Our Data, Our Responsibility, Our Action: An examination of the potential for results-based transformational behavior change in Zambian schools

• In Event: Leveraging behavioral science to make instructional reforms stick: Case studies from Burundi, Liberia, Rwanda, and Zambia

Proposal

While teachers have the most immediate effect on improving student learning, the behaviors of systems actors can have an outsize impact on student and teacher performance (Grissom, 2011; Bennell and Akyeampong, 2007). School directors who fail to show up on time, supervisors who cannot conduct coaching visits, and administrators who deliver inadequately resourced plans and budgets all contribute to poor teacher capacity and motivation and low student achievement. If there is no monitoring data to document performance gaps, then the system will cycle through the same mistakes, despite the best intentions.

When it comes to the role of education leaders, capacity to use data for decision-making is tacitly understood to be a key element of education reform (World Bank, 2020; UNESCO, 2017). But the complexities, costs and capacity for data-based decision-making can be underestimated and do not always consider the behavioral models needed to adopt data-driven actions (Mandinacha & Schildkamp, 2021). In 2019, a six-year “Let’s Read” project partnership was initiated to strengthen the government of Zambia’s efforts to use standardized literacy assessments and continuous professional development to improve learning in the early grades. More than three years later, the Zambian government boasts a Performance Tracking System (PTS) comprising a digital dashboard that hosts classroom and school performance data for nearly 5,000 public and community schools in five of the ten provinces in Zambia. With over 85% of the 5,000 schools regularly reporting, and 18,000 teachers trained, schools are beginning to see modest improvements, with a 3% increase in learners meeting minimum proficiency in reading.

Keen to sustain and scale this progress, the Ministry of Education is using existing resources and processes to pilot Let’s Read program elements in two districts in the Southern province. Our partnership is using participatory action research to determine fidelity of implementation, especially in the use of data to inform school and classroom improvements. We employ the 5Rs Framework to examine the resources, roles, relationships, rules, and results needed to sustain selected program actions (USAID, 2016). At the heart of this evaluation is an examination of the behavioral models required to achieve program goals. Drawing on the COM-B framework (Michie, 2011), we identify critical barriers to sustaining progress, questioning embedded assumptions that capacity outweighs motivation or opportunity for adopting new behaviors. We also examine the availability and use of data as a motivating factor for transformative change. Easy to access, reliable school and classroom level reporting is encountered by ministry staff as an exciting novelty, but does it inspire behavior change? This presentation will highlight lessons learned, with particular focus on the actions and behaviors of the “middle tier” district and provincial level staff in using data for advocacy, planning, resource allocation, and school-based continuous professional development (Mitchell et al., 2022). We will discuss the real vs. perceived opportunities for transformative change given available resources. We will also review the formal and informal rules, roles and relationships that can serve either to support or weaken motivation for change in Zambia schools and classrooms.

Authors

• Corrie Blankenbeckler, Education Development Center (EDC)

• Wiston Chiyengi, Education Development Center