There are many international schools in Southeast Asia today and more are added each year. This reflects both the impact of globalization which has led to the growth of a large expatriate population in Southeast Asian countries and also a growing demand for good quality education from Asian parents. For many Southeast Asian parents, international schools means quality education for their children.

However, international schools do have a serious problem with regards to their teachers professional development. Many of these schools do not have on their staff trained and qualified teachers. Many of them are taken from the expatriate population that already live in the various Southeast Asian cities. Although I am not implying that untrained teachers make for bad teaching, it would be even better if such teachers are given a concerted and systematic training program with all the basic skills that they need as professional teachers.

Such experience and knowledge can make the classroom learning even more relevant for the students. A widening of the students’ horizons can and should be expected through such teachers. Students will be exposed to a more cross cultural perspective of things. A basic teacher training program can help such teachers be even more effective as agents for a truly global world.

Furthermore, studies have shown that teachers are more likely to stay if they feel that they can affect the outcome of the learning in the classrooms. Trained teachers would be better equipped with the tools and repertoire of skills that will help them exert a more positive impact on what goes on in the classrooms. Teacher training programs although can be costly, can actually contribute positively to the overall quality of the teachers in the school.

Click on this link if you want to learn more about enhancing teacher professional practice.

Today Indonesian schools have a golden opportunity to undergo a more than cosmetic revamp. The demand for good schools in Indonesia has perhaps never been higher. Furthermore, the demands of the new workplace has also changed and parents and employers want schools to produce people who will display the characteristics of the workforce of the future. In my last posting I have argued that it is important that schools in Indonesia should adopt a model where thinking and deep understanding takes center stage in the school curriculum. I have also suggested that the Smart School model adopted by David Perkins be given a serious look and that Indonesia should not settle for school curricula that is very high stakes examination-oriented.

In that first posting, I have explained a key principle of Perkins’ Smart School concept, which was generative knowledge. A school that places emphasis on generative knowledge would have to look beyond the teaching of meaningless rote learning of facts and routines. It would mean that a serious look be given to what ought to be taught. Here lies the challenge for the teachers. Would the teachers be willing to design their own syllabus as to what is to be taught, how it is to be taught, what is to be assessed and how it is to be assessed? It would require work on curriculum mapping instead of just adopting what an international examinations syndicate gives you. The curriculum would have to be mapped out to ascertain what would be taught. Schools thinking of going in this direction should seriously look at whether their teachers are prepared to put in the time for such work. They also need to see if the teachers need to undergo further training or professional development. It also implies the schools would have to have more intelligent teachers.

Another key principle of the Smart School is learnable intelligence. The Smart School stands on the belief that students can and do learn ways of thinking that can boost their performance. This view stems from the research done by Perkins and his colleagues in Harvard’s Project Zero. This contrasts with the traditional view about intelligence being a fixed quantity. Other studies also have supported this view of intelligence.

However, inteliigence can only be boosted if the teachers in the school adopt a more rigorous teaching approach that requires the integration of the teaching of higher order thinking skills. The teachers would also need to adopt an approach of teaching that calls for the use of careful scaffolding. Scaffolding is important because it guides students to develop their own thinking processes. With the guidance through scaffolding, students will learn to see that they have a more accurate picture of their own abilities and potentials and how they learn.

For most schools in Indonesia (and even in Singapore), this will represent a tectonic shift. Schools chasing high stakes examinations syllabus will have great difficulty meeting this most basic demand of the Smart School. Such schools will always be short of time and racing to complete the syllabus in time for the examinations. Secondly, it would also often mean that teachers in such schools will only teach to the examinations. All else will be unimportant because the only real assessment of learning is only done at such examinations. But schools that move in the direction of the Smart School model, including schools aspiring to be SBIs, will be a school that is truly serious about student learning and very importantly, in such a school, every student will be valued because here, truly, it is believed that every child can learn.

Workers who are independent learners have become one of the most important characteristics of the workforce of the future. Independent learners would know how to seek whatever information on their own when they enter the workforce. They would be resourceful workers. Also according to Carol Sanford in “Myths of Organizational Effectiveness at Work”:

“The foundational element in effective work systems is self-correcting, self-managing, self-accountable, self-governing behavior. Energy spent on monitoring and attempting to affect the behavior of team members or other entities from the outside is energy wasted and energy that could be better expended on improving the business and the capability of people. The critical element is to increasingly create self-governing capability.”

The old factory line approach to teaching and learning that features the teacher doing most of the thinking and talking has to give way to students having to explore, do their own research and thinking about what they are learning. Teachers would have to craft lessons that excite their charges with that spirit of inquiry that has as its basis in the natural curiosity of children and teenagers. Part of that crafting includes the need to design appropriate activities that comes with appropriate assessment strategies because not only would the teachers need to know what goes on in the heads of their students but also the latter would also need to know if his learning is going in the right direction.

That is the new challenge for teachers everywhere, including those in Singapore, if they are serious about preparing students for the future. Students must be made to take more responsibility for their own learning. They will have eventually decide when they have left school, what is it that they have to learn or re-learn, how they will be learning, when and why. They will have to be able to monitor their own progress to see if their work skills suits whatever work they have been employed to do or that they hope to do. How do they know if they are on the right track?

Already experts are talking about workers having two or even three careers in a lifetime. overnment leaders in Singapore are echoing this same view about multiple careers ina life time too.This implies of course a lot of learning and re-learning is required of workers in the economy of the future. In fact, it is already beginning to happen. With this scenario, it becomes imperative that teachers teach students how to do their own self-directed learning and link to this, also how to do their own self-assessment of their own learning. Teachers, therefore, need to devise in schools today, assessment strategies for their students to learn to monitor their own learning. Assessment can no longer be in the sole responsibility of the teachers. Students must learn to assess their own learning.