Developing whole child outcomes through teacher training:The impact and implementation of Teach For Nigeria

• In Event: Teaching as Collective Leadership - Research and evidence from the Teach For All network

Proposal

Teach For Nigeria (TFN), a local network partner organization in the Teach For All (TFAll) network, implements a two year leadership development program to train new teachers (“fellows”) to teach in primary and secondary schools with an emphasis of developing students as leaders.

Over the past three years, TFN has gone on a journey to reorient around the purpose of education in its context to foster social and emotional learning (SEL) through training and support of their fellows. In 2021, the TFN senior leadership team and program designers co-developed their theory of change for whole child development and updated their contextualized vision for holistic student outcomes, emphasizing the importance of student self awareness, growth mindset, collaboration, and communication.

To understand its impact on SEL skills and school level contribution, TFN and TFAll commissioned the RAND Corporation to conduct an independent quasi-experimental impact evaluation that uses a mixed-methods approach to analzye student and teacher level data from both comparison and TFN classrooms, and triangulate these findings with qualitative data from key informant interviews and focus group with school community members. This evaluation offers insight in how a network partner has oriented teachers and students to a vision of holistic student outcomes. Additionally, in 2022, the TFN program piloted the global Teaching as Collective Leadership (TACL) framework by customizing the TACL resources to support 12 different teacher coaches to provide feedback and work collaboratively with more than 20 new teachers in creating classroom environments that foster student social and emotional learning.
The baseline and follow-up data collection for the impact study involved three types of respondents to self-reported surveys (headteachers, teachers, and students) designed to measure whole child development outcomes of students and factors that influence their development. Students were also administered grade-specific mathematics and literacy assessments based on Ogun State curricular standards developed by Ogun State Universal Basic Education Board. SEL skills were measured through a triangulation methodology, relying on student self-reported questionnaires based on internationally-validated student SEL scales and from perceptions of teachers, parents, and school leaders in qualitative interviews.
The first-year findings demonstrated that the TFN program was successful in improving foundational literacy and mathematics skills. Students in classrooms taught by TFN fellows scored approximately .11 standard deviations higher in mathematics and .07 standard deviations higher in literacy compared to students in the comparison group. The qualitative findings indicate parent and peer teachers’ perceptions of progress in terms of student behavior and socio-emotional development; however, the quantitative impact study did not find evidence that social and emotional skills improved differentially between TFN and non-TFN students. Additional data was collected at the end of the 2023 school year to understand more about the two-year effect of TFN fellows on whole child development, classroom environment, relationships, and school-level transformations.
The results of this study that will be shared in the presentation shed light on how concerted efforts to train and provide ongoing support to novice teachers in developing contexts can accelerate foundational learning and support student social and emotional development.

Author

• Edikan Unyime Mbang, Teach For Nigeria