Education for all and multigrade teaching: making the school an integrated part of the indigenous world

Abstract

The central argument in this article is that for children in schools that serve impoverished, indigenous/rninority ethnic populations to learn well, the traditional Western model of schooling generally provided needs to be reformed. The aim is to deliver qualig education at the margins and for these schools to become an integratedpart of the students' world whilst still offering them new horizons, should they want them. Firstly, it uses a case study of teaching and learning in small, remote schools in the highlands of North Vietnam to identify challenges to the educational quality and reviews experiences from other countries to further illuminate the multidimensional nature of the challenges. Secondly, it reviews lessons learned from observation of multigrade teaching in successful remote schools to identzfy opportunities to improve quality and relevance through improved classroom management and more situated learning. Thirdly, it draws out the implications of the research findings for reform of teacher education and makes suggestions for adapting and expanding curricula so that all teachers are equipped with the complete set of skills they need to guide culturally sensitive and relevant learning by managing student diversity through dzfferentiati of learning tasks and outcomes.