The Empowerment of Education in East Timor Through In-service Teacher Training

Abstract

East Timor has reached independence in 2002, after two periods of colonialism and after severe violence, especially following 1999. As a result, the country was almost destroyed, and lost its qualified workforce in all sectors, including education. To ensure national independence it is essential to reconstruct and build the basic infrastructures for all sectors, and mainly, prepare a technical and professional elite expected to ensure the autonomy of the society and the sovereignty of the state. In this context, education plays a key role. The Timorese Government has supported several approaches to empower national education, mainly through in-service teacher education. In this paper we propose to (i) characterise the educational system in East Timor and how it has changed in recent years, and (ii) contextualize and characterize the in-service teacher education in East Timor.