LEARN AT TAXILA

Education is one of the most critical investments for developing countries like Myanmar in building their human capital and improving the socio-economic standards of their citizens. To ensure the quality of teaching and learning, educational institutions focus on demonstrating the academic results of their students, which in turn is related to the standard of instruction provided by teachers. As a Burmese saying goes, “Saya the tha akaryar,” teachers are prime. The quality of the teaching workforce greatly reflects the quality of education and has a significant impact on students' academic outcomes. 

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Despite having such an importance on nation development, PK-12 teachers from private schools and tutors across Myanmar have long been attempting with limited resources to provide their students with the most effective instruction possible. It is because the attempt to enhance teachers’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes through professional development is often neglected in Myanmar’s education system. In fact, current teachers with 10-20 years of experience have grown up in the darkest era of the country under the six decades of authoritarian regimes and have not often been exposed to professional development throughout their careers. From the 1960s to 2010s, there was little to no effective professional development for Myanmar PK-12 teachers working freelance or at private schools for over seventy years. 

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Moreover, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the recent political turmoil further intensified the existing negligence of professional development in Myanmar. When the pandemic has emerged in early 2020, freelance and private school teachers encountered prolonged closures of their schools or losses of their jobs. As a result, most of them started working as freelance teachers and tutors assisting the PK-12 students with their government-prescribed lessons and helping them improve their English proficiencies. There are thousands of unskillful and untrained teachers who are impacting the lives and education of millions of children. 

We planned our program and drafted the curricular content in consultation with the administrators and faculty members from the University of North Dakota and its College of Education and Human Development, and our own advisory board members and subject matter experts from the field of Education. There are three components in this project; the first component being a 30-hour training on educational technology, the second component being a 30-hour training on educational pedagogy, and the last component being a 30-hour training on educational leadership. We believe we can empower beginner teachers with inclusive educational opportunities, prepare them to become agents of change, and share the knowledge to a new generation of Myanmar people.