The Need
FTEP, which stands for Female Teacher Education Project, aims to increase accessibility for girls attending school in villages. By training young women from villages as high-quality teachers, we are able to increase the accessibility of education in remote areas.
Over the last decade, there have been improvements in the number of girls attending school in Afghanistan. However, according to a joint research paper document released in 2011 (which you can read here), there are still a number of obstacles for girls and young women in Afghanistan to receive an education. While this is a complex issue, one of the reasons given was that “the number of female teachers is insufficient to meet the demand.” In fact, the paper goes on to say that “[m]ore than a quarter (26.4%) of the individuals interviewed named the lack of a female teacher as a major obstacle to girls’ access to education. More than two-thirds of teachers (68.4%) reported that their school does not have enough teachers. Of these teachers, more than half (54.6%) stated that they need only female teachers.”
Due to the lack of female teachers, many young women drop out of school. This number increases particularly as young women get to higher grade levels. It makes sense, then, that the recommendation was to “[I]ncrease the number of female-friendly, well-equipped schools for girls, especially in rural or remote areas,” and “[i]ncrease the number and quality of female teachers, especially in rural or remote areas.”
These issues are exactly what our Female Teachers’ Education Project hopes to address.
How it works: Years 1 and 2
Our Female Teachers’ Education Project is done in a five-year cycle. During this cycle, we provide training for women from rural areas, who will become teachers in their home villages.
For the better part of the first year, before official programming begins, our FTEP team takes time to assess the villages to discern their need for female teachers. Our team then selects and tests Year 12 graduates as candidates from those villages. This process is a cooperative effort, done in consultation with the Ministry of Education (MoE). The MoE give recommendations as to where there are vacancies for teaching positions and the needs are highest. Our team also works with the villages themselves; after our team receives recommendations from the Ministry of Education, they go to the villages to meet with community members. These communities members include village elders, the school principal, and the mayor to discuss the project. Our team also works closely with families of the girls; we want to ensure families are happy with the project plan and give their daughters permission to attend our training.
For two years, these young women learn from both the Government Teacher Training College and our own teacher-trainers. In addition to learning the regular teaching curriculum for teachers, our students learn supplementary content for some key secondary school subjects. These supplementary subjects include English, computer skills, Dari, biology, physics, chemistry, as well as teaching approaches and methodology. As our Afghan teacher-trainers teach these additional courses, they model the learner-centered methodology that is taught in our pedagogy classes. In this way, our students can experience learner-centered methodology first-hand and see how to apply it across the curriculum.
Once they are finished their two years of formal teacher training, these women are fully certified and can return to their villages and begin teaching. By working in cooperation with both the Ministry of Education and the villages, we can help to ensure that the graduates from our project will strive to get an official government teacher position back in their own village once they have completed their initial two-year training.
How it Works: Years 3 and 4
Our project doesn’t end there, however. We know that learning in the classroom as a student is quite different from the hands-on learning that comes with being the teacher in a classroom. That’s why we continue to provide monthly monitoring for our students for the next two years. We carry this out by observing their classes and evaluating their teaching with criteria based on our learner-centered methodology approach. Then we meet with each teacher and talk about their strengths. We also provide constructive criticism on the areas they can improve, and set goals with them. This ongoing mentoring process ensures they continue to grow in the classroom; mentoring allows these teachers to have the support they need as they begin their teaching careers.
So, does this extra training and follow up make a difference? The results we have seen so far have shown considerable impact. Across the villages where our FTEP graduates now teach, we have seen a 40% increase in girls’ attendance at the end of one cycle (5 years) of our project.
Our teachers are also demonstrating approaches to teaching and learning that vary greatly from traditional Afghan schooling. Traditional Afghan schooling focuses on rote memorisation and the idea of the teacher “depositing” knowledge into students. In this method, students are seen as lacking knowledge. As such, they are considered empty vessels to be filled, rather than people that can participate and contribute to the learning experience. We train our teachers, in contrast, in participatory, learner-centered pedagogical approaches. That means that students are actively engaging in their own education. With that engagement, there is potential for the educational landscape of Afghanistan to change.
Long-lasting Change
We know that large-scale issues have no quick fixes. That’s why our project focuses on going in depth with a small number of young women over a five-year period. FTEP aims to build up the strength of Afghanistan’s educational system; instead of just rote memorisation, these teachers-to-be are provided with positive and engaging methodologies. We want to get children to develop critical thinking skills and engage in their education. By focusing in depth on a handful of female teachers, we are confident that this will result in far-reaching effects. Our teachers will introduce new ways of thinking and learning to their students in their own villages to bring about long-lasting change.
As both teachers and students develop into critical thinkers and problem solvers, this will inevitably impact their entire communities as well. Simply telling teachers to use a method isn’t enough–people teach how they were taught. If we were to just provide our students with a short training, they would likely revert back to the normative styles of teaching. However, by taking a longer-term approach and allowing our students to experience good teaching practices across the subjects over two years, we can ensure that they will not only use these techniques but also pass them on to those around them.
FTEP is still a fairly new project, just starting into its second cycle. During the first cycle of the project, we trained 15 young women. 13 of these women are now teaching in government schools. Now, in our second cycle, we are training 45 women. We can’t wait to see the results as the training progresses!
Curious about our work in education? Click here to learn more.