Countries around the world are aware of the importance of early childhood education, especially improving children's development from 3 to 4 years. The Myanmar Ministry of Education has invested heavily in the education sector since the launch of the ...
Countries around the world are aware of the importance of early childhood education, especially improving children's development from 3 to 4 years. The Myanmar Ministry of Education has invested heavily in the education sector since the launch of the new Myanmar Democratic Government in 2011, and the main reform focus of the government in early childhood education for Myanmar’s young children is to provide quality health, play-oriented education. Also, at the same time educating quality early childhood teachers should be considered in order to achieve these government reform goals.
Recently, as Myanmar's social development has developed, interest in education is increasing. Myanmar’s education has been affected under the U. K. for a long time, so early childhood education and care and early childhood teacher education also have been same situation. However, with the development of Myanmar's society, the demand for high-quality early childhood education and childcare is also increasing. For high-quality early childhood education and childcare, a system for education high quality of early childhood teacher education is essential.
Therefore, this study explored the early childhood teacher education system, especially pre-service teacher education, in South Korea to make useful implication for the early childhood teacher education in Myanmar. South Korea has the same Asian culture as Myanmar, and which is a member of OECD. Despite of the aspects of cultural and social differences between South Korea and Myanmar, it is a significant thing to explore teacher training courses for early childhood education and childcare in Korea for making improvement early childhood teacher education system and its curriculum in Myanmar. Thus, through this study, I would like to take a look and find implications for the process of nurturing early childhood teachers in Myanmar. For this study, the research questions were as followed;
1. What is the process and format of early childhood teacher training in South Korea and Myanmar?
2. What is the implication of Myanmar’s early childhood teacher education?
To gather data, Myanmar and South Koreas’ government homepages and related references were reviewed. The data analysis method and procedure of this study were as follows. First, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Social Welfare in Myanmar, the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Social and welfare’s homepage in south korea government related the early childhood education and care and related studies were reviewed. Second, researcher set the criteria to compare the early childhood education systems and also, the criteria were reviewed and confirmed by researcher, peer researchers who majored early childhood education and the supervisor. Finally, six criteria were created for the analysis. The data analysis of this study collected data that has been presented on the latest teacher training process in two countries.
Overall, to present in 3 ways, the main results of this study were as followed. First, there was a difference between Myanmar and South Korea in teacher training institutions. In Myanmar the teacher training courses run by ECCD’s programs not the major in the university. These programs have been consisted mainly of field practicum and seminars provided by early childhood institutes in Myanmar. In contrast to Myanmar, in South Korea early childhood pre-service teacher training are operated as a major in the University courses. In South Korea emphasizes theoretical classes while taking field training as essential. In Myanmar, the teacher education course is composed of seminars with a focus on practical training.
Second, the study is figured out the different of the administration for teachers’ certificates. In Myanmar, teacher’s certificate is belonged to the Ministry of Social Welfare. In South Korea, kindergarten teachers’ certificate is belonged to the ministry of education and child care teacher's certificate is managed by the Ministry of social and welfare.
Third, the training period is different. As mentioned above the training institutions for childcare teachers are two-year, three-year colleges, or four-year colleges and graduate schools in south Korea. In contrast to Myanmar, teacher training periods range from 1 month to 1 year, where one year is part-time study provided by ECCD. Most Myanmar teachers took a short time teacher training course such as 1month, 3month or 6months.
The stated above, some implications for Myanmar’s pre-service early childhood teacher education were discussed. First there is need to increase the period of teacher training in order to improve pre-service teachers’ professional competency. Second, the curriculum for pre-service early childhood teacher education should be carefully considered and structured based on the balance between theories and practicum. And also, the most important thing is to establish to make the major study of the University as a bachelor of arts. Third, policy support is absolutely necessary to improve the quality of early childhood education. The government systematically needs to support teacher education in accordance with the early childhood education development plan. South Korea administrated the early childhood teacher training to strengthen the pro professionalism.
In order to establish a foundation for early childhood teacher education which is suitable for Myanmar's situation. Its further research should be conducted to analyze the needs of early childhood teacher's policy.
Key words: Early Childhood Education, Kindergarten Teacher, Childcare Teacher