Strengthening School Leadership: Meaningfully Embedding Teacher Development and Support in Schools for Improved Learning Outcomes

• In Event: Empowerment through Action: Preserving the Teaching Workforce and Indigenous Practices

Proposal

“The greatest influence on student progression in learning is having highly expert, inspired and passionate teachers and school leaders working together to maximize the effect of their teaching.” (Hattie, 2015)

Most ‘at-scale’ teacher development and support efforts are dependent on actors beyond the local school ecosystem. This is particularly problematic in the international education sector, where programs are often driven by agendas far removed from local context and culture. Consequently, teacher development and support is often poorly targeted, dependent on external actors, lacking in follow-up support for sustainable shifts in classroom and pedagogical practice; and delivered via mechanisms that hinder meaningful, sustainable impact.

To the contrary, local school leadership is a critical, yet often overlooked lever in shifting power to local communities that can nurture sustained improvements in pedagogical practice for lasting impact on learners, schools and communities, whilst leaning on local strengths.
Dignitas, through the Coaching at Scale study, led in collaboration with the Kenya Education Management Institute (Ministry of Education), has sought to address this by generating an evidence-based framework with accompanying toolkits and resources to ensure teacher development and support for successful curriculum delivery is embedded in local school leadership teams.

The study was designed to generate evidence for sustainable, locally-driven school improvement by answering the following key learning questions:
1) How do we scale coaching support for School Leaders and Teachers in a way that is impactful and sustainable?
2) How do we co-design, disseminate and implement a common framework that embodies the core principles of coaching?
3) How do we embed resources for quality coaching practice at a local institutional level with minimal external support?

Coaching at Scale leans on a strengths-based approach to ensure that solutions are driven by a collective understanding of how to lean into local pedagogical strengths that support successful curriculum delivery. Allier-Gagneur, Z et al (2020) highlights recommendations for teacher professional development designers including; “acknowledge and build on teachers’ existing knowledge, views and experiences,…empower teachers to become reflective practitioners and structure teacher education around practice-based cycles of trial and refinement,…incorporate peer support,…prioritize school-based teacher education,…(and) ensure support from school leaders.”

Their recommendations are best enabled through support embedded in local school leadership. Pedagogical solutions are not prescribed but rather shaped by local leadership in response to locally collected data and insights. This also allows school leaders and other local stakeholders to lean into indigenous models of leadership and school improvement, and shifts the power of decision-making to local communities and leaders by placing tools within their reach to effect those decisions through the utilization of local data, knowledge and insight.

This presentation will share findings from the Coaching at Scale study, comparison of schools across two counties that showed gains in local pedagogical practice that were aligned with national curriculum delivery expectations, and an increase in the use of locally gathered data to drive decisions around teacher support and development.

Authors

• Deborah Kimathi, DIGNITAS LIMITED

• Nancy Gikandi, Dignitas