An advanced training workshop to build capacity of Korean educators on developing and implementing GCED teaching methods was held in Malaysia. Co-organized by APCEIU and Arts-ED, a Malaysian educational NGO, the workshop hosted twenty primary and secondary school teachers from July 30 to August 3 in Penang.
With ‘GCED through Place-Based Learning (PBL) Approach’ as the main theme of the workshop, participants explored the utility of PBL as a tool to implement GCED. The workshop featured experience-centered programmes such as PBL case studies, PBL field visits, lectures, and visits to local schools followed by action plan design and presentation.
The participants could not only learn about the core principles of PBL but also observe actual cases of implementation at schools and the local community in Penang. They have also visited Chowrasta Market for two days, a famous traditional marketplace of Penang, as a fieldwork, which provided an opportunity to learn and apply PBL tools such as issue mapping and interviewing vendors and customers.
Through this year’s workshop, participants had a chance to learn and reflect through case studies and fieldwork on PBL, a transformative learner-centered teaching method, while developing their own GCED projects through group discussion and feedback. Moreover, they visited schools that implement PBL principles to discuss with the Malaysian teachers concrete strategies that utilize local issues.
Towards the end of the workshop, each group presented plans for their new projects based on the fieldwork as well as sharing GCED action ideas that utilize PBL approach in their own local context. APCEIU plans to highlight the potentials of PBL as a method to implement GCED while discovering and gathering future outcomes to introduce model cases to the domestic and international audience.