Research

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Honors for Tanzanian Teacher Education Project Led by TC Faculty

The Teaching in Action professional development seminar, which helps Tanzanian teachers use more participatory and student-centered teaching methods, has won the Ashoka Changemakers Champions of Quality Education in Africa award.

The Teaching in Action professional development seminar begun at Teachers College in 2007, which helps Tanzanian teachers use more participatory and student-centered methods, has won the Ashoka Changemakers Champions of Quality Education in Africa award.

Teaching in Action, initiated in 2007 by former TC Associate Professor Fran Vavrus and developed since then with TC Associate Professor Lesley Bartlett, was one of three projects that won the award, which carries a $5,000 prize. The competition is designed to focus attention on “on innovative, effective approaches to improving student learning outcomes in Africa.”

Funded by AfricAid, Teaching in Action is an annual professional development seminar that encourages Tanzanian teachers to use of student-centered, participatory teaching techniques in order to foster critical thinking skills in secondary schools. Teaching in Action works with teachers in a wide range of subjects. The goal is for those educators to serve as model teachers with expertise in participatory, student-centered teaching methods.

Since 2008, Lesley Bartlett and several TC students have teamed with Vavrus, who is now a professor at the University of Minnesota, and faculty members from the Mwenge University College of Education in Tanzania on Teaching in Action initiatives in the Kilimanjaro region. To date, the program has reached hundreds of Tanzanian teachers across the country.

Ashoka: Innovators for the Public is a nonprofit organization focused on social entrepreneurship. Founded in 1981, the organization currently works in more than 60 countries and serves more than 2,000 social entrepreneurs. Ashoka’s Changemakers initiative sponsors competitions intended to develop innovative solutions to social problems.

Schools as Centers for Care and Support: A Child-Friendly Initiative in Africa

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From February 11-15, 2008 Professor Lesley Bartlett and doctoral student Stephanie Bengtsson traveled to Kigali, Rwanda to facilitate a workshop with lead researchers from five African universities. Their task: to design a study to investigate the obstacles to centralizing, within schools, support for vulnerable children in five essential categories-'"physical health, psychosocial health, nutrition, water and sanitation, and safety and security.

The study, which is funded by Unicef, is being conducted thanks to an unusual partnership involving experienced lead researchers and junior researchers from Lesotho, Nigeria, Rwanda, Swaziland, and Tanzania. Participants in the New York-based team include Professors Monisha Bajaj, Lesley Bartlett, George Bond, Lynn Kagan, and Frances Vavrus, as well as doctoral students from the International Education Program Stephanie Bengtsson, Radhika Iyengar, Chris Pagen, and Anne Smiley. The immediate aim of the study is to inform the implementation of Unicef's Child-Friendly Schools program; in the long term, the study is expected to inform the development of national policy in several of the participating countries as well as to develop research capacity among all teams.

"The workshop was truly phenomenal," says Lesley Bartlett, an assistant professor in the Programs in International and Comparative Education at Teachers College. "It gathered some of the top researchers and practitioners in universities, development organizations, and ministries of education from the participating countries. Together we had the opportunity to design a study that stands a real chance of influencing educational policy and practice in a direct way. We are looking forward to completing data collection and data analysis with our partners. Furthermore, we are truly excited by the prospect of long-term relationships with each team. For example, through the Center for African Education, we are already developing a plan for faculty and student exchanges with the Kigali Institute of Education."

Once the baseline study is complete in July 2008, the results will be presented to a joint meeting of ministers of education in the participating countries. The teams are expected to continue to work together to conduct a monitoring and evaluation study of Child Friendly Schools in the next few years.