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

Abstract

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; 2011; 2018) puts it, and (b) an empiric focus, as concretely and exemplarily reflected by Kokemohr (1990; 1998; 2002a; 2018). The study uses a qualitative sequential analysis in the perspective of the Documentary Method (Bohnsack et al., 2010) to reconstruct the participants’ conjunctive space of experiences and biographical orientations documented in transcripts of classroom interaction, a group discussion with teachers and group interviews with both primary and secondary private schools. It triangulates with inference analysis of language use in the manner attuned to Kokemohr (1989; 2001) to reconstruct features of SCBs in inclusion-exclusion modus operandi in pedagogical practice. The project is based on a learner-centered and diversity-sensitive pedagogical concept that aims to take greater account than before of students' differences in the dimensions of gender, social, cultural, ethnic origin and disability. Although it is a qualitative case study, the work provides interesting insights into typical conditional contexts of pedagogical reform projects in international cooperation. It is also an empiric exemplary Cameroonian perspective of a research on Bildungsprozess. Overall, this investigation has found out that features of SCBs of actors back, structure and sustain inclusion-exclusion dynamics of interaction in everyday social life and thereby in pedagogical interactions in Cameroon/Africa. Although the complexity of actors’ SCBs in Cameroonian/African multi-social and multi-cultural contexts, communitarian-group dynamics generally orient individual and collective actions. The consideration of actors’ SCBs is, therefore, significant for QTE in Cameroon/Africa. Considering this complexity, effective QTE in Cameroon/Africa consists of opening room for diversity, interaction and reciprocal responsibility in teaching-learning processes. That is, the more pedagogical concepts and reform projects relate and imply actors’ SCBs, the more they engage themselves in transforming (changing) their teaching and learning routines (habitus) and the more quality develops in the teaching and learning processes. In other words, the success and sustainability of cooperative pedagogical reform projects are deeply linked to how far features of actors’ SCBs are taken into consideration. The study, therefore, recommends that actors’ SCBs should be considered in reflections on the QTE, the conception, implementation and evaluation of cooperative pedagogical reform projects, the teaching and learning practices in classrooms and in the state’s efforts for quality education in Cameroon/Africa. Keywords: sociocultural backgrounds, quality teacher education, cooperative pedagogical reform projects, Bildung as a transformative process, empiric qualitative study