Finish education system as a springboard for teachers' reflection on educations practice in a Maldivian school system Hawwa Nazima : a case study /

Abstract:

The purpose of this qualitative study is to determine if reflection among novice teachers can be generated through a scenario and to investigate the changes reflection brings to their perception on educational practices in the Maldives. Finnish education system was selected as the scenario to be used as it provides a sense of familiarity as well as adequate detachability which identifies to be necessary to generate reflection. As such five teachers from a secondary school located in Male', Maldives, having professional teaching experience of 1-3 years, were selected and six different aspects of the Finnish education system were presented to them. Audio recorded, semi-structured, individual interviews and a focus group discussion interview were then conducted and thematic analysis of data was carried out to evaluate if the scenario presented had bought any changes to the participants' perception and thus generated reflection.
As such, seven main themes were identified as findings. Participants highlighted the issues related to their personal practice, practices of the school and those of the education system of the Maldives and suggestions for improvement were brought forward. The results of this research showed that Finnish education system is a scenario that can generate reflection among teachers and influence their preperceptions of the current educational practices of the Maldives.
This thesis presents this research in six chapters; i) introduction, ii) contextualization, iii) literature review, iv) methodology, v) data analysis, Findings and evaluation of findings and vi) conclusion.