Government Partnership in Evidence-Informed Competency-Based Teacher Training through CPTCs

• In Event: Scaling Educational Programs: Case Studies from Uganda, Honduras, and Colombia

Proposal

Uganda’s bold education system restructuring can only be achieved through thoughtful planning and execution. Teachers are, no doubt, key to this success given their huge impact on the student learning process. However, the extent to which teachers teach can only go as far as the way they themselves learn. Therefore, this presentation describes an emerging project, partnering with government, to scale an evidence-based teacher-training approach known as “Learning to Learn”, wherein teachers experience competency-based curriculum first as learners. Implemented by Ugandan NGO, Kimanya-Ngeyo, at the primary and secondary level in Jinja district, this approach has been highly impactful and is the most cost-effective teacher-training to date. Utilizing the structure of Core Primary Teachers Colleges (CPTCs), this project envisions country-wide scaling to achieve this shared goal of a competency-based learning environment.

The approach of Learning to Learn “trains teachers to teach students to learn like scientists: posing sharp questions, framing specific hypotheses, using evidence and data gathered from everyday life whenever possible.” A previous study of the program found that the training is perhaps the most cost-effective teacher training program studied to date (Ashraf, Banerjee, and Nourani 2020). Furthermore, the training improves not only traditional learning outcomes, such as test scores, but higher-order learning outcomes, such as creativity, critical thinking, and the ability to reason scientifically. This striking result is consistent with a transition among teachers and students from a "banking'' approach ---in which the goal is for the student to assimilate facts---to a "capabilities'' approach---in which the goal is for the student to develop deeper conceptual understanding and the capacity to link this knowledge to her lived experience and social action.

The approach to scale proposed by this study is envisioned as "scaling through accompaniment," which takes its roots from the growth experience of FUNDAEC's SAT's program in Colombia. School administrators and government teacher tutors will participate in the trainings, in addition to teachers. By embedding teachers in overlapping networks of support from actors who have engaged in the training---fellow teachers, government teacher tutors, and administrators---will create persistent and dynamic effects on student learning. The proposed model of scale departs from common approaches in the literature, and has the potential to offer a new perspective on the nature and practice of scaling interventions.

Author

• Vesall Nourani, University of Chicago