Partnership to Strengthen Innovation and Practice in Secondary Education
Poor student performance in Science Technology, English and Mathematics (STEM) is in many developing countries one consequence of poor teaching in these subjects. Education must be made relevant to the needs of a 21st century society, and teachers are key to realising this objective.
This project pilots the innovative use of ICTs to train secondary school teachers to improve their pedagogical skills and ability to integrate ICT into their teaching practice. It addresses two key challenges:
- The poor quality of teaching and learning in secondary schools, reflected by poor student performance in Science Technology, English and Mathematics (STEM).
- The need to make education relevant to the needs of 21st century learners by preparing them for successful working lives- whether through regular employer recruitment or by applying the entrepreneurial and enterprise skills and know-how acquired.
Project Goal: Ensure that teachers are equipped with the appropriate ICT and pedagogical skills to raise the quality of teaching, and therefore to make learning more relevant.
1. Train selected teacher educators, who in turn
2. Train teachers in participating schools (an average of 6 teachers per school)
Demonstration schools are selected for closer support of the teachers in integrating ICT's in teaching and learning
The intended long-term Project Impact Downstream, thousands of students will benefit from improved teacher competencies and new learning materials from the project schools.
Schools are carefully monitored to determine what works and under what condition and how technology plays a part in improving teaching and learning. This information is valuable to stakeholders including governments and donors who are investing in technology in schools. The lessons learned will ensure that the investments being made are not wasted.
Objective 1: To leverage ICT's to provide professional development to existing teachers on new pedagogical approaches which will equip them to provide a learner – centered, participative and ICT- based approach to curriculum delivery
Objective 2: To encourage, support and facilitate teachers with methodologies to enable learners to develop information literacy skills, team delivery of project work by students and the acquisition of those higher order skills that both society and the world of work demand in a growing knowledge society increasingly demands.
Objective 3: To design and operate a school based support programme – encompassing school based support in all project schools and a more intensive school–based support in the demonstration project schools. The focus is to showcase good practice that demonstrates technology literacy (applying), knowledge deepening (infusing) and knowledge creation (transforming) levels of technology integration. The purpose is to provide concrete models on ‘how to’ motivate learner participation in school practice and provide a rich participative learning environment, facilitated by the use and integration of digital learning resources.
Objective 4: Drawing on the evaluation of the emerging models for teaching and learning in the general and beacon schools, to develop policy recommendations on competencies and requirements for teachers to be included in national teacher training policies in the project countries and to feed into ICT- based professional development courses for teachers in general.
The project will use blended learning methodologies to train a purposive sample of secondary school teachers from secondary schools.
In Year 2, teachers will be supported by a post training online portal and a school visits programme to apply their learning in practice
- Enhanced teacher capacity to teach Science, Technology, English and Mathematics in a 21st Century context
- Increased access to, and quality of teaching and learning materials
SIPSE policy forums full report
Report on the pilot for this programme outlining the challenges and learning outcomes. The pilot SIPSE Project ran from July 2013 to May 2015 to pilot the innovative use of ICTs in the professional development of secondary school teachers. It was been done with the aim of improving their pedagogical skills and ability to integrate ICT into their teaching practice.Download