Nepali teachers’ perceptions of and responses to the impacts of globalisation on their context

Since democratisation in 1950, the Nepali education system has undergone 12 reform cycles. These reforms have been influenced by international policies emerging from the Millennium Development Goals and the subsequent Sustainable Development Goals and have instigated an increasing shift toward Westernised pedagogical practices, particularly Learner-Centred Education. Within the substantial research on both the Westernisation of the Nepali education system and on Learner-Centred Education, there is often a lack of the voice of teachers and/or the research positions teachers as passive or resistant implementors of top-down reform rather than proactive, interpretative agents of change. A doctoral study reviewing Nepali primary school teachers’ implementation of the School Sector Reform Plan (2009 -2016) found a disjuncture between the teachers’ support for the philosophy of Learner-Centred Education inherent in the Plan and their implementation of these practices in their classroom. This paper conveys the voices of teachers when they describe the contextual factors they perceived influenced their philosophical support for change. Far from being passive or resistant implementors of policy reforms, their discussions highlight careful consideration of their context and the needs of their students.