The Equitable Education Fund (EEF) of Thailand, UNESCO Bangkok, and partnering organizations hosted the 6th Meeting of the Equitable Education Alliance (EEA), ‘Exercising Equity to Deliver an Inclusive Classroom’, on February 7, 2023. The meeting, via webinar, highlighted the delivery and implementation of that items which facilitate evidence-based school and classroom practices, as well as provincial and area-based programs to tackle equitable education from the grassroots level.
In an opening note delivered by Dr. Supakorn Buasai, former Managing Director, Equitable Education Fund (EEF) of Thailand, key areas and directions of EEA in 2023 were articulated, with Dr. Supakorn commenting, “EEF Thailand and UNESCO serve as an EEA Secretariat with the vision to develop quality education for all learners as EEA works together with members – organizations, and practitioners – including the government agencies and private sectors to promote equitable education at the national level, regional and international levels. EEA continues to expand its network and work with global education changes in the world. The EEA is welcome to invite education practitioners and interested organizations to join the EEA.”
Following upon opening remarks, the webinar proceeded with presentations by its two distinguished guests, who spoke on equitable education case studies which might be said to benefit all participants and practitioners in the education sector.
According to Ms. Kate Griffiths of AERO, there are some persisting challenges that the Australian education system is currently facing:
- Australian students’ performance on international assessments is currently declining; in national assessments, performance is stagnating, and there are growing equity gaps.
- Teachers need additional support to teach for maximum impact, so that all students, all classrooms, and all schools benefit from the highest-quality instruction.
- Despite strong evidence attesting that teaching practices have proven to make a difference, the larger implications for teaching are neither well understood nor implemented in schools.
As Ms. Griffiths points out, projects conducted by AERO aim to promote and support the implementation of evidence-based teaching practices informed by the science of learning and development. For stakeholders in various areas of the education sectors, there is some opportunity to improve teaching outcomes – for instance, in the case of education practitioners, in building awareness and understanding of how students learn, as well as what might be the implications for future teaching practices. Educational policymakers should explore and research more actively how students learn, and then embed evidence-based teaching practice in strategies and policies. All in all, formative assessment; explicit instruction, mastery learning, focused classroom, and spacing and retrieval practice have come to represent the ‘tried and tested’ guides outlined for organizations like the AERO.
Ms. Kelsey Carlton’s presentation (VVOB) on education for development focused on ‘Process-oriented Child Monitoring into the Vietnamese Early Childhood Education (ECE) System’. As a non-profit organization, VVOB has supported governments to improve education systems sustainably since 1992.
Based on VVOB’s research and local government reports, in actual practice, not every child is learning the Vietnamese language. For example, there are stubborn language barriers to learning, faced especially by minority ethnic children in Viet Nam, as well as other barriers, among them barriers in social interactions, gender identity, contextualization of learning materials, and lack of interest in learning to the extent that children’s attention fails to align with the required activity. To explore possible solutions to this problem, Ms. Carlton suggests that there is a need to understand the real meaning of ‘learning’ to students. VVOB is trying to work with process-oriented child monitoring (POM) in its program, which is a tool – developed at Belgium’s Leuven University – entailing intentional and focused child observation geared towards identifying learning barriers and improving children’s levels of well-being and engagement in the classroom.
In order to proceed with any success, Ms. Carlton points out that it is important to understand the definition of well-being and involvement, as well-being is not the same as behaving well. Some children with a high level of well-being also experience negative emotions, and high involvement is not the same thing as being busy; conversely, ‘low involvement’ is not the same as ‘not being able to do’. As such, well-being and involvement should be integrated into the educational practices which can be achieved via deep-level learning, and Ms. Carlton discussed how to scale them.
In closing remarks, Dr. Buasai summed up the webinar’s proceedings by commenting, “These two studies have theoretical significance for promoting fair education and improving teaching quality in Asia-Pacific, and eventually the world. The research case studies of Australia and Vietnam teach practitioners new knowledge and methods to address local challenges. The EEA will continue to provide a platform for different educational practitioners and organizations to exchange, learn, and jointly research together to achieve more inclusive, equal, and high-quality education in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.”
Source:
Original UNESCO Bangkok’s Article: Here
Record of Webinar: Here
Following EEA Activities: Here
Related Articles in 6th EEA meeting: Article 1 & Article 2
