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Teachers for teachers: Competency-based, continuous teacher professional development for refugee teachers in Kakuma, Kenya

Thu, March 29, 1:15 to 2:45pm, Fiesta Inn Centro Histórico, Floor: Lobby Floor, Room B

Proposal

Teachers are at the heart of learning and yet receive limited support in refugee contexts. In response to this Teachers for Teachers provides competency-based, continuous teacher professional development. It is an integrated professional development model that combines teacher training, peer coaching and mobile mentoring.

Teachers for Teachers provides the knowledge and skills necessary for teachers to make their classrooms protective, healing and learning environments.

The training model consists of two tracks and utilizes the Training Pack for Primary School Teachers in Crisis Contexts: (1) a short-term training conducted over a period of four days, consisting of 12 sessions in 23 hours; and (2) a long-term training that runs over several months, consisting of 18 sessions and 60 hours. Training takes place in the form of workshops where international and local staff lead in-person training sessions with cohorts of ideally 25-30 teachers. Topics for both training schedules include: Teacher's Role and Well-being; Child Protection, Well-being and Inclusion; Pedagogy; and Curriculum and Planning. Trainings are interactive, practical, and draw on local expertise in the Kakuma context.

Teachers who participated in the Teachers for Teachers programme reported better preparation, higher confidence, a stronger sense of purpose-not just as educators, but also as advocates for child protection and positive discipline-and that they were more aware of useful practices that can be used in their classrooms.

Introduction
War Child UK partnered with the Ministry of Education (MoE) to engage the nation’s leading ECCD experts in developing a high-quality emergency education ECCD Level one and two curriculum both adhering to international ECCD standards and adapted to the local Jordanian context. Furthermore, War Child UK developed a pilot ECCD Parental/ Caregiver Education Component. The rationale behind developing a Parental Education component builds upon the success of Positive Parenting and PARENTS DEAL sessions and provides adults with the skills, knowledge, and materials to continue educating their children outside of the classroom. Involving caregivers is an integral part of any successful ECCD programme. The sessions cover child and adolescent development which means that parents can understand their children’s different needs and that ECCD programmes support and help parents cope with their own reactions to stress. Programmes should strive to support families and children together.

Methodology
War Child UK partnered with the Ministry of Education (MoE) to engage the nation’s leading ECCD experts in developing a high-quality emergency education ECCD Level one and two curriculum both adhering to international ECCD standards and adapted to the local Jordanian context. Furthermore, War Child UK developed a pilot ECCD Parental/ Caregiver Education Component. The rationale behind developing a Parental Education component builds upon the success of Positive Parenting and PARENTS DEAL sessions and provides adults with the skills, knowledge, and materials to continue educating their children outside of the classroom. Involving caregivers is an integral part of any successful ECCD programme. The sessions cover child and adolescent development which means that parents can understand their children’s different needs and that ECCD programmes support and help parents cope with their own reactions to stress. Programmes should strive to support families and children together.

Results
Parents and caregivers benefitting from the ParentsDEAL methodology showed improvement in their psychosocial wellbeing and ability to better cope with stress and play a positive and supportive role in their children’s healthy development. Older children (who were engage in other activities and whose siblings were in the ECCD programme of the parents taking part in the sessions were asked 24 questions related to their caregiver’s behaviours including the ability to cope with stress and their parenting skills. Because these questions were not grouped by subscale as the other surveys above, all the questions are shown individually in the table below. Of the children surveyed about their parents or caregivers, 87% reported progress on their parenting skills and ability to cope with stress. The average improvement that children reported for their caregivers across the questions was 37%.
Parents and caregivers also benefitted from the Positive Parenting methodology that focuses on improving parents’ and caregivers’ parenting skills, including positive discipline to support parents in managing the challenges of raising children and helping their children cope with challenges. To assess the impact of these programmes on parents, two pre- and post-intervention surveys were conducted with the parents themselves but also the children of the parents taking part in the programmes.

The caregivers were asked questions across five domains or subscales: caregiver’s psychological health, social support, adaptation, practices of caregiving to children who have experienced traumatic events, child discipline. It should be noted that the ParentsDEAL programme content overlaps on some topics with the Positive Parenting programme, as reflected in the survey questions. However, most staff in the field gave feedback that the programmes complement and reinforce one another and many caregivers elected to take both methodologies, one after another.

Authors