Quality teaching in rural Sub-Saharan Africa: Different perspectives, values and capabilities

Over the last decade vast sums have been invested in Sub-Saharan Africa to enhance teacher quality. Yet improvements in quality – when interpreted as enhanced pupil attainment – are disappointing. This paper shows how Amartya Sen’s capability approach can help answer the call for a renewed focus on, and reconceptualisation of, quality teaching by considering the pursuit of valued goals in teachers’ work. It is increasingly understood that what teachers do, matters. Drawing on a recently completed PhD, this paper examines the professional capabilities of two women teachers from a rural Nigerian school. These teachers provide a focus for exploring the relationship between official representations of teachers’ work and the professional lives teachers create and experience. Official perspectives were extrapolated from policy documents around teachers’ work, teachers’ perspectives were drawn from an ethnography of rural teachers’ lives carried out between 2007 and 2011. A list of professional capabilities was developed from each perspective to represent what was valued in teachers’ work, and the study developed an analytical framework for evaluating teachers’ professional capability from each perspective. This paper draws out some highlights of this analysis and proposes a new cyclical model of professional capability for quality teaching

Understanding the Professional Lives of Female Teachers in Rural Sub-Saharan African Schools: A Capability Perspective

This study examines an important dimension of the global challenge to achieve Education for All: the professional lives of female teachers in rural communities in Sub Saharan Africa. Teachers from five countries (Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and Sudan) provide a focus for exploring the relationship between official representations of teachers' work and the professional lives teachers create and experience. The official perspective is drawn from an analysis of documentary evidence and interviews with policy makers and officials. Teachers; perspectives are derived from an ethnographic and narrative analysis of data collected during fieldwork in schools. The thesis is framed by the capability approach. It compiles lists of professional capablities for each perspective and examines teachers' agency to pursue and achieve these capabilities. The thesis establishes that: - the capability approach provides a frame of reference for understanding the professional lives of teachers. In particular it highlights disconnections between official and teacher perceptions of the teacher role and teacher effectiveness and makes visible patterns of agency teachers have within their professional lives. - the predominantly deficit model of teacher work in Sub-Saharan Africa expressed in policy documentation and the literature fails to take account of the more complex ways in which female working lives are situated; for example the intersection of professional values with rurality and gender. - teachers do not necessarily perceive rurality in negative terms, but rather the "conditions of support" associated with rurality. This defines a further dimension to teacher agency and has implications for re-examining the professional and administrative structures within which teachers work. The thesis concludes by proposing a model of professional capability for female teachers working in rural communities in Sub-Saharan Africa in a form that could engage research and policy communities, and suggesting grounds for re-thinking policy orientations to teachers working in such contexts

New teachers and corporal punishment in Ghana

School-based corporal punishment is still legal in 76 countries (SRSG 2012). A large-scale survey of children in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Viet Nam reported that 50–90% of children had witnessed a teacher administering physical punishment in the week prior to the survey (Ogando Portela and Pells 2015). While others have highlighted that some teachers, parents and even children believe that corporal punishment is linked to improved learning (Parkes and Heslop 2011; Morrow and Singh, 2014), Ogando Portela and Pells’ longitudinal research found that corporal punishment at age 8 is associated with poorer learning outcomes at age 12 (see also UNICEF 2014)

Education Workforce Initiative: Initial Research

The purpose of this initial research is to offer evidenced possibilities in the key areas of education workforce roles, recruitment, training, deployment and leadership, along with suggested areas for further research to inform innovation in the design and strengthening of the public sector education workforce. The examples described were identified through the process outlined in the methodology section of this report, whilst we recognise that separation of examples from their context is problematic – effective innovations are highly sensitive to context and uncritical transfer of initiatives is rarely successful. The research aims to support the Education Workforce Initiative (EWI) in moving forward with engaging education leaders and other key actors in radical thinking around the design and strengthening of the education workforce to meet the demands of the 21st century. EWI policy recommendations will be drawn from a number of country level workforce reform activities and research activity associated with the production of an Education Workforce Report (EWR). This research has informed the key questions, approach and structure of the EWR as outlined in the Education Workforce Report Proposal. Issues pertaining to teaching and learning in primary and secondary education are at the centre of the research reported here; the focus is on moving towards schools as safe places where all children/ young people are able to engage in meaningful activity. The majority of the evidence shared here relates to teachers and school leaders; evidence on learning support staff, district officials and the wider education workforce is scant. Many of the issues examined are also pertinent to the early childhood care and education sector but these are being examined in depth by the Early Childhood Workforce Initiative. Resourcing for the Education Workforce was out of scope of this initial research but the EC recognises, as outlined in the Learning Generation Report, that provision of additional finance is a critical factor in achieving a sustainable, strong and well-motivated education workforce, particularly but not exclusively, in low and middle income countries. The next stage of EWI work will consider the relative costs of current initiatives and modelling of the cost implications of proposed reforms. EWI aims to complement the work on teacher policy design and teacher career frameworks (including salary structures) being undertaken by other bodies and institutions such as Education International, the International Task Force on Teachers for 2030 and the Teachers’ Alliance, most particularly by bringing a focus on school and district leadership, the role of Education Support Professionals (ESPs) and inter-agency working

Understanding teachers’ working experiences: capturing data on teachers as professionals, learners and change-makers in low resource contexts

When we picture a school, many of us will see a teacher, standing at the front of a classroom. When our children are at school, it’s their teachers we turn to with concerns. When we think back to our own school days, we think fondly about our favourite teachers, those who really stood out. Teachers have always been at the heart of education, at least in the popular imagination. It is particularly odd, then, that in much of the education research and policy discourse in low-income countries over the past 20 years teachers have been side-lined and presented as passive, generic (and often negative) inputs. While children’s engagement with education systems is increasingly framed in constructivist terms, with much attention given to the interrelation between their ideas and their experiences, these terms have been far less evident in research and policy around teachers’ engagement with these same systems

Book Reviews

The following publication contains book reviews of these titles: Seth Giddings, (2014) Gameworlds: Virtual Media and Children’s Everyday Play. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. 192 pages. ISBN-10: 1501318292. ISBN-13: 978-1501318290 Gibbons, A. S. (2014). An architectural approach to instructional design. New York: Routledge. ISBN-10: 0415807395. ISBN-13: 978-0415807395 Simone White and Michael Corbett (eds.), 2014. Doing Educational Research in Rural Settings: Methodological issues, international perspectives and practical solutions. Routledge: London and New York. 234 pages ISBN-10: 041582351X, ISBN- 13: 978-0415823517 Jill Porter (2014). Understanding and Responding to the Experience of Disability. Routledge: London and New York. 170 pages ISBN-10: 0415822912 ISBN-13: 978-041582291

The role of OER localisation in building a knowledge partnership for development: insights from the TESSA and TESS-India teacher education projects

OER continue to support the needs of educators and learners globally. However, it is clear that to maximise their potential more focus is needed on reuse and repurposing. Accordingly, adapting OER for local contexts remains one of the greatest challenges of the open education movement, with little written about how to support communities of users to adapt materials. This paper emerges from the ongoing debate around education quality in low income countries (LICs), taking as its focus two OER projects led by the Open University –TESSA and TESS-India. These projects have collaboratively developed core banks of OERs for teacher education that respond to regional and national priorities and pedagogies. In this paper we explore how the projects have supported localisation of the OERs and how processes of OER localisation can contribute to more equal knowledge partnerships in the pursuit of education quality

“… by Seeking Help I Became Equipped, Skilled and Enlightened”: Ugandan Tutors’ Stories, Identities and Spaces for Professional Development in Teacher Colleges.

The title of this paper is taken from a story written by Norah Nakitto, a tutor at Jinja Primary Teachers’ College (PTC) in Uganda. Like a majority of stories generated during a storytelling research project with Ugandan tutors, Norah’s focuses on professi onal learning. In this paper we explore tutor learning and professional identity in the context of national programmes promoting more inclusive and equitable teaching at the primary level (MOES 2019, UNAPD 2019), which have an impact on how tutors are expe cted to work. We draw on an analysis of 39 stories from research led by the TESSA (Teacher Education in Sub - Saharan Africa) programme in collaboration with Kyambogo University. The study was initiated to understand the impact of a TESSA - MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on tutors’ practices. However, the early stages of the research suggested that, despite well - articulated examples of impact from those who had engaged with it, uptake in the Ugandan PTCs was limited; none of the tutors who participated in t he storytelling strand were aware of the MOOC. As these tutors worked in colleges where staff members had participated in a workshop to introduce the MOOC, this raised questions about knowledge - sharing. The research focus shifted to learning and collaboration in colleges to better understand the mechanisms for knowledge sharing, and the research design was adapted accordingly

Out-of-school girls’ lives in Zimbabwe: what can we learn from a storytelling research approach?

This paper focuses on the experiences of out-of-school girls in Zimbabwe. It draws on a research strand of SAGE (Supporting Adolescent Girls’ Education), a UKAid programme funded through the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s (FCDO) Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC) initiative. Using a digital storytelling approach the research highlights critical events that have changed girls’ lives and impacted on how they see their futures. The paper explores insights made possible by this alternative methodology. Crucially, it challenges the often-static representation of ‘marginalised’ and ‘out-of-school’ girls in Sub-Saharan Africa by illustrating the unpredictability of individual circumstances and girls’ perceptions of these, within broader contexts of persistent vulnerability factors. Drawing on the capability approach the paper also offers new insights into the perceived value and purpose of school for out-of-school girls. The findings have implications for conceptualising more creative, contextually appropriate policies and practices for young people who miss out on formal school

What Prevents Teacher Educators from Accessing Professional Development OER? Storytelling and Professional Identity in Ugandan Teacher Colleges

Tutors working in colleges of education in sub-Saharan Africa are responsible for teaching, and inspiring hundreds of thousands of aspiring teachers. Yet they have received little attention in the literature, often being depicted as a conservative cohort of professionals, unprepared for their role, yet resistant to change. This study reports on how 39 tutors from eight colleges in Uganda see their professional role and their responsibilities, and if professional development OER will have any impact on their professional role. The research adopted a storytelling approach. Tutors were supported in developing a (true) story about their work that they felt would give previously untold insight into their profession. The stories were analysed through a professional identity lens. The group emerged as agentive and caring, committed to developing as teacher educators but with a highly individual approach to their work. The nuanced understanding of tutor professional identity facilitated insights into why professional development OER aimed at this group did not have the intended impact. Tutors working in colleges of education in sub-Saharan Africa are responsible for teaching, and inspiring hundreds of thousands of aspiring teachers. Yet they have received little attention in the literature, often being depicted as a conservative cohort of professionals, unprepared for their role, yet resistant to change. This study reports on how 39 tutors from eight colleges in Uganda see their professional role and their responsibilities, and if professional development OER will have any impact on their professional role. The research adopted a storytelling approach. Tutors were supported in developing a (true) story about their work that they felt would give previously untold insight into their profession. The stories were analysed through a professional identity lens. The group emerged as agentive and caring, committed to developing as teacher educators but with a highly individual approach to their work. The nuanced understanding of tutor professional identity facilitated insights into why professional development OER aimed at this group did not have the intended impact. Tutors working in colleges of education in sub-Saharan Africa are responsible for teaching, and inspiring hundreds of thousands of aspiring teachers. Yet they have received little attention in the literature, often being depicted as a conservative cohort of professionals, unprepared for their role, yet resistant to change. This study reports on how 39 tutors from eight colleges in Uganda see their professional role and their responsibilities, and if professional development OER will have any impact on their professional role. The research adopted a storytelling approach. Tutors were supported in developing a (true) story about their work that they felt would give previously untold insight into their profession. The stories were analysed through a professional identity lens. The group emerged as agentive and caring, committed to developing as teacher educators but with a highly individual approach to their work. The nuanced understanding of tutor professional identity facilitated insights into why professional development OER aimed at this group did not have the intended impac