For the first time, the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI) will be held in Africa, hosted by the Moroccan Centre for Civic Education. For five days, education actors from about 80 countries will get together with policy makers, researchers, civil society leaders to share experience and exchange knowledge to ultimately develop a new agenda of Global North and South collaboration focusing on providing quality education for all.
Together with the University of Rwanda – College of Education (UR-CE), VVOB will participate to this 33rd International Congress to present two papers on key components of its multi-year programme “Leading, Teaching and Learning Together”:
- “Lessons from the evaluation of a Continuous Professional Development Programme for School Leaders in Rwanda” and
- “The need for Induction Programmes in Improving Motivation and New Teacher Retention in Rwanda”.
In the framework of this multi-year programme, VVOB works closely with the UR-CE and Rwanda Education Board (REB) to offer relevant professional development opportunities to primary and secondary school leaders and teachers in 17 districts around the country. In secondary education the programme is part of Mastercard Foundation’s Leaders in Teaching initiative.
Lessons from the evaluation of a CPD Programme for School Leaders
VVOB Rwanda conducted a study which aimed to describe the evaluation process of the continuous professional diploma course in Effective School Leadership, explore the feedback loops between the different levels of training evaluation and discuss the role of policy makes, researchers and practitioners.
For this study, the evaluation of the CPD programme in Effective School Leadership was based on Kirkpatrick’s training evaluation model (Kirkpatrick, 2009):
The Need for Induction Programmes in Improving Motivation and New Teacher Retention
Induction of new teachers is one of the characteristics of effective teacher professional development. Studies showed that induction programmes can play an important role in stimulating teachers’ competences and in retaining them on-the-job within the first years of employment.
The goal of an induction programme for a new teacher is to support him/her in his first steps in a school, with coaching and mentoring activities, helping for example to develop lesson plans and learning materials. Such programmes are mostly organised by the school and/or in cooperation with pre-service teacher training institutions.
After conducting a baseline survey with 719 new teachers, the findings were clear: there is a great need for induction programme for NTs in Rwanda, reflected by low access to formal induction programmes and first signs of motivational deprivation among NTs:
The study identified how the components of the evaluation approach complement each other and analyses the link between the three levels.
It is argued that such triangulation deepens the insights into the effectiveness of the training. While researchers and practitioners at UR-CE are looking into reaction to the training and effects on learning, policy makers at REB are looking in first instance at behaviour change of school leaders and educational change in schools. While the feedback loop between researchers and practitioners is effective, feedback loops to the level of policy makers can be closer to allow for continuous improvement and to sustain high-quality professional development of school leaders.
Download our concept notes on School Leadership and Teacher Support.
