We’re pleased to be able to share this update on our longitudinal study. Our evaluation partner Ichuli, an independent research organisation, has recently shared with us several summary and technical briefs on the first round of data collection as part of our ongoing 4-year longitudinal studies. All data was collected in 2019 (prior to the Covid-19 pandemic). You’ll find the summary briefs for Uganda here, for Karnataka here, and for Tamil Nadu here. The purpose of these summary briefs is not only to highlight lessons learnt about our efforts to strengthen intrinsic motivation and contribute to building the foundations of lifelong learning among education officials, teachers and students, but also to highlight specific recommendations for STiR and our government partners to take forward.
At a high level, the insights from the first round of data collection illustrate that behaviour change with regard to the foundations of lifelong learning is happening across all three systems in line with where we hoped we would be. The routines that we aim to build in these systems are happening: officials are spending their time away from their offices actively supporting teachers to improve through observation and feedback. Teachers are consequently trying out new strategies we introduce them to, and students are starting to respond to this and showing signs of self-esteem, engagement, and they seem to be enjoying school. There is, however, significant room to further strengthen the depth of behaviour change and we will therefore focus on three priorities based on these findings.
First, we’ve learned that observation and consequent feedback between officials and teachers tend to focus primarily on praise, not improvement. By supporting officials and teachers to have more constructive coaching sessions, we hope to stimulate critical thought and consequent deeper behaviour change in the classroom. To learn more about our efforts to improve feedback between officials and teachers, explore these technical briefs based on our findings in India and Uganda.
Second, student safety remains a key challenge across all three systems that we studied. Although students generally report to feel safe in school, physical and emotional punishment too often remain normalised. In a post-Covid world, teacher and student wellbeing will be a key priority as part of our support to our government partners. The technical briefs on safety among students in India and Uganda provide specific recommendations which we’ll take forward with our government partners.
Third, we disaggregated our data by gender and didn’t see any significant differences in outcomes between male and female officials, teachers, or students. We are, however, working with Surgo Ventures to more deeply understand causal links within our longitudinal study data-sets and we aim to further uncover differences in male and female role-modelling in the system. We look forward to sharing these insights in the coming months.
The second round of data collection is planned for the end of 2021, and we would like to thank Ichuli for the rich insights generated thus far. We welcome your thoughts on these various summary briefs as we aim to take the specific recommendations forward and we encourage you to get in touch with our M&E Director, Rein Terwindt (rterwindt(at)stireducation.org).