IMPROVING EDUCATION IN THE G5 SAHEL COUNTRIES: a comparative study of initial primary teacher education

• In Event: Access, Gender and the impact of Covid-19 on Education in Africa

Proposal

CONTEXT

Quality education for all emerged as a global imperative at the World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000. The fourth sustainable development goal (SDG 4) set in 2015, i.e., to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”, is a reaffirmation of this imperative. Education being a labor-intensive sector, for developing countries that were lagging in terms of access let alone quality, attaining these international goals has meant facing a double challenge: increasing the number of teachers while improving the quality of the teaching force. In many sub-Saharan African countries, the number of teachers increased rapidly during the 2000s, in part thanks to massive recruitments of contract, volunteer or community teachers, with undesirable consequences for educational quality in several systems (Dembélé & al., 2005; Dembélé, Chudgar and Ndow, 2020; Duthilleul, 2005).

This paper draws on a comparative study of teacher education (TE) and development in a region, G5 Sahel, where access to and completion of basic education remain formidable challenges. Commissioned by UNESCO's Multisectoral Office for West Africa and carried out by the UNESCO Chair in Curriculum Development (CUDC) at the University of Quebec in Montreal and a team of national researchers, this study was designed to provide a comprehensive overview of where, how (including content), for how long and by whom primary and lower secondary school teachers are prepared to teach in each of the five countries, as well as the professional development opportunities available to practicing teachers.

OBJECTIVES

We report on the preservice primary TE component of the study through five objectives: 1) describe the pathways to the primary teaching profession and the institutional landscape of primary teacher preparation in G5 Sahel countries; 2) analyze various aspects of existing programs (prescribed contents, organization, duration, practice teaching, use of ICTs, evaluation, certification, etc.); 3) provide a general portrait of the cadre of teacher educators; 4) identify, through comparative analysis, regional convergences and national specificities; and 5) draw implications for policy, practice and research.

METHODOLOGY

A project team was formed within the CUDC and broadened to include national expert collaborators in each country. Together, we developed a country profiling sheet to be completed through document analysis in a first phase. The second phase consisted in gathering field data. Two questionnaires, also developed with the national collaborators’ substantive input, were administered to the heads and the program and internships directors of primary teacher institutions in all these countries. Individual and group interviews were also conducted with training staff during onsite visits which were dedicated in part to observing the infrastructure and carrying out an inventory of technological resources (including computer equipment and Internet access). The third phase, which overlapped with the second, was devoted to analyzing the TE curriculum being implemented in each country. A common rubric inspired by Saussez & Paquet (1994) and Dembélé & al (2005) was designed to this end. Finally, throughout the project, the CUDC team held individual or group meetings with the national experts. Each expert produced a national report covering the first three and the fifth objectives of the study. The CUDC team then conducted a comparative analysis of the five national reports to produce a regional one, with all five objectives in mind.

SELECTED RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS

The first thing that stands out from the comparative analysis of this impressive set of reports is that teacher issues, including TE and development, are higher on the agenda in national policies and sector plans than a few decades earlier. In particular, the idea that solid subject matter knowledge is sufficient has progressively given way to the need for professional training. One of the consequences of this shift is the increase in the number of primary teacher preparation institutions in several countries over the past two decades. Raising entry requirement to end-of-secondary education diploma and increasing the duration of the regular programs are other observable trends. Paradoxically, most of the countries have and continue to recruit teachers who do not meet the nationally-set academic and professional requirements. Another striking finding is the institutionalization of contractualization policies in the region. Excluding Mauritania where contract teachers represent 20% of the teaching force and Burkina Faso where contract teachers were all granted civil service status in January 2016, the proportion of such teachers is generally about 90% in the remaining countries (up to 95% in Mali). Notwithstanding the positive contribution of contractualization to the pool of teachers, such high proportions of contract teachers raise important policy issues given their documented negative consequences on the teaching profession, on school management, and ultimately on student learning. What proportion of contract teachers is acceptable in an education system? Private provision of teacher preparation is yet another striking finding, even though it concerns mainly one country (Burkina Faso), with preoccupations regarding quality assurance. The regional analysis also shows that the ITE programs generally include comparable training units, though their relative proportion varies between countries or from one institution to another in the same country. Noteworthy as well is the fact that hardly any program has a unit devoted to student learning assessment. Pending specific data gathering and analysis, we assume that this topic is probably infused in other units. Not so surprisingly, practice teaching stands as a/the neglected area in program implementation, due to limited resources and teacher shortages resulting in student teachers being used to fill in gaps during their field experiences. Another neglected area has to do with the pedagogical integration of ICTs, due to lack of both equipment and reliable internet connection and above all to limited ICT knowledge and competency of teacher educators. The professional development of the latter can in fact be considered an imperative where major reforms of teacher preparation are underway (e.g., in Burkina Faso since 2020-2021) or being considered. This selection of findings and several others included in the report lead to a set of implications for policy, practice and research that we provide in this paper.

Authors

• Valerie Vinuesa, Université du Québec à Montréal, UQAM

• Patrick Charland, Université du Québec à Montréal, UQAM

• Martial Dembele, University of Montreal

• Mathias Kyélem, Ecole normale supérieure de Koudougou

• Stephane Cyr, Université du Québec à Montréal, UQAM