STiR has recently completed a research study with Microsoft Research India. This study aimed to understand the applicability and experiences of lifelong learning, as understood through teacher metacognitive capacities, motivation, the ability of teachers to mitigate prevailing Covid-19-related challenges, and teachers’ beliefs and outlook for their futures.
The study is one of the largest surveys ever conducted on teacher motivation and metacognition with a participation of 5,110 teachers from Delhi and 4,729 teachers from Karnataka. The study lasted eight months from October 2021 to May 2022. The five main questions asked in this research were:
- What are teachers’ current metacognitive abilities and level of motivation across STiR districts in Karnataka and Delhi?
- Understanding teachers’ technological familiarity and stress (Burnout and Technostress)
- Lifelong learning in teachers as a result of STiR’s activities
- Teachers’ perceptions of challenges and their ability to overcome them (specifically looking at their own motivation and support structures)
- Teacher stories of behaviour change in students
The highlights of this study are given below:
- Survey results as well as in-depth interviews with teachers in Delhi indicate that all teachers perceive themselves as motivated and fundamentally adaptive (metacognitive) teachers.
- All teachers associate themselves with being lifelong learners. They consider it in order to continue developing and learning professionally and also identify it as a trait/behaviour that they need to role-model to their students.
- All teachers have pointed out the importance of two factors in their professional development, motivation and learning: network meetings and teacher-sharing communities (both informal as well as more formal on WhatsApp groups).
- It is unknown why this correlation does not exist in Karnataka, but it suggests no overlap between teachers’ feelings of burnout and their ability to think or act metacognitively.
You can read the detailed study in full here.
Viji Iyer, Associate Director of Monitoring and Evaluation at STiR, said: “We are very happy to have had the opportunity to conduct this study alongside Microsoft Research and we’re glad to receive these findings, which provide useful learning for our work in India. We look forward to further opportunities to collaborate in the future.”
