The Complexities of Postcolonial Educational Reform: Teacher Implementation of Mali's Pedagogie Convergente Method

Since 1994, Mali has embraced a nation-wide effort to incorporate the Peagogie Convergente (PC) reform, a transitional bilingual education method, into all primary schools. Many teachers considered this a top-down reform and misunderstood its theoretical objectives, which led to ambivalent attitudes and hybrid practices. The postcolonial and education reform theories that guided my analysis, however, suggest that hybridized attitudes and implementation practices are to be expected and even respected. I thus focused mainly on Malian teachers' attitudes and practices with the PC reform. My research design consisted of interviews and classroom observations with teachers from both PC and "regular" Classique schools in three regions of Mali: Bamako, Koulikoro, and Djenne. While Bamanankan, the majority language, was used in the first two regions, Fulfulde, a minority language, was the medium of instruction in Djenne. In order to triangulate the data collected in schools, I also attended the teacher training for the method and interviewed regional education directors who were involved in its organization and administration.