<p><span>What is the status of professional learning communities in Vietnam and Uganda? Is there a significant difference between the teaching experience of secondary teachers and how they see the relevance of professional learning communities on professional development in Vietnam and Uganda? The forementioned questions were explored by collecting data from secondary school teachers (n=345) in Vietnam and Uganda through a questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Tukey honestly significant difference (HSD) were used to analyze the data. The findings depict that involvement of secondary school teachers in professional learning communities and the associated contribution on professional development is ‘moderate’ in Vietnam whilst, it is ‘minimal’ in Uganda. It was also established that significant difference exists between the teaching experience of secondary teachers and how they recognize the relevance of professional learning communities on professional development. The findings suggest that relevant educational policies and adequate funding ought to be considered in order to make professional learning communities vibrant in both Vietnam and Uganda. This is deemed key to enhance secondary school teacher competence which in turn could lead to higher students’ learning outcome in Vietnam and Uganda respectively.</span></p>
How competent are university teaching staff to deliver effectively their present and future university duties in Uganda? This question was explored in this study by collecting data from managers (n = 90), teachers (n = 126), and students (n = 179) through a questionnaire administered at Kyambogo University. The results show that teacher performance in the role of innovating; knowledge society facilitating; collaborating and networking; higher education designing and developing; and entrepreneurship, could not be considered as satisfactory. It was also established that there are significant differences in the perception of the aforesaid among the respondent categories. The findings suggest that urgent intervention is needed to develop teacher innovation competence if Uganda wants to have an effective higher education. This study also highlights the centrality of using various internal key stakeholders in the educational system such as students and educational managers if effective teacher performance evaluation is to be attained in universities.
Kieron Sheehy is Professor of Education (Innovation Pedagogies) at The Open University (UK). His research interests are within the broad field of inclusive education, often focusing on how teaching approaches, technologies or services can be developed to successfully support diverse groups of learners. This has encompassed creating practical pedagogies for inclusive classrooms and researching the impact of epistemological beliefs and lesson study on classroom practices.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.