In this symposium we argue that accurate data on teachers’ actual skills and knowledge are a key factor in designing and implementing teacher education and development programmes that really impact on classroom practice and learners’ outcomes. We demonstrate this with four case studies from Rwanda, Nigeria, Burma and India.
As the Global Education Monitoring Report 2016 suggests, existing data about education quality and achievement is often based on crude measures such as enrolment and completion. Far more refined measures of education inputs, quality and achievement are required across the board. As improving the quality of teaching is regarded as a major influence on the quality of education, then more accurate data is required in this area, both to gain insight into the current situation and to identify approaches that will actually make improvements. Given that the recruitment and retention of qualified teachers, access to effective continuing professional development and support of untrained teachers in the classroom are a global challenge, new, more cost-effective and scalable approaches to teacher education and development are urgently needed.
Teaching for Success is our approach to CPD systems and practice developed in response to these global challenges, including the tendency in many countries to conceptualise teacher education and development only as face to face training, often front-loaded. The approach prioritises the use of accurate data to define outcomes and activity to meet local teacher development needs and achieve maximum impact. In particular we have developed a comprehensive CPD framework describing teachers’ and teacher educators’ knowledge and skills and a suite of diagnostic tools linked to these, including a teachers’ self-assessment tool, a teacher educators’ reflection questionnaire, classroom and training room observation tools, and APTIS for teachers, a language assessment tool, which provide quantitative and qualitative data that can be triangulated. Through these we give education systems, educators and teachers access to data that helps them set their own improvements.
The case study from Rwanda relates to the transition to English as the national teaching language, initiated by the government there in 2008. It reports on the teacher development pilot innovations in Rwanda under DFID’s Innovation for Education Programme (2012-15), and will discuss how data collected using our APTIS for teachers tool provides valuable information touching on SDG themes for education, such as inclusion, showing variations in levels between male/female, urban/rural teachers. Such data has not been available before but is essential in meeting language proficiency targets set by agencies providing assistance in the country. The case study from Nigeria, the Strengthening Teachers’ English Language Proficiency in Northern Nigeria (STEPIN) project (2013-2019), funded by UKAID and managed by Mott MacDonald, will provide evidence of how similar data on teachers’ language proficiency and professional needs provides insights into a different context.
In Burma the National Education Sector Plan (NESP) educational reform has set challenging targets for the modernisation of education in the country. This case study focuses on the English for Education College Trainers (EfECT) project (2014-2016) and how both quantitative and qualitative data was gathered and used mid-project in order to measure impact and identify further action towards improving the English language and trainer competence of college trainers preparing new teachers.
The case study from India will focus on two different approaches to classroom observation and three different approaches to collecting qualitative data for the development of teachers and teacher educators – including ‘most significant change’. It will discuss how these methods have been used to provide real insight into the learning of teachers, demonstrate deep and personal impact and play a role in advocating similar innovations in other parts of the country.
