QR-GCRF RF 06 2019 Identifying Cambodian School Teachers’ Needs to Improve their Performance: Stakeholders’ views on teachers’ psychological well-being as a way to improve teachers’ performance.

Project Description

Cambodia’s education system started virtually from zero in 1979 after the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge regime. This
regime killed least 1.7 million people out of seven million and 75%-80% of Cambodia’s teachers died or fled (Tan &
N.G., 2012). The negative consequences of this regime can still be seen in the education system in the 21st century with
an important shortage of qualified teachers -about 5000 of them every year (UNESCO, 2010), despite teacher training
being a priority for the Cambodian government since 1990. In fact, only 32% of primary school teachers fulfil the state
requirements of teacher training (Ministry of Education Youth and Sports; MOEYS, 2005; UNICEF, 2005) and in some
cases, only 36% of teachers have lower secondary diplomas (MoEYS, 2005). This problem is worsened in remote and
rural areas where 34.5% and 6.4% of teachers respectively, only finished primary school (UNESCO, 2010). Paired up
with school drop outs, the panorama does not look promising. The OECD (2016) estimates that 63% of school-aged
children are already out of school and although coverage and enrolment have remarkably improved (i.e., 98.4% in 2014
according to OECD, 2019), the quality of the education is constantly questioned.
Among other pressing challenges in Cambodia (i.e., environmental sustainability, health provision, poverty reduction,
access to education etc.) health and education are highlighted as key priorities of the country (World Bank, 2018).
Similarly, the OECD (2019) highlights that both, access and quality of education must be addressed urgently to improve
the welfare of the country. Specifically, quality education is a complex social construct with multiple factors, however
one of the key factors reported in the literature is teachers’ performance. Research consistently shows that by improving
teachers’ performance, children’s academic achievement is remarkably improved (Ronfeldt, Brockman & Campbell,
2019). However, research also reveals that one of the essential elements negatively impacting teachers’ performance has
to do with personal characteristics such as motivation, self-efficacy and psychological well-being (Collie et al., 2016;
Fackler & Malmberg, 2016; Zee & Koomen, 2016). Cross-cultural research consistently shows that teachers’
psychological well-being plays a key role in improving the quality of teaching in schools (Jennings, 2015; McInerney et
al., 2015). In fact, Daniels and Strauss (2010) found that discipline issues, attitudes of parents and non-institutional
support, negatively affect teachers’ well-being; however, there is no evidence of teachers’ psychological well-being in
Cambodia. This is in line with earlier conversations with the Co-I where teachers’ well-being is often underreported in
the literature. This project aims to fill this gap by initiating multidisciplinary and strategic sustainable partnerships to
identify stakeholders’ needs related to teachers’ performance and psychological well-being to develop the elements of a
roadmap for future research. The project also aims to benefit Cambodia’s professionals by delivering a lecture to teachertraining
specialists with a view to upskilling specialists’ knowledge around teachers’ psychological well-being.
Meeting with teacher-training specialists, academics, urban & rural coordinators of schools (coming from deprived
regions) and Cambodia’s MoEYS-staff, will help us identify additional teacher-training needs -with a potential initial
impact by serving as initial guidelines for Cambodia’s stakeholders to improve teacher training. These meetings will lay
the groundwork for future projects (with nationally-representative samples) aimed to create standardised measures which
MoEYS can use to assess teachers’ well-being and overall performance. This will create important empirical evidence to
inform teacher training.
This project promotes multidisciplinary and collaborative approaches to conduct excellent research with social impact in
Cambodia, being in line with the core element of the University’s Research Strategy (2017-2021). It is also aligned with
the RCUK GCRF priority area No. 4 focused on global health and wellbeing in a South East Asian country. In fact, the
need for Cambodia to improve its quality of education is aligned with Goal 4 of the SDG’s and more specifically with
target 4C which urges the need to work globally, to increase the supply of qualified teachers through international
cooperation.