British Council Nepal organized a three day workshop – Teacher Educator Management and Quality Assurance Framework (TEMQAF) in Kathmandu last week. The objective of the training was to ensure that the trainers working with the British Council had relevant skills and knowledge to deliver training as part of its English and Education projects.
The focus
The focus of the training were to explore ideas like ’how do teachers learn’, ‘difference between how young people and adults learn’ and ‘need for experiential learning’. One of the major focuses was also to introduce the global Continuous Professional Development (CPD) framework for teachers and teacher educators and highlight Action research and its importance in continuous professional development.
The need
Since different trainers of many project of the British Council Nepal were working with different contacts and ToR’s, it was imperative to bring them together as British Council trainers than trainers of independent projects. The objective of the training was also to filter the default trainers and provide all the trainers with basic training skills. The workshop also highlighted that it was high time for trainers to set a practice for observation and feedback for quality assurance.
Head of Programmes at British Council Nepal, Rhona Brown who trained the trainers at the workshop shared, “Teachers, educators are the linchpin to many of our projects in education. Without their hard work and commitment, there is no way our projects can reach classrooms and students in Nepal. This was just a beginning to deliver quality education through quality trainers and educators.”
Vaishali Pradhan, Programmes Manager, also the trainer at the workshop further added on the objective behind this workshop, “We have been working with the pool of trainers for our projects such as NIITE (National Initiative to Improve Teaching in English), Connecting Classrooms and EDGE (English and Digital for Girls’ Education). It was thus imperative to bring all the trainers of our projects together and assure the quality of our trainers.”
“As a follow up this workshop, British Council staff will now go and observe each trainer at least twice a year and provide them with feedback,” she elaborated.
Upasana Shrestha, one of the participants and the British Council trainers shared about the training – “This training was very useful. I have been sharing the insights of the training with my colleagues in the school I teach and many of colleagues are keen on implementing this strategy of teaching. I have also seen students getting engaged in the classroom more than before. I have now learnt to reduce teacher-talk-time in the classroom and emphasize on student-talk-time.”
Similarly another participant and trainer Gopal Bashyal enunciated, “This training was very essential for trainers and educators to have a common approach to training in the classroom. Every trainer should be familiar with CPD framework and must have observation skills. With this training, the trainers now can improve their weaknesses and empower teachers at large for effective teaching.”
Ishwor Kandel, another trainer highlighted that this was the first time when all the trainers from various projects of the British Council Nepal had the opportunity to sit together to share their ideas and learn better skills to become a better trainer. He said, “The training provided us both practical and theoretical knowledge to enhance our teaching capabilities. This was very fruitful workshop.”
A total of 34 trainers participated in the workshop.
