Multigrade pedagogy has been used in Bhutan for more than two decades as a means of accelerating universal primary education. The study from which this article emerges used interviews, document analysis, and observations to investigate the gaps among policy, teacher education, and practice in multi-grade education in Bhutan. These gaps exist because government intention to train teachers and deploy them in multigrade classrooms lags far behind policy initiatives. We found that, currently, many teachers are either untrained or trained only in monograde pedagogy and are poorly resourced. Although the Ministry of Education has a policy to use multigrade teaching to achieve universal primary education, our research found a gap between policy intentions and practice in implementing multigrade teaching at the classroom level.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
BeebyC. E. (1966). The quality of education in developing countries (5th ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
2.
BerryC., & LittleA. W. (2007). Multugrade teaching in London, England. In LittleA. (Ed.), Education for all and multigrade teaching: Challenges and opportunities (pp. 67–86). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.
3.
DeyI. (1993). Qualitative data analysis: A user-friendly guide for social scientist.London: Routledge.
4.
Education Division. (1999). Education for all: An assessment of the progress.Thimphu, Bhutan: Royal Government of Bhutan, Ministry of Health and Education.
5.
EMSSD (2002). Factors contributing to classroom effectiveness: A study report.Thimpu: Ministry of Education, Bhutan.
6.
FullanM. (2001). The new meaning of educational change (3rd ed.). New York: Teachers College Press.
7.
GubaE. G. (1992). The alternative paradigm.London: Sage.
8.
GubaE. G., & LincolnY. S. (1989). What is this constructivist paradigm anyway? In Fourth generation evaluation (pp. 79–90). London: Sage.
HargreavesA. (1994). Changing teachers, changing times: Teachers’ work and culture in the postmodern age.London: Cassell.
11.
KivunjaC., & MaxwellT. W. (2011). Training manual in multigrade strategies for lecturers of Zambian multigrade trainee teachers and teachers.Armidale: School of Education, University of New England.
12.
LittleA. (Ed.). (2007). Education for all and multigrade teaching: Challenges and opportunities.Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.
13.
MasonD. A., & BurnsR. B. (1996). “Simply no worse and simply no better” may simply be wrong: A critique of Veenman's conclusion about multigrade classes.Review of Educational Research,66(3), 307–322.
14.
MaxwellT. W. (2009). A decade of an international in-service model: An initial analysis of reports of classroom action research by Bhutanese multi-grade teachers, and related data.Armidale, Australia: Kardoorair Press.
15.
Ministry of Education. (2005). Education statistics year book.Thimphu, Bhutan: Policy and Planning Division.
16.
Ministry of Education. (2006). Twenty-fifth education policy guidelines and instructions.Thimphu, Bhutan: Policy and Planning Division.
17.
Ministry of Education. (2007a). Education statistics year book.Thimphu, Bhutan: Policy and Planning Division.
18.
Ministry of Education. (2007b). Twenty-sixth education policy guidelines and instructions.Thimphu, Bhutan: Policy and Planning Division.
19.
Mulryan-KyneC. (2007). The preparation of teachers for multigrade teaching.Teaching and Teacher Education,23, 501–514.
20.
PridmoreP. (2004). Bhutanese multigrade curriculum alignment project.Thimphu, Bhutan: Ministry of Education, Curriculum and Professional Support Division.
21.
Royal Government of Bhutan. (1999). Bhutan vision 2020.Thimphu, Bhutan: Ministry of Education.
22.
Royal Government of Bhutan. (2006). Prime minister executive order on quality of education.Thimphu, Bhutan: Office of the Prime Minister.
23.
SmithA. (2003, May–June). Automatic extraction of semantic networks from texts using Leximancer. Paper presented at the Human Language Technology Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Edmonton, Canada.
24.
SmithA. (2007). Leximancer qualitative software.Brisbane: University of Queensland.
25.
StrawbridgeD. (1994). Multigrade organization and teaching in primary schools: Handbook for teachers in Bhutan.Paro, Bhutan: KMT Press.
26.
UNICEF. (2004). Mid-term review report.Thimphu, Bhutan: UNICEF Bhutan Country Office.
