Small non-residential trainings vs. large residential training: Findings from action research in Uganda

• In Event: Teacher education programmes: lessons from Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Europe

Proposal

Training a large number of teachers across a large geographical area in a short period of time (often only during school holidays) time is a persistent challenge for many education systems and projects. The USAID-funded Uganda School Health and Reading Program (SHRP), implemented by RTI International, has been training teachers in Early Grade Reading (EGR) methods since early 2013. Up until 2018, all SHRP program in-service teacher trainings had been conducted through large-scale, residential trainings hosted at primary teacher colleges (PTCs). In May, 2018, SHRP piloted smaller scale teacher refresher trainings which were non-residential by conducting the trainings at coordinating center (CC) schools where teachers could travel to and from the training site to home each day.
The coordinating centers were originally introduced by the Uganda Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) under the Teacher Development and Management Systems (TDMS) which started in 1993; it was conceived as an integrated delivery system for primary education reform services focusing on improved pupil learning. Some of the initial activities of TDMS were refresher courses commonly termed continuous professional development (CPD) courses/workshops to enable teachers and head teachers to handle the ever changing curricular, pedagogical and managerial demands. Several of these took place in CCs; all teachers and head teachers commuted to the CCs to attend the CPD courses/workshops. To date, CCs are still a vital grassroots structure in the TDMS delivery system, but they have usually not been utilized when rolling out large scale trainings under projects or other initiatives, which have tended to follow the traditional model where teachers travel to and reside at teacher training colleges while the trainings are conducted over a number of consecutive days. This residential model of training has proven to be very resource intensive and not sustainable through the regular systems and funds available to the MoES
In order to learn the effect of these smaller, closer trainings compared to the traditional residential model, the SHRP team designed action research to determine if the smaller trainings held closer to the schools at CCs are more effective, or at least as effective, as the larger trainings in terms of teacher attendance, content coverage, teacher learning, and teacher satisfaction by answering the following questions:
• Are teachers present? Are the right teachers being trained?
• Is the training covering the same amount of content as the residential trainings?
• Are teachers learning more (or at least the same amount) as they are in the larger trainings?
• What is the difference in cost between non-residential and residential trainings? Are there cost savings from holding the trainings closer to the teachers’ schools?
Research was conducted at five CCs and 3 residential training venues. Data was collected on teacher attendance, content coverage, and teacher learning at the trainings. Views of participants, facilitators, SHRP and MOES officials were also collected.
Major findings and recommendations to action: Non-residential, CC-level trainings are an equally and, potentially, more effective for training delivery, the key component to ensuring high quality trainings lies in the content delivery and individual trainers. In general, CC level training is better for ensuring that teachers attend and the right teachers (the actual class teacher) is trained. Class sizes are smaller and teachers may be learning more. Still, programs need to ensure the quality of the training, whatever the mode/venue by tracking teacher attendance and quality of trainers. Participants and other stakeholders were positive about the CC level training and the CC training was less expensive.
The findings seem to indicate that the original TMDS model of CC based training is still upheld and can be revitalized but with modifications according to the current context.

Authors

• Scholastica Tiguryera, RTI International

• Tracy Brunette, RTI International