Designing bilingual teacher professional development through a stakeholder perspective

• In Event: Facilitating Teacher Professional Development in Multilingual Contexts of Cote d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Senegal

Proposal

Building on the discussion of professional development needs in the three countries, the second presentation will discuss the process for engaging key national-level stakeholders in designing and adapting a language-focused teacher training package called the Foundational Learning Improvement Package (FLIP). Using our evidence-based framework for teaching students in their languages and at their current skill levels, we take a structured pedagogy approach, adapting the framework to stakeholder needs and the existing resources within the country. Each ministry of education applies it to their respective programs, making it fully country-owned and amenable to scalability and sustainability.

We will begin our presentation with a brief overview of structured pedagogy, its benefits and uses, then describe the FLIP approach to tailoring instruction to students' language needs. We will also describe the process of adapting the framework for teacher professional development purposes within the contexts of Cote d'Ivoire, the DRC, and Senegal. We will share our model for stakeholder mapping, which specifies each stakeholder’s role in ensuring policy uptake along dimensions of accessibility (e.g., prime minister versus local language specialist); influence (e.g., urban community leader versus rural teacher); and power and status (e.g., those with the ability to determine policy versus program beneficiaries). This model clarifies means to monitor, inform, and engage each stakeholder throughout the knowledge-generation cycle. Lastly, we will share the steps taken to engage and co-design with ministry of education stakeholders, and the subsequent successes and challenges of the implementation process.

This presentation offers several areas of learning for attendees by a) providing an example of language-focused structured pedagogy, b) sharing a method for identifying and understanding stakeholder needs and the means of engaging those stakeholders, and c) detailing some of the benefits and challenges of such engagement.

Author

• Kaitlin Carson, American Institutes For Research