Effect of hands-on STEM teacher training pilot program amongst math and science teachers in Monrovia, Liberia

• In Event: What works and what doesn’t: Professional development for teachers

Proposal

Introduction: Embedding hands-on STEM learning into the education system in the African context can serve as an avenue to build capacity to combat injustice and inequity. As students engage in inquiry through exploring phenomena around them, they strengthen their ability to solve problems broadly. However, in order to achieve this, teachers must first be equipped to deliver hands-on, inquiry-based lessons in their classrooms. Over the last few years, Practical Education Network (PEN) has been training science and math teachers in Ghana to use hands-on methods leveraging locally-available materials. The program has seen great success and stakeholders in other parts of the continent have called for it as well. In 2022, PEN took up the call and piloted its program with teachers in Monrovia, Liberia, over one academic year.
Aim: The project sought to introduce hands-on pedagogy which utilizes local materials to bring science to life in the classroom while enabling learners' learn effectively by doing.
Methodology: PEN partnered with The Ministry of Education and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in Liberia to train 33 science and math teachers using a blended (both in-person and online) training approach. Beneficiary teachers were selected by The Ministry of Education in Liberia using a documented selection criteria. The selected teachers were from 10 schools in different provinces. A pre-post intervention (without a control group) approach was used to determine the impact of PEN’s hands-on teaching approach on teachers’ attitudes, skills and teaching methods. Descriptive Data Analysis was used to summarize the characteristics of the data set obtained from the data collection tools.
Results: Pre-training surveys analyzed showed that most (55.2%) teachers' usual style of handling science/math lessons is writing points on the board and explaining them to learners. Again before PEN introduced its hands-on teaching method, 34.8% teachers believed that writing points on the board and explaining to learners was the most effective approach to teaching science/math. Feedback shows that the training was well received, clear, understandable, and empowering to the beneficiary teachers. Beneficiary teachers have gained a lot of skills and are eager to use hands-on methods to teach because they have gained confidence to use hands-on methods to teach. All five Likert scale scores related to teacher skills and attitudes increased, on average, for the participating teachers over the course of the training, but only one (“confidence to teach a hands-on activity”) was statistically significant (p <0.05). Results also showed that PEN maintained the quality of the training even though this was the first time its training was deployed in Liberia.
Conclusions: PEN successfully developed a blended version of its training due to changes COVID-19 has brought in the education sector, converting its face-to-face content into blended modules. The training was implemented as expected especially with regards to the training content, surveys and assignments given to participants. The quality of the training was also maintained and teachers gained confidence to use hands-on methods to teach STEM.

Authors

• Mawuena Asem Hanson, Practical Education Network

• Heather Beem, Ashesi University

• Elyse Addison, Practical Education Network

• Nana Yaw Kyeremeh Osei-Safo, Practical Education Network