In search of conflict-proof teacher training solutions

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Learning in groups, learning in loops: How to start using data for development in implementation research

Proposal

Justice Rising exists to transform war zones through education and has built a network of 23 schools that it operates in North Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Justice Rising is using IR to actively pursue evidence to determine how to strengthen the teacher training component of Chalkboard Guides: a light-touch structured pedagogy tool that aims to reach children in protracted conflict and crisis with foundational learning. Chalkboard Guides are sets of structured lesson plans that guide teachers to deliver high-quality lessons even within a low-resource, conflict-affected context. They are deliberately simple and light-touch, excluding conventional structured pedagogy components such as student workbooks and external coaching, and including only a four-hour introductory training in initial piloting, because of the implementation challenges inherent to conflict settings. Chalkboard Guides apply behavioral science and human-centered design principles to reduce the need for teacher training. During initial small-scale pilots in DRC and Cameroon, Chalkboard Guides proved popular with teachers, who found them easy to use and effective at easing workload. However, uptake of key instructional strategies embedded within the guides was inconsistent and teachers participating in the pilots requested extra training (Justice Rising, 2023).

Justice Rising is using IR to test how effective current introductory training is and using this data to identify the gaps so as to a) strengthen existing training and b) develop school-based training options and iterate towards what works best to effectively support teachers to form powerful teaching habits in a protracted conflict context.

IR is relatively new to both the global education (Dowd, 2024) and humanitarian sectors (Reynolds et al, 2024), and existing frameworks require adaptation for these settings. However, implementation science offers great potential to . Implementation in protracted conflict settings is often weakened by recurring “operational, organizational, and security hurdles that frequently impede or restrict research and implementation” (Falb et al, 2024). In search of conflict-proof teacher training solutions, JR is conducting IR within conflict settings to help develop context-proof implementation strategies, and systems (feedback loops) that will further strengthen these strategies. This has great potential value for scaling successful interventions for education in protracted conflict settings.

During this roundtable, Justice Rising will be able to share their IR findings from the original introductory training, how these findings have led them to develop and test differing school-based training options, analysis of qualitative data from teachers’ feedback from these options, and what they hope to learn from the implementation feedback loops that they have set up. They will also be able to reflect on what they have learnt so far on how to set up these feedback loops: the data collection systems and data-driven decision-making systems that are needed, and the role that being part of the uBoraBora cohort has played in the journey.

Authors

• Dieudonne Ombeni, Justice Rising

• Ee-Reh Owo, Justice Rising International