Sociocultural Backgrounds and Quality Teacher Education in Africa: A Qualitative Case Study of Pedagogical Reform Projects of the Evangelical Church of Cameroon (EEC) in Mbouo-Bandjoun, West-Cameroon
It is generally agreed that the quality teacher education (QTE) improves the quality of teaching and learning processes. Pedagogical reform endeavors in Cameroon’s private church educations in the 1980s aimed at coping with the economic crisis of 1985, which led to the closure of many teacher-training institutions of the State under the economic policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The high QTE was then a survival strategy, a quality asset for the parents’ choice of a church school. In this view, the Evangelical Church of Cameroon (EEC) promoted reform projects researching the perspectives of change of a dominant mono-logical system of a teaching and learning process to a more diversity-based interactive learner-centered pedagogy (Kokemohr, 1998; Foaleng, 2005; Moukoko, 2012a; Fonssi, 2018). The debate is still influenced by a historic colonial heritage background of education (Njimoluh, 2010). Cooperative projects in a postcolonial and rapidly changing Cameroon are still suffering from a general criticism of their “imported character” (Kokemohr, 2002a; Kä Mana, 2012a). This study rather focuses on concrete educational problems and the actors’ experiences in practical pedagogical situations involving participants of the reform project. It answers the core research question of in how far the actors’ sociocultural backgrounds (SCBs) are significant in the target projects’ development process within a complex multi-cultural Cameroon. The Sociocultural backgrounds can encompass the actors’ biographies, the social/cultural assets, and the habitus (Bourdieu, 1984; 2010). Intercultural cooperative actors are engaged in the projects, according to their complex sociocultural backgrounds. It is worth investigating the possible roles of ingrained social structures and cultural dispositions in the projects’ development processes. The study uses a theoretic perspective of Bildung (education) as a transformative process (a) “according to and beyond” Bourdieu’s theory of Habitus and Capitals, as Koller (2010; ...