Providing the best education possible for every child requires teachers and officials to be intrinsically motivated and effective role models for the foundations of lifelong learning.
Today, more children and adolescents are enrolled in school than ever before. Yet, for many of them, schooling does not lead to learning—and that was true even before the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered schools and disrupted learning across the globe. Children today face an increasingly complex world as affected by the pandemic, the climate crisis, increased inequality, and rapid technological changes. Education systems must prepare them for these challenges and set them on the path to achieve social justice, challenge inequalities, and build healthy, resilient, and prosperous societies.
At STiR Education, we support government education systems to improve learning outcomes for children. We began in 2012 with a single pilot involving 25 teachers in Delhi, India. Today, we work with 200,000 teachers and six million children across three states in India and a quarter of all districts in Uganda. We believe that intrinsic motivation plays an essential role in achieving this ambition. Our model uses monthly networks to motivate teachers and teacher-support officials within governments. One of our teachers from Mysore, Karnataka, India shared that the strategies she has learned as part of thae network has brought happiness to her class and made them more curious. She says that she now sees them enjoying the process of learning. This spurs her to do even better.
This piece was originally written by Mark Butcher, Associate Head, Communications and Partnerships for Taylor and Francis Online and can be read here.
