Learning from teachers like us: using video to move beyond ‘secret knowledge’ in Papua New Guinea elementary teacher professional development

ABSTRACT

Providing professional development (PD) for Papua New Guinea (PNG) teachers is highly challenging due to the remoteness of schools, limited budgets, travel costs, and safety. The essential follow-up guidance and support after PD workshops is rarely possible, especially for the majority of teachers, who work in rural schools. In addition, the effectiveness of PD in facilitating collaboration among members of the school community can be affected by traditional cultural approaches to knowledge building and sharing. This article reports on an innovative form of PD with PNG elementary school teachers that used classroom teaching videos provided on SD cards for mobile phones. Videos of authentic teaching by other PNG teachers in similar contexts were provided to 260 teachers as follow-up to literacy practice workshop training sessions. The SD cards were used by 80% of the teachers in their own teaching, and more than half also shared the SD cards with other teachers. These findings show the value of SD cards in PD training in low-income countries, both for the development of individual teacher self-efficacy leading to confidence and better outcomes for the children in their classes, and for the development of teacher collaboration with colleagues

KEYWORDS:

• Professional development
• Papua New Guinea
• teacher videos
• SD cards
• elementary education
• ‘secret knowledge’

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Whilst we acknowledge the important move away from the term professional development to professional learning which highlights the importance of teachers as active agents (for example, Webster-Wright, 2009), the term professional development (PD) has greater currency across the Pacific and is used in this paper to enhance regional readership.

2. The consortium is led by World Vision and comprises ChildFund, Library for All, the University of Canberra and Consultative Implementation and Monitoring Council and is supported by the Australian Government.

3. Five additional videos were produced in a studio in Port Moresby. These videos comprised three videos explaining the story behind and how to use the teacher guides, one video outlining the Library For All classroom book sets and one video demonstrating how to read Library For All books with expression and ask comprehension questions.

4. The data collection procedures had ethics approval (HREC17-257) from the [university] under university policy and the Australian National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research, 2007.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the PNG-Australia Partnership in partnership with the Government of Papua New Guinea under the PNG Partnership Fund (PPF);This work was supported by the PNG-Australia Partnership in partnership with the Government of Papua New Guinea under the PNG Partnership Fund (PPF).;

Notes on contributors

Kym Simoncini

Kym Simoncini is an Associate Professor of early childhood and primary education. Prior to her academic career, she was a primary school teacher. She is part of the Together for Education project in Papua New Guinea. Her research focuses on culturally relevant materials, supporting teacher development, family learning and children’s play.

Barbara Pamphilon

Barbara Pamphilon has taught adult education and community development for more than 20 years. As a community educator, she has worked with rural communities, environmental education, women’s issues, youth and the aged, as well as in HIV/AIDS, disability, and sexuality education.

Hilary Smith

Hilary Smith has a background in applied linguistics, education and international community development. She has over 40 years of teaching, research, and evaluation in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia, the South Pacific, and Southeast Asia.