Challenges of Scaling Education innovation in the global South

• In Event: South-South partnerships in STEM teacher education - Knowledge creation, adaptation and dissemination

Proposal

The experience of the Open University of Tanzania from the south-south partnership on CL4STEM with the consortium partners has been very beneficial. Much of the positive experience from a south-south collaboration detailed in the case of Bhutan also applies to Tanzania. Further, this innovation is aligned with the policy priorities in Tanzania and draws upon the strength of the Open University of Tanzania in offering online courses. Instead of reiterating these, this presentation focuses on the challenges that were faced in the CL4STEM project implementation in Tanzania and the measures taken to address these challenges.
First, aligning the developed in-service professional development programmes for newly qualified teachers to the existing Teacher Professional Development mechanisms is key to the successful implementation and scaling of such a programme. Higher STEM Teacher workload due to the shortage of this kind of teachers and overcrowded classrooms in many schools, especially the government ones, put a strain on their time. Further, the ongoing national census required teachers to be deployed as censors reducing their time to teach. A similar challenge is faced by teacher educators who have to work on a project such as this over and above their usual responsibilities. Second, access to technology infrastructure and ICT devices by teachers becomes a challenge. School resource mobilization policies instruct teachers to look upon school leaders providing the required resources rather than improvising from local environments. Failure to timely employ all gained skills due to missing ICT resources reduces the effectiveness of such a programme. Third, project solely managed from the global south face unique risks that are not seen in North-South collaborations. For example, a sudden change in the foreign Exchange policy in Nigeria put a significant strain on the fund flow to partner countries. Funding the activities from our individual university budgets that are already tight becomes a challenge. Fourth, at times the imperative for research interferes with the ease of implementation. For example, the Community of Practice (CoP) platform (Telegram) that was selected due to the ease of data collection for research was different from the common practice of using WhatsApp. This then required additional effort to create a habit for both teachers educators(facilitators) and NQTs to use this new platform. Finally, resource constraints in education departments that are expected to scale this innovation, especially when they do not align with their normal operating plans, become a challenge. Successful scaling demands the project to demonstrate the feasibility of scaling in addition to its effectiveness to education stakeholders. Despite these challenges, the experience of south-south collaboration has been very positive for Tanzania.

Author

• Edephonce Nfuka, Open University of Tanzania