Abstract:
For the first time since its independence in 2002, Timor-Leste (East Timor) is producing its own curricula completely in-country. The current primary-school curriculum reform includes not only new curricula, but also scripted lesson plans, classroom materials, training videos, and even a literacy TV show. Managed by the Ministry of Education, staffed by a multinational team, and supported by development partners, the reform aims to improve educational quality and contribute to national development by adapting international best practices to the Timorese context. Much research in the anthropology of education has debated how the competing forces of localization and globalization shape schooling systems around the world. Studies in the anthropology of development have examined the structures and strategies that attempt to bridge cultural divides in international development projects. Located at the intersection of these two fields, this paper examines how reform staff and school teachers translate reform policy into practice. The study is based on two months of ethnographic fieldwork in the reform project office and primary schools in the capital, Dili, also drawing on the researcher’s own experience as a consultant to the reform. The research methods included audiovisual recordings, workplace and classroom observations, and semi-structured interviews, resulting in the present paper and an accompanying ethnographic film. The research found that educational actors’ divergent visions of education and development, diverse working environments and unequal access to information about the reform shape the way they translate reform policy into practice, in sometimes unintended ways. Crucially, the research found that while reform staff want to internationalize pedagogy and localize content, school teachers generally want to retain localized pedagogy but internationalize content. As such, the paper argues for the value of ethnographic research in broadening understandings of the complex terrain into which educational policy is introduced in international development contexts.