Applying educational psychology in a changing World: Some lessons from Mongolia

Setting

Mongolia is a large landlocked, sparsely inhabited country of some 3 million people, covering a land mass two-thirds the size of Western Europe. Caught mainly between the two great powers of China and Russia, it has long sought to maintain its independence as a buffer state, operating as a former voluntary member of the USSR and, since 1990, as an independent democratic republic. Following the breakup of the socialist system in the early 1990s, a new free market economy has brought both benefits and pitfalls. Those aspects of society most obviously susceptible to rapid marketization resided principally in the congested, polluted capital, Ulaanbaatar, which housed over a quarter of the population and continued to exercise a certain attraction from the countryside.

In the late Soviet period rural education and medicine had been well subsidized. However, that practice was seriously diminished as the independent republic struggled to reconcile the rigours of the market and popular expectations from democracy. The tough herdsmen and their families living in one of the harshest climates on the planet are historically well-adapted to survival. They have little absolute need for money and can subsist on the product of the horses, sheep, goats, yaks, and camels they herd. Their astonishingly adaptable gers, which can be dismantled for transport in a couple of hours, protect them successfully from temperatures ranging from −35℃ to +40℃. However, dependence upon rural husbandry was severely affected by a series of severe winter events and droughts in the late 1990s. In particular, there were two winters in each of which nearly two million animals died. The consequent loss of livelihood drove many more of the rural population into the capital, where they set up extensive ger settlements on the outskirts.

About a third of the population of Ulaanbaatar now comprises such settlements. It is a city without the infrastructure to sustain them and whose population has increased to around one million, a third of the population of country. Actual poverty has been increased by these events. Over 36% of the population, of whom 38% are below the age of 16 and only 4% above 65, currently live below the poverty line ($0.75 per day). Ulaanbaatar is located in the centre of the country at an altitude of 1500 m above sea level. There are few other towns with more than a few thousand people, the largest of which act as administrative centres of provinces known as Aimags. These are typically the size of Austria with populations of around 70,000, and are divided into Soums (districts) and further into Bags (parishes). There are virtually no permanent roads throughout the country outside of the capital and few reliable maps. Soums are often cut off from each other, therefore, for months at a time, particularly during harsh winters when icy surface can cover the plains for hundreds of miles. There is only one railway track, a branch from the Trans-Siberian line connecting with Beijing via Ulaanbaatar. Thus, maintaining communication networks across the country can pose enormous problems.

Outside of the capital, education is generally undertaken in ‘complex’ schools that combine kindergarten, primary, and secondary education in one set of buildings serving a whole Soum district comprising very wide areas of countryside. Consequently most of these schools, have dormitories for the children from the more remote areas. The collapse of the Soviet system-support and the subsequent economic downturn has led to the removal of subsidies for these dormitories, which in turn has led to lower levels of attainment and an increased dropout rate for children prior to the official leaving age of 16 years (Del Rosario, 2005). Although most of the schools are closed from mid-June until early September the nomadic culture has also meant that a significant proportion of herders’ children miss some schooling during the brief summer months to help their parents with their livestock. (This is beautifully illustrated in the Mongolian film The Cave of the Yellow Dog).

The impetus for what came to be termed the ‘Outreach’ project came from recognition within the Mongolian Ministry for Education, supported by a number of reports by international agencies that the country’s education system was in need of drastic reform. They identified ‘interactive’ and ‘pupil centred’ learning as important. Indeed, a two-year EU funded project, ‘Interact’ (1999–2000), also coordinated by Exeter University, UK, eponymously acknowledged and addressed those concerns, working with the dynamic English Language department and very small Educational Studies department at the then Mongolian State Pedagogical University. The university has since be renamed The Mongolian State University of Education under a new rector. It was from lessons learned during project ‘Interact’ that the project described in this article grew.

This and our own subsequent experience of rural schools identified widespread practice that remained entirely teacher-directed and heavily didactic. All classrooms were set out with three rows of desks, with each row being allocated a child monitor responsible for the orderliness of the children in the row and who bridged the gap between the differential status of the student and teacher. This pyramidal structure of the classroom reflects what Steiner-Khamsi and Stolpe (2006) refer to as ‘democratic centralism’—arguing that this was a common feature of socialist life and the’ micro-collective’ of the Mongolian classroom.

Although more than a quarter of the population is unemployed, jobs do exist within the fast growing service industries, particularly for those with appropriate knowledge and skills. Unfortunately, the education system, dominated for so long by rigid socialist dogma and an outdated knowledge-based curriculum has failed to prepare the potential workforce with the required skills for survival.

A recent report, compiled for the benefit of the World Bank (2008), pointed out that the skills needed to enhance the ability to perform as entrepreneurs or workers in the private sector

include, but are not limited to thinking skills (critical and creative thinking), behavioral skills (perseverance, self-discipline, team-work, the ability to negotiate conflict and manage risks), special knowledge (including numeracy and literacy) and vocational skills (a mix of specific knowledge and skills to perform jobs that rely on clearly defined tasks). (World Bank, 2008, p.13)

The opportunity to meet with the Rector of the Mongolian State University of Education, situated in the country’s capital, Ulaanbaatar, where the vast majority of Mongolian teachers are trained, confirmed that this was indeed the case—but that he and his colleagues had a strong commitment to change. He also concurred with a further comment in the World Bank Report (p. 30) that ‘The implementation of student-centred learning will take time and will require substantial investments in pre- and in-service training’.

Successive governments have recognized the need for educational change, but have tended to present edicts and new regulations without apparently thinking through the consequences or the requirements necessary to make them work. For example, in 2008 it was suddenly announced that from September of that year full-time education would be available from the age of six, thereby extending the curriculum over 12 years. The existing teaching workforce was not consulted about this change, teacher training institutes were given only a limited opportunity to prepare either untrained teachers or the new curriculum, and the enormous resource implications were only minimally touched upon.

In 1998 a new standards-based curriculum had been introduced in an attempt to break away from an educational system largely aimed at the transmission of outdated information along traditional subject lines. The old system assumed that all children across the country would be following the same textbooks at more or less the same pace. Rote learning was the norm and all examination success and access to higher education was founded upon this. Yet again, however, there was little attention given to how these new standards were to be reached. Teachers trained under the old regime had no idea how to run their classes to encourage individualized learning or collaborative group work amongst their pupils.

As the World Bank report comments ‘While these standards are consistent with the acquisition of skills that are needed for work and life, the enacted curriculum and teaching practices are not very consistent with these goals’ (p.15). And further,

The curriculum continues to be too theoretical and focused on traditional academic subjects, while teaching continues to be teacher-centered rather than interactive, as well as to encourage memorization rather than critical and creative thinking and individual learning rather than team-work. (p. 16)

The next step was to seek the involvement of interested and appropriate academics at the Exeter School of Education (SELL) who would be prepared to travel on a fairly regular basis to Mongolia to work with rural teachers for little remuneration, and to provide input for Mongolian tutors on return visits to England. The response was very positive and eight representatives from Exeter visited Mongolia over the three-year period of the project, two of whom visited on a six-monthly basis to work with teachers in selected provinces. Mongolian tutors travelled to England to work for significant periods in SELL on three occasions and once to Denmark.

We were concerned not to make the mistake of many similar projects by flying in, imparting brief inset inputs and flying out again. One of our major aims was sustainability. Accordingly we negotiated with MSEU to work mainly with a selected group of teacher educators in an attempt to empower them to act as the main trainers and sources of support for the province teachers. As a further incentive, MSEU was prepared to offer a series of credits to all teachers producing written records of the work they carried out during the Outreach Project leading ultimately to a Master’s degree for those submitting an acceptable dissertation. Such accreditation provides both status and extra financial remuneration in Mongolia.

Plans

In consultation with the Rector of MSUE, a needs analysis was carried out which led to the endorsement of the project’s main aim and to five related objectives for the Outreach project. These were: Main aim: To design and establish a functioning and sustainable modular in-service programme of professional development of up to master’s degree level for serving teachers in Rural Mongolia. Objectives: To upgrade the methodology and content of teacher education; to strengthen the role and responsibility of MSUE in providing professional advocacy and expertise in teacher education; to develop the professional qualities of teacher educators at the University; to improve the quality of curriculum content and teaching methodology in selected schools; and to introduce modular, credit based advanced courses for teachers, leading to a professional master’s-level degree.

It was decided to provide teachers in two rural provinces (aimags), Khentii and Tuv with the opportunity of taking part in the project. There would be open enrolment for about 80 teachers and input sessions were to take place at annual summer courses based at the main high school in each district (soum) and at the university in Ulaanbaatar. These courses were to be centred upon four modules leading up to a final practical dissertation which had to be based on an action research project carried out in each candidate’s school.

It was planned for the modules to follow a developmental sequence, starting with reflection on and evaluation of their own practice, assessing their students’ knowledge and skills, planning, implementing, and evaluating new ways of working, and finally taking a wider perspective by considering aspects of the learning environment, considering the quality of teaching and learning, working with parents, and developing a whole new curriculum.

Action

Our first task was to gain the acceptance and trust of those with whom we would be working. A self-selected group of five faculty members from the University of Exeter’s School of Education and Lifelong Learning travelled to Ulaanbaatar in the middle of winter 2004 to meet with a group of 17 teacher trainers who had been carefully selected by the University Rector as current and potential future leaders within the university. The fact that none spoke English and few had had any teaching experience in schools meant that all negotiations and discussions had to be interpreter-mediated, thereby making them lengthy and protracted, at least in the early sessions. We were faced with the additional problem that the group’s expectation was that our function was to simply instruct them in the basic techniques of group work and child-centred learning and then do the same with a selected body of teachers.

Instead we negotiated a more pyramidal structure whereby we would work alongside the tutors in developing their pedagogical knowledge and skills and they in turn would act as facilitators to a volunteer group of teachers working in the two rural aimags of Khenti and Tuv. Those teachers would in turn be expected to act as facilitators within their districts following the attainment of their Masters degree in Education. Thus, we deliberately resisted requests at this stage to provide formal input sessions geared to our own particular areas of expertise, but sought instead to facilitate open-ended discussions and to model ways of working collaboratively, but not necessarily perfectly harmoniously, around themes that the tutors themselves identified. These sessions were held twice annually at the Mongolian State University and once each year in Exeter, which the tutors’ group visited for periods of two weeks.

We quickly learned that it was not enough to expect the Mongolian tutors to start from scratch and build a curriculum without some form of informational input from their Western ‘guides’. Each member of the UK team therefore selected a relevant topic to introduce (e.g. the purpose and function of schools, questioning techniques, motivational issues, reflective practice, action-research) and modelled an interactive learning process. At first we were unsure how much the tutors were gaining from what to them was an unfamiliar and unorthodox way of working because initial feedback was minimal. However, as soon as the first summer conference began, it became clear that the tutors had been fast learners and were rapidly gaining in expertise in facilitating small group teacher interaction. This also meant that we often had to be ready to help them organize different ways of the teachers feeding back their reflections to each other (e.g. by means of jigsaw techniques).

Each summer conference began with the teachers sharing their experiences of reflecting on their current practice and attempting different ways of working, having already written this up in order to obtain credits towards the MA. The Mongolian University tutors marked these assignments, graded them for their efforts to implement what had been agreed at the previous conference and used them as a basis for further discussion.

Reaction

Once the university tutors grasped that we were placing the onus of their own and the teachers’ development on them; they began to respond enthusiastically in their own way. Mongolians do not by nature express overt enthusiasm. Until we came to understand this, we were unsure as to how our messages were being received. But then we discovered that after our input sessions had finished, the tutors (and later also the teachers) would work long into the night discussing what we had said and demonstrated, and deciding how they themselves could best act collaboratively and as facilitators for the teachers to whom they had been assigned. At the end of the project, the Rector of the University wrote,

My University is a principal beneficiary of the project, for we have established a skilled, dynamic group of educationalists across the curriculum. They are able to influence policy within their own departments and across the range of subjects both inside the university and in schools.

The teachers’ reactions gathered at the end of our final conference clearly indicated perceptions of personal development on the part of many of them in their understanding of and their confidence in attempting new ways of working, and in their satisfaction in the outcomes. As one teacher commented,

We were concerned about the educational reforms in Mongolia because we didn’t know how to accomplish them. Now we can see a clear pathway. Previously, as teachers we gave lessons like ‘1 + 1 = 2’; now we realise we should make changes. We should demand of our learners not only correct answers, but to think differently and to share our different opinions with others. We understand that the main goal of teachers’ work is to engage with learners, and the important thing is to bring children up with good ethics and good morals.

Evaluation

Drawing together our findings from the four key aspects of the SPARE wheel process, a much fuller and arguably more helpful picture emerges of the Outreach Project than would have been possible by more conventional means. First, by focusing so explicitly upon the cultural setting within which we would be working, we were able to avoid many of the mistakes of other ‘culturally imperialistic’ projects and provide an input to the Mongolian education system that was perceived as meaningful and useful to the main stakeholders, the Mongolian university tutors and school teachers. It is this emphasis upon understanding and describing the setting in as much detail as possible that epitomises illuminative evaluation and differentials it from more ‘straightforward’ action research. In this instance we were thereby able to ensure that organizational change was brought about from within rather than imposed from without. Second, we were able to draw upon previous official documentation and our discussions with the University Rector and his colleagues (the 17 course tutors) together with their knowledge of the setting of the schools in drawing up our aims and planning our input. At the action stage, however, we were constrained by barriers of language, time, and distance. We were never completely able to overcome the language barriers on both sides. This meant that without our expert interpreter and her assistants we were ‘lost’ as to what was being said and done. Communication barriers were not only confined to the structure of the two languages. The Mongolian culture is very different from the British and deeper misunderstandings were often apparent. What we initially interpreted as indifference was in fact deep reflection leading to much private discussion and creative new ways of working.

The commitments demanded on both sides were enormous. No extra time was allocated by either university for work on the project. The Exeter team gave up their vacation time to travel to Mongolia and depended upon uncompensated goodwill of their colleagues to work with the Mongolian tutors and arrange school visits when they came to Exeter. The Mongolian tutors were even more hard pressed, working long hours and travelling hundreds of miles over and above the call of duty to keep the project alive. No extra time or remuneration was made available to them for this work; but no word of complaint ever reached our ears.

Resources were limited within Mongolia because of the nature of the terrain, the lack of funding available to schools, and the misappropriation of the country’s natural resources. The teachers themselves were nevertheless extremely enthusiastic from the start, to a level way above one that would ever be expected in most Western countries. They were excited and enormously grateful to both the tutors and the European consultants for their input and support—literally killing the fatted sheep and arranging mini-festivals in their visitors’ honour. They were also prepared to travel unhesitatingly and uncomplainingly across a barren landscape devoid of anything representing a road for eight-to-ten hours to attend the summer conferences.

Understandably, the initial reactions to our input were often confused and driven by the tutors’ and teachers’ previous experiences and implicit assumptions about the teaching/learning process. However, as their trust in us developed and their personal confidence grew and was reinforced by the successful production of modular assignments based upon their reflections on new practices, so did their shared enthusiasm and appreciation. This led to the production of a newspaper chronicling their experiences, which was distributed to schools throughout the country.

Of the original 84 teachers beginning the project, 68 had successfully completed their Masters dissertations one year after our final joint conference and were reported to be taking responsibility for acting as mentors to other teachers in their provinces to help them change their practices. At the time of writing, the overall evaluation of the project can justifiably be seen as highly positive. The intention that our work should be collaborative was realized. That it also seems to be sustainable, as we hoped, is largely thanks to the evident judgement of the teacher educators and the participant teachers that the process was worth considerable extra work. Moreover, we must acknowledge the wisdom of the Mongolian university and the two local authorities in recognizing that these efforts deserved both formal recognition and opportunist exploitation. Such flexibility is rare in bureaucratic organizations.