Edited by Sarah Pouezevara Cultivating Dynamic Educators: Case Studies in Teacher Behavior Change in Africa and Asia Edited by Sarah Pouezevara RTI Press © 2018 Research Triangle Institute. RTI International The RTI Press mission is to disseminate is a registered trademark and a trade name of information about RTI research, analytic Research Triangle Institute. The RTI logo is a registered tools, and technical expertise to a trademark of Research Triangle Institute. national and international audience. RTI Press publications are peer-reviewed by This work is distributed under at least two independent substantive the terms of a Creative Commons experts and one or more Press editors. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 license (CC BY-NC-ND), a copy of which is available at RTI International is an independent, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 nonprofit research institute dedicated /legalcode. to improving the human condition. We combine scientific rigor and technical Library of Congress Control Number: 2018959618 expertise in social and laboratory ISBN 978-1-934831-22-9 sciences, engineering, and international (refers to print version) development to deliver solutions to the critical needs of clients worldwide. RTI Press publication No. BK-0022-1809 https://doi.org/10.3768/rtipress.2018.bk.0022.1809 www.rti.org/rtipress Cover design: Dayle Johnson This publication is part of the RTI Press Book series. RTI International 3040 East Cornwallis Road, PO Box 12194 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2194, USA [email protected] www.rti.org Contents Acknowledgments v 1. Understanding and Influencing Teacher Behavior Change: Editorial Introduction 1 Sarah Pouezevara 2. Changing Teacher Educators’ Conceptions and Practices Around Literacy Instruction: Lessons from Teacher Educators’ Professional Development Experiences in Ethiopia 23 Dawit Mekonnen, Marion Fesmire, Adrienne Barnes, Stephen Backman, and Flavia Ramos-Mattoussi 3. School Leadership and Early Grade Reading: Examining the Evidence in Zambia 65 Mitchell Rakusin and Guy Bostock 4. Making Sense of Teacher In-Service Training in the Philippines 107 Nancy Clark-Chiarelli and Bonita Cabiles 5. Short Message Service (SMS)–Based Remote Support and Teacher Retention of Training Gains in Malawi 131 Timothy S. Slade, Scott Kipp, Stirling Cummings, and Kondwani Nyirongo 6. Relationships Between Coach Support and Teachers’ Adoption of New Instructional Practices: Findings from the Nigeria Reading and Access Research Activity (RARA) 169 Karon Harden, Alison Pflepsen, and Simon King 7. Using Activity Theory to Understand Teacher Peer Learning in Indonesia 205 Sarah Pouezevara, Feiny Sentosa, and Tifa Asrianti 8. Teacher Motivation and Behavior Change: Results of the Teacher Motivation Diagnostic Tool in Northern India 249 Molly Hamm-Rodríguez, Emily Richardson, and Jarret Guajardo 9. Once More Up the Mountain: The Promise of High-Quality Teaching Depends on Behavior Change 289 Lee E. Nordstrum About the Contributors 315 Index 319 Acknowledgments This volume was made possible through a professional development award from RTI International; the book’s editor and chapter authors also wish to recognize, with deep gratitude, the editorial and production support of Erin Newton (RTI) in compiling this volume. Also notably, portions of the editorial introduction were completed as part of the requirements for the Graduate Certificate in Adult Education at Portland State University, awarded to the editor in July 2017 under the same professional development award. The editor gratefully acknowledges the support of Dr. Andrew Job (Portland State University), Dr. Benjamin Piper (RTI), Dr. Matthew Jukes (RTI), and Jennae Bulat (RTI) for comments on early drafts. CHAPTER 1 Understanding and Influencing Teacher Behavior Change: Editorial Introduction Sarah Pouezevara Introduction Problem Statement Across the world, governments are embarking on ambitious reforms to improve education systems, often through international donor funding and incentives for education reform at local, subnational, and national levels. Examples of reforms include • instituting or enforcing policies to implement programs that use mother tongues as the language of instruction in early primary school (e.g., Ethiopia, Uganda, the Philippines); • expanding government provision of free basic education (e.g., from 10 to 12 years in the Philippines); or • introducing a thematic structure to the curriculum or revising the methodology for reading instruction to include explicit, systematic instruction in the components of reading (e.g., Indonesia, Tanzania, Morocco, Ethiopia). Such changes in curriculum and teaching practices require teachers to make significant shifts in their assumptions regarding how children learn and to revise their day-to-day classroom pedagogical methods. It therefore follows that a significant proportion of donor or national reform project funds and human resources are dedicated to in-service teacher professional training on the new content and methods. 2 Chapter 1 The release of the 2016 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),1 and specifically Goal 4, to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” aims to “substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers, including through international cooperation for teacher training in developing countries, especially least developed countries and small island developing States” (United Nations, n.d.).2 Although the mechanisms to engender teacher change differ by context, Bold and colleagues (2017) reported that for teachers to improve learning, they must master the curriculum and learn to apply it to the particularities of the children in their classrooms. That said, finding, recruiting, deploying, and retaining teachers with basic mastery of the curriculum can be a challenge in many places. Teachers may be recruited with fewer than 12 years of basic education, and teacher preparation programs may be of modest duration and quality (see, for example, the Ethiopia chapter of this volume, in which the authors point out that teachers are recruited from the pool of individuals who received the lowest marks on a grade 10 exit exam and were therefore considered unqualified for higher education). Furthermore, finding the resources to keep teachers’ knowledge and skills current can be even more complex. This challenge is especially present in rapidly changing contexts with diverse populations, evolving labor markets that change the skills students need to succeed beyond school, and more competing employment options for would-be teachers. The scale at which donor programs are attempting to influence instructional behaviors is increasing. For example, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) 2010–2015 Education Strategy Progress Report noted that its programs were training 450,000 teachers annually, on average (USAID, n.d.). Although the authors could not find a baseline figure of the number of teachers reached through training, the same report stated that the number of basic education programs increased from 48 in 2011 to 123 in 2015; thus, it is logical to assume that teacher-training activities also increased substantially. Based on the 1 The SDGs, spearheaded by the United Nations, are part of a continued attempt to frame a concerted effort at reducing poverty, improving the condition of the planet, and promoting global prosperity over the next 15 years. The SDGs consist of 17 goals and 169 targets that governments, institutions, and individuals can use as a guide to measure the impact of their country-level policies and programs. 2 Consistent with the SDGs, we use the term “developing country” throughout this book. We recognize, however, that each context is unique, and the primary shared characteristic across the case studies and other referenced literature is that the countries engage in international financial cooperation to achieve ambitious education reform goals. Understanding and Influencing Teacher Behavior Change 3 national or large-scale reforms in Malawi, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda, among others, in which RTI International has been involved, the authors can attest to the technical, managerial, and logistical challenges that any mode of training presents, given the sheer number of teachers to support and, more importantly, classroom practices to affect. In Kenya, for example, more than 100,000 grades 1–3 teachers and head teachers had been trained under the Tusome literacy program by the end of its third year. In a given month, as many as 16,000 instructional coaching visits may take place (Piper, Oyanga, Mejia, & Pouezevara, 2017). The challenge of how best to train teachers is not new. For as long as there have been programs to support education systems, teacher training has been a necessary component. However, the low levels of student achievement shown by any number of national, regional, or international standardized tests suggest that more—or different—professional development opportunities are needed. Moreover, although effective teacher training and support strategies exist, they are usually found at a small scale. Thus, one must ask an important question in meeting today’s demand for more and better-quality teaching in most low-resource contexts: How can changes in teacher behavior be facilitated effectively, at scale, using existing systems? Although this book only scratches the surface of this important question, the authors describe a range of