Behavioral Science for Increasing or Improving TaRL Delivery

• In Event: Using Applied Behavioral Science to improve Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa and India

Proposal

Although primary school enrollment rates in Zambia are increasing, many children do not acquire foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) in the first few years of schooling, which can have long-term effects on their career prospects, poverty levels, and overall well-being.

In response, the Ministry of Education (MoE) in Zambia is implementing Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL), an evidence-based approach pioneered in India. For a given period of the day, outside of regular classroom hours, teachers arrange children into groups based on their learning level, rather than their age. Teachers then carry out planned activities tailored to the different learning level groups as per the TaRL classroom methodology. At the teacher’s discretion, students can move in and out of learning groups as needed.

The MoE adapted TaRL to reflect the Zambian context and called it the Catch Up program, now in eight of ten provinces across the country. They incorporated Catch Up into the existing School Programme for Inservice Training for the Term (SPRINT). Through SPRINT, teachers of grades 3 through 5 are expected to conduct Catch Up lessons. They are trained in the TaRL approach, and given platforms in school- and zonal-level meetings to voice their experiences with the program.

While teachers are required to implement Catch Up activities, their motivation is a critical factor to ensure sustained, high-quality implementation. We conducted 30 interviews with teachers in Eastern, Southern, and Lusaka Provinces to construct a nuanced picture of the Catch Up experience from their perspective. Our analysis focused on identifying and understanding factors that drive teacher motivation to teach Catch Up in the context of the program’s national scaling.

We found that teacher motivation is driven by a number of individual, social, and institutional factors, most notably:
Teachers feel varying levels of control over teaching. Broadly, we view teachers as having either an internal or external locus of control. Teachers with an internal locus of control believe that their actions lead to outcomes. Conversely, teachers with an external locus of control attribute outcomes to extraneous factors, such as inadequate funding and resources to teach.
There is a strong sense of community among teachers, and they want to be accepted among their peers. Catch Up teachers will follow what they see other teachers in their school doing. The “group” defines how they will teach Catch Up, and the need to belong drives individual motivation to conform.
Perceived lack of support from the school administration and MoE demotivates teachers. Teachers become demotivated when they are not provided with the materials required to teach Catch Up. They also feel unsupported when they are not given a classroom or dedicated space to teach Catch Up lessons.

Our next step is to survey 2,000 teachers to validate the findings from the interviews and analyze how they differ by key variables. We will then design and test solutions to improve teacher motivation. By the conference date, we will present the survey results and prototypes of the solutions that we will test.

Author

• Morgan Kabeer, Busara Center for Behavioral Economics