Bridging the Gap: Instructional Enrichment through WhatsApp to Empower Early Childhood Facilitators in Northern Pakistan

• In Event: Cultural Arts, Identity, and Employability Skills: Exploring Youth Development in Diverse Educational Spaces

Proposal

Bridging the Gap: Instructional Enrichment through WhatsApp to Empower Early Childhood Facilitators in Northern Pakistan
Yasmeen Mehboob, Senior Instructor yasmeen.mehboob@aku.edu

Aga Khan University Institute for Education Development (AKU IED) Pakistan

Abstract
This study aims to test the effectiveness of WhatsApp as a tool to bridge the learning gap for early childhood facilitators in northern Pakistan. The study addresses how a Community of Inquiry framework can be embedded within WhatsApp to create a sustained learning environment to make professional development meaningful, interactive, accessible, and supportive.
This is an empirical study focused on a qualitative-method approach. Data was gathered through In-depth interviews (IDI), focus group discussions, polls, and analysis of WhatsApp communication records. FGD results indicated that despite the challenges posed by distance, WhatsApp proved to be an effective tool and participants expressed positive attitudes and found it to be easy to handle and connect with colleagues and facilitators. The study provides insights into using innovative and resilient online pedagogies to empower early childhood facilitators in emergency and normal circumstances. The extended abstract will be of value to university faculty and policymakers, particularly in developing contexts for designing teacher training and uplifting communities through the cascade model.

Introduction:
Technology has played a vital role in our daily lives including teaching and learning. Using digital tools encourages interaction, collaboration, and personalized learning experiences. It allows rapid real-time feedback and live interaction with students from diverse backgrounds to make education more inclusive and accessible (Yeboah & Nyagorme, 2022). WhatsApp is a widely accessible, easy, and commonly used tool to engage master trainers in teaching and learning. It allows facilitators to provide guidance and respond to content-related queries and for training participants to reinforce content knowledge, get answers to the queries, exchange knowledge, and share the best practices with other colleagues from diverse regions. The professional development program provides critical reflection and lessons to educate a large workforce through a cascade model, where master trainers are first trained and then go on to educate other practitioners in their context, which is an effective method to ensure widespread training. However, logistical challenges both personnel and financial resources, make it difficult to maintain consistent support in the field by staying for extended periods in the field or frequent travel. To address the challenge WhatsApp was used as a communication tool for learning and professional development in education particularly in distant and underprivileged communities (Chitanana, 2023).

Research Rationale
The research project is a case study focusing on the use of WhatsApp as the vehicle for a cascade training model in early childhood teacher education in geographically remote and underserved regions like northern Pakistan. This study aims to explore the effectiveness of WhatsApp as a tool to bridge the learning gap for early childhood facilitators by using the Community of Inquiry framework (COI) to create a sustained learning environment and make the professional development course meaningful, interactive, and accessible and support participants during the training and implementation phase. Over a module, WhatsApp was used with a diverse group of participants including teachers, health workers, and community mobilizers distributed across northern areas of Pakistan to enhance their pedagogical content knowledge about early childhood education through synchronous and asynchronous methods.
WhatsApp, as a widely accessible and cost-effective mobile tool, allows facilitators to offer timely assistance, answer questions, and share resources whenever needed, ensuring continued learning without the constraints of travel. It also fosters a collaborative learning environment by keeping communication open between trainers and participants across distances.

Theoretical Framework:
The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework serves as the foundation for this study, exploring how WhatsApp facilitates social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence. With the COI framework, social presence was captured through interactions and communication patterns among facilitators and trainees via WhatsApp. Cognitive presence is examined through shared content, reflections, and discussions while teaching presence is assessed through timely feedback, guidance, support, and recourse sharing from facilitator to master trainers and from master trainers to their other master trainer colleagues. provided by faculty.
Research Questions:
1. How does WhatsApp function as an interactive and effective tool for communication and collaboration in a cascade teacher training model?
2. How is the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework (social, cognitive, and teaching presence) evident in the use of WhatsApp during the cascade training process?
3. What are the key themes identified in the use of WhatsApp as a support tool in teachers’ professional development, resource sharing, feedback, and building learning communities?

Design/methodology:
This is an Empirical study with a qualitative approach. Within the qualitative framework, data was gathered through In-depth interviews (IDI) with master trainers and training participants, focus group discussions (FGD) with teachers, health workers, and community workers to explore their experiences with WhatsApp, polls, and analysis of WhatsApp communication records to understand the effectiveness of the CoI framework and WhatsApp in the Modular Master trainers Training Program. It also fosters a collaborative learning environment by keeping communication open between facilitators, master trainers, and participants across distances.

Result
The analysis of the results of the study reveals that the course participants had a positive attitude toward using WhatsApp for learning purposes. They found WhatsApp accessible, easy to handle, and interactive. Results highlighted six key themes, which are integral to understanding its role in the cascade training model under the COI framework contributed to a deep and meaningful learning experience, and facilitated co-construction of knowledge and practices about early childhood education.

Conclusion
The study summarises important insights into adopting innovative distance learning pedagogies for teaching early childhood master trainers education programs that can be used in difficult as well as normal circumstances. The extended abstract will be of value to university faculty and policymakers, particularly in developing contexts, responsible for designing teacher education programs and implementing project activities in diverse contexts.

Author

• Yasmeen Mehboob, Aga Khan University