EDUCATION INTERNATIONAL
onstrate these techniques themselves during the interaction with student teachers. They have to “teach what they preach” in order to convince teachers of the validity of these practices and show how to apply them in the classroom.86 In practice, however, “most teacher education programmes are taught in a traditional way.”87 Although mentors are aware of the paradigm shift to participatory and active learning methods, lecturing is the most common practice in teacher education in countries like Niger, Senegal, and Burkina Faso.88 In schools that have already been forced to hire untrained personnel, the organisation of in-service mentoring of teachers is extremely difficult.89 Especially in vast rural areas, mentors are unable to visit their students on a regular basis, so that the in-service part of the programme shrinks to a “sink or swim” model. It also makes the upgrading programme strongly dependent on support from colleagues within school, in a kind of apprenticeship model. The question is to what extent such collegial support can be counted on. Under difficult working conditions with large class sizes and double shifts, it is far from realistic to rely on the supervisory capabilities and inclinations of a few qualified colleagues. Moreover, to induce collegial participation it would be necessary to provide the mentoring teachers themselves with training courses and financial incentives. These aspects show the need for a carefully designed instruction programme for mentors, including qualified sympathetic colleagues in school, to prepare them to educate the unqualified teachers.90 Potential mentors would have to have sufficient academic background and teaching experience to be able to acquire mentoring skills. Furthermore, such mentors will expect to be paid for this assignment.91
Cost-effectiveness With so many unqualified teachers, it is necessary to select a model that can simultaneously educate many teachers at low cost. But however promising the model, if it cannot be sustainably funded it will be of little use. “Little information is publicly available about the cost-effectiveness of different training pathways.”92 But we can consider the following issues: When comparing alternative models, the payment of student-teachers’ salaries during the out-of-school part of their upgrading must be classed as costs. There will consequently be a preference for alternatives that produce a large number of teachers without pulling them away from their schools for a too long period.
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An efficient solution could combine effective support from mentors while students are teaching in schools, alternated by short periods of residential education not far from the workplace. In this model, the larger part of costs lies in the financing of organisation, learning materials, and the salary payment for support and mentoring. A complementary use of distance education, by means of written course