknowledge the Australian Government through the Australian Leadership Awards Fellowship Program for funding the Myanmar teacher trainers’ experiences in Australia. I would also like to acknowledge the support of the Australian Catholic University project team, Nancy Reid, Professor Kristina Love and Joanna Lilpop.

Notes on contributors

Amanda Gutierrez

Dr Amanda Gutierrez is an English and literacy lecturer at the Australian Catholic University. Her interests lie in the investigation of links between critical literacy, curriculum and teacher practice. In particular, she is interested in the ways teachers hybridize their practices based on the environment they are in, including the voices, experiences and types of texts that they value.