Reaching out to those furthest behind: The role of instructional leadership programme leveraging a blended approach towards supporting educators.

• In Event: Practical approaches to supporting and empowering teachers and schools to secure quality equitable learning in uncertain times: Lessons from Kenya, Uganda and Zambia

Proposal

This paper focuses on a school leadership training programme in Kenya, which seeks to enhance the working conditions of instructional leaders in schools both privately owned and located in informal settlements, and public schools located in rural areas of Kenya that tend to be left out of mainstream support. Considering the socio-economic, political and socio-historical contexts of informal settlements, little support is offered to privately owned learning institutions, with weak teaching capacity standing out. We seek to share lessons learned from embracing a blended approach to supporting school leaders during the pandemic.
This paper is based on practical insights from implementation of the training programme, and a comparative analysis of data pre- and post- intervention to demonstrate positive shifts in instructional leadership, classroom culture and learner engagement. Data includes teacher classroom observations; school leader surveys and key interviews; and learners’ assessments in literacy, numeracy and acquisition of 21st century skills.
The programme takes its inspiration from the Swahili word Stawisha, which means to enhance, and aims to strengthen partner schools’ leadership, improve instructional quality, providing infrastructure to help create an environment where all students can develop the skills and strength of character to thrive. The delivered content focuses on effective strategies for instructional leadership such as vision setting, use of data of decision making, and building results-oriented teams. Teachers also undertake courses to improve teaching pedagogy, leading to more responsive learner engagement. Classroom culture, with an aim to enhance discipline and safety of learners, is also covered in-depth.
The 2021 cohort was a programme milestone as it embraced a blended approach, with both in-person and virtual delivery of training and coaching. Within a year, results demonstrated the impact of this approach, using assessments pre- and post-session to gauge the impact of the training, plus follow-up coaching sessions to obtain additional data on the application of newly acquired information. Results demonstrated an average increase of 30% in school leaders’ development of systems that promoted student achievement. Significant improvements in school leader and teacher relationships were noted and success stories documented.
Surveys, key informants' interviews, and classroom observations revealed an average increase of 31% in learner engagement, a sign that school leaders are effectively supporting teachers. Coaches supporting teachers post-training confirmed that teachers were applying pedagogical skills that fast tracked learners’ social and emotional skills. These results have fostered interest in better understanding the positive effects of blended approaches towards training and coaching, versus an in-person only approach.
Lessons learned through the programme confirmed that this blended approach can be applied at scale. Additionally, school leaders and teachers reported positively on the use of scenarios to support resources shared through the online platform. Feedback also highlighted potential improvements including onboarding education officials as part of the design team; a detailed induction within the online platform allowing participants to address and resolve teething issues; the critical role of follow up coaching, which has proven to be the magic ingredient, strengthening positive results.

Author

• nancy gikandi, Dignitas