Crossing Boundaries: Teacher Trainers and Science Curriculum Implementation in East Timor

In-service teacher training is being implemented in East Timor in order to help Timorese teachers, who are ill-prepared to exploit new educational resources, as part of the restructuring of the secondary education curriculum in Portuguese. Such in-service teacher training has been implemented for all 14 disciplines, including the science and technology ones. Taking into account such issues, the purpose of the study is to i) characterize the Chemistry, Geology and Physics teacher training being implemented, using the new educational resources; ii) identify changes in the pedagogical practices of Timorese teachers resulting from such training and iii) identify possible constraints on quality pedagogical practice. The research paradigm adopted in this study is constructivist-interpretative, with the qualitative study as its organizing perspective. In conducting this study, semi-structured interviews were carried out with three Portuguese trainers at the beginning of 2014 and some training sessions were directly observed and audio recorded. Content analysis, guided by specific categories, was used to analyse the collected data. Findings show that the in-service teacher training developed in all of the three areas focused on subjects and teaching and learning methodologies regarding the new educational resources produced. The Timorese teachers have introduced some changes in pedagogical practices, such as group work and questioning. However, there is still much to do. The in-service teacher training needs to continue to support an appropriate use of these resources. It is also important to simultaneously focus on improvements in Timorese school infrastructures, and on the continuous training of Timorese trainers in the Portuguese language.