Introduction

Tejas was a joint initiative delivered through a partnership between the Government of Maharashtra, the Tata Trusts, and the British Council. It aimed to improve the quality of English language teaching and learning in primary schools in Maharashtra. The program design supported state capacity building to provide appropriate ongoing TPD to teachers. Objectives included:

• enabling the Regional Academic Authority to plan, manage, and support local communities of practice (CoPs) independently as an alternative to traditional cascade models of training;
• enabling teachers to organize, form, and implement local groups, both digitally and face-to-face, to improve their quality of teaching and strengthen their professional development; and
• equipping state personnel and teachers with increased confidence in their ability to communicate effectively in English, especially in the classroom and training room, and developing their skills in facilitating TPD activities.

Key features of the Tejas Model

• Teacher activity groups (TAGs) were formed consisting of primary school teachers from clusters of five to eight geographically close schools. These teachers meet once a month to learn new ideas and teaching techniques, share experiences, and lend learning support to each other through discussion and interaction. There is no formal external trainer present; instead, one of the teachers, who has been trained as a TAG Coordinator, facilitates the meetings and keeps the group focused on tasks.
• TAG Coordinators are teachers or block resource persons who have undergone intensive face-to-face training on TAGs supplemented by online language learning. TAG Coordinators facilitate the TAG in their own cluster and two adjacent clusters.
• In every TAG meeting, teachers collaboratively pick a topic for discussion from the TAG Resource Book, which includes video content. This is to ensure that their learning is related to their own contextual professional learning needs and has an actual and immediate impact on their classroom teaching. At the end of a TAG meeting, teachers complete a “Reflection and Action” planning document to record their learning and plans for classroom activities.
• WhatsApp groups and Facebook communities are used to encourage sharing of experiences, learnings, and best practices in between TAG meetings and across TAGs. These are facilitated by TAG Coordinators.
• Self-access and e-moderated courses have also been embedded in the program to support teachers to improve their English language skills.
• Tejas was initially conducted as a pilot project in nine districts across Maharashtra and represented a cross-section of urban, semi-urban, and rural areas. After the initial phase, the pilot was successfully scaled up to another 27 districts.
• To support state capacity strengthening, a core group from the Regional Academic Authority (RAA) composed of State Academic Resource Persons (SARPs) and English Subject Assistants (ESAs) was trained in project management and the monitoring and evaluation of the TAGs. This group supports the TAG Coordinators and assumes responsibility for the progress made by the teachers.
• The success of Tejas was measured based on three key aspects: participant engagement, evidence of participant learning, and participant application of practice in the classroom via lesson observations.

Internal evaluation demonstrated strong engagement with both face-to-face and digital resources, improved English language teaching and learning, and increased state capacity.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, Tejas swiftly pivoted to synchronous and asynchronous digital delivery, with the British Council delivering 72 Tejas webinars and TAG Coordinators facilitating virtual TAGs. This enabled teachers, TAG Coordinators, SARPs, and ESAs to access intended program inputs during the lockdown. In addition, the British Council was able to create bespoke inputs that reflected some of the current challenges these stakeholders face: planning and facilitating virtual TAGs, using online platforms for remote  teaching, teaching online in low-resource contexts, and good practice in supporting students’ return to classrooms after extended absences.

Introduction

The BLF program is built on three foundations: teacher development, strengthening leadership for learning, and system strengthening. Running through these is a crosscutting theme of inclusive education practices for children with special education needs including those with disabilities. The overall aim of the program is to improve the English and Mathematics learning outcomes for 4.2 million children in Rwanda.

The BLF program is designed to provide support and capacity building to teachers and all workforce roles that directly support TPD in the system. Of particular promise is its comprehensive approach to TPD that includes promoting guided, not prescriptive, materials; focusing on complimenting, supporting, and enhancing existing systems and structures at national, district, sector, and school levels; embedding change; and utilizing a comprehensive teacher assessment approach.

Key features of the BLF Model

• All teachers are given printed self- and peer-study toolkits that focus on subject-specific pedagogy. Supporting audio-visual materials are also provided on an SD card. Two school subject leaders (SSLs) in each school are given a smartphone as a shared device. These are used to watch BLF videos and for teachers to record their own practice to inform collective reflection.
• Video materials support the toolkits by providing model lessons and short clips demonstrating key best practices for teachers to reflect on, discuss with their peers, and incorporate into their teaching practice. BLF also provides some learning materials for students.
• Teachers engage in monthly school-based communities of practice (CoPs) led by SSLs with guided session plans.
• SSLs are an existing role within the Rwandan education system; their use supports sustainability. They are provided with toolkits and regular orientations.
• Teachers also receive regular follow-up visits from BLF Sector Learning Facilitators (SLFs). Remote follow ups via WhatsApp, free conference calls, and phone calls also started during the Covid-19 period.
• BLF field and project staff occasionally attend CoPs and share good practices from other schools, help school-based teams overcome local problems, and support teachers to reflect on their learning and engage in other school-based professional development activities.
• Teachers are assessed via lesson observations by SLFs and project staff using a progression matrix.

Introduction

The Teachers for Teachers project in the Kakuma Refugee Camp and Kalobeyei Settlement in Kenya aimed to respond to the gap in support for teachers in refugee and crisis-affected contexts. Their TPD approach integrated teacher workshops, peer coaching, professional learning communities called Teacher Learning Circles, and mobile mentoring.

Key features of the Teachers for Teachers  Model

• Initial face-to-face training workshops for refugee and Kenyan teachers working in the refugee camp and settlement, in cohorts of 25-30 teachers led by international and national staff including teachers themselves. Teachers then tried out in their own classrooms what they learned from this initial training, supported by peer coaches and mobile mentors.
• Small groups of teachers were assigned a peer coach. The peer coaches facilitated professional learning through classroom observations and Teacher Learning Circles where teachers could collectively reflect on their pedagogical practice, address shared challenges, and celebrate successes. Selected from among the training cohorts, these peer coaches received additional training to enable them to create a safe and supportive environment for reflection and learning, give constructive feedback to peers, and help the teachers set personalized goals related to the training.
• Teachers were also assigned a mobile “global” mentor who provided online support for four to six months. These global mentors were volunteer experts from around the world whose role was to connect teachers in groups of four or five through WhatsApp to facilitate discussions on good practice and provide advice on issues participants were facing in their classrooms and schools. The technology used enabled the mentors and teachers to share videos and images as well as text, thus widening the scope of the ideas and solutions discussed.
• The global mentors further reinforced learning from the face-to-face training by giving teachers pedagogical advice linked to the training through a mobile mentoring curriculum. This includes core messages sent twice a week and follow-up questions and support.
• All teachers from each training cohort were also linked via a larger WhatsApp group to enable them to share and exchange ideas with a wider audience.
• Teachers were provided with mobile phones and data, thus removing the main financial and technical barriers to communication that would have limited the impact of the project had teachers been asked to use their own technology.

The impact of the project was assessed primarily through teacher-generated data and data collected by peer coaches. The project team also analyzed the teachers’ WhatsApp and Facebook activities and the communication and engagement between teachers and their mentors. In addition, they held focus group discussions and interviews with the aim of collecting narratives from teachers and students using the Most Significant Change technique.

Data suggested considerable success, including increased preparation, confidence, pedagogical knowledge, and effectiveness among teachers. Notably, teachers also reported improvements regarding child protection and positive and safe learning environments. This is of particular value in a refugee context where the creation and maintenance of safe learning environments is vital.

Further evidence suggested that the technological aspect of the project was particularly helpful. Nearly 50 percent of teachers  reported successfully employing solutions shared within their WhatsApp groups, suggesting that the communities created through mobile technology had led directly to improved pedagogical practice.

Introduction

To address challenges in the variation in teacher practice and quality in schools, a Brazilian federal government policy in 2013 mandated that schools free up approximately a third of teacher working hours for in-school teacher collaboration and development programs.

In 2014, the Ceará education secretariat partnered with researchers from the World Bank and the Lemann Foundation to deliver a one-year program that provided feedback to secondary school teachers on their classroom practices from in-school coaches who, in turn, were supported by expert educational coaches through one-on-one Skype sessions. The State of Ceará was selected for the experiment due to a long history of sustained improvements in education quality at the secondary level supported by an effective and robust supervision and accountability system.

The Ceará project aimed to increase professional interaction among teachers and to promote good practice techniques for lesson planning, classroom management, and keeping students engaged.

Key features of the Ceará Model

• School-based Pedagogical Coordinators (an existing school-level role) participated in three one-day, face-to-face training sessions with the external coaching team on how to observe teachers in the classroom and how to hold individual coaching sessions with teachers to provide specific feedback on their teaching practice. They were also trained to film themselves providing feedback to teachers and to upload and share these videos with their coaches for additional feedback. Over the course of the 2014 school year, each pedagogical coordinator also had two to four private sessions with an assigned coach via Skype.
• Pedagogical Coordinators regularly observed teachers (weekly) and provided benchmarked feedback on their teaching practice.
• Teachers and their Pedagogical Coordinators had access to online videos filmed in Brazilian classrooms and materials that illustrated and explained high-impact teaching practices.
• Pedagogical Coordinators and teachers also had access to a private website to post video examples of good teacher practices in their school – both classroom teaching examples and Pedagogical Coordinators giving teachers specific feedback after observing their classes. These videos were also viewed by the external coaches and referred to in the external coaching sessions.
• Schools received benchmarked performance feedback based on an initial round of classroom observations at the end of the 2014 school year. Data was gathered using the Stallings “classroom snapshot” method. Results were shared through school-specific bulletins that provided easy-to-compare data on indicators such as the share of class time teachers used for instruction, pedagogical techniques, classroom materials used most frequently, and the share of class time students were engaged.

The randomized controlled trial evaluation of the program found that teachers’ classroom practices and students' standardized test scores had improved; teaching time and student engagement had also increased.

The Ceará project demonstrated the importance of coaching and the critical value of a shared culture of results and constant improvement.