Implications for Teacher Education in a Time of Rapid Reform: Lessons from Myanmar

Over previous years, Myanmar has made significant efforts to improve the quality and equity of its education system. Rapid educational reform is now underway across the Union, in the form of revisions to schooling structures, curricula and assessment processes, monitoring of school improvement mechanisms, and teacher education programs, underpinned by the introduction of teacher standards. Yet the success of standards-based reform in Myanmar is predicated on the mode of enactment, and the ways in which policy is interpreted within the education profession. Thus, in recognition of the role teachers play during major and important cycles of teaching reform, this chapter highlights the potential of standards-based education reforms in improving teacher quality in Myanmar, while also considering the key challenges policy actors and educators now face. In a time of great uncertainty for the country of Myanmar, this chapter also considers ways that comparable systems can position themselves as partners in educational reform, supporting schools and teachers as they begin to use and embed school improvement mechanisms in broader practice.