ABSTRACT
The authors of this chapter (Lindsay Howard, one of the module writers, and Hertha Pomuti, an education officer for the BETD working from the National Institute for Educational Development (NIED), a directorate of the Ministry of Basic Education and Culture), wish to share their initial experiences of the partnership that was formed to produce distance materials for the Basic Education Teacher Diploma In-service Program, (hereafter referred to as the BETD INSET). This program uses a practice-based inquiry approach and actively engages teachers in practical activities of inquiry about their daily classroom practice as a means of constructing an understanding of the reform processes. The goal is for teachers to take responsibility for effecting change in their own classrooms. The chapter will itself follow the same inquiry cycle as the materials that were developed— plan, act, reflect, and evaluate—in order to renew the plan (see Figure 9.1). First, however, we would like to situate our education narratives in terms of (a) the background of the BETD INSET teachers, (b) the background to the BETD INSET itself, and (c) the changes that we are trying to effect at school level through practice-based inquiry (PBI).
