Taking Educational Quality To Scale – Five Key Considerations - Part 1/6

Everybody’s talking ‘large-scale’ these days – and that’s a good thing. Time was when some of our leading lights used to insist that the very idea of large-scale implementation is bad, since ‘quality cannot be ensured on large scale’. However, since the problem is on large scale, it is unlikely that working on small scale will solve it. And children who are left out as we work on small scale certainly do not deserve being ignored while we figure out how to reach them! Therefore, work on large scale we must.

In fact, large-scale implementation of education quality improvement efforts now has (at least) a 20-year history in India, starting in the mid-1990s with APPEP (Andhra Pradesh Primary Education Programme), Operation Blackboard, BEP (Bihar Education Programme), UP-BEP (UP Basic Education Programme), Lok Jumbish in Rajasthan, DPEP (District Primary Education Programme), and of course the SSA (Sarva Shiksha Programme). There have also been many somewhat ‘smaller’ large-scale efforts such as the Janshala Project jointly implemented by five UN agencies, or the projects such as PEEP and SPEED in Bihar, many innovative projects implemented across dozens of districts within DPEP and SSA (e.g. the recent ABL projects or various literacy enhancement sub-projects that ran across thousands of schools), and of course several efforts by NGOs and INGOs in different parts of the country.

A polite statement about all these initiatives would be that they have had varying degrees of success. In retrospect, most of these projects had a relatively successful initial period – you might call it the ‘honeymoon phase’, when there appeared to be a fair degree of enthusiasm all around and it looked like something was happening on the ground. This usually tends to last for anywhere between one and five years, after which things peter out, something new takes over and now many of us can’t even remember there used to be such projects! (For instance, can you recall CLIP and CLAP, very famous at one time?)

There is no doubt that we have consistently goofed up on large scale, time and again (and I've been as responsible as many others!). Unfortunately, we’re at a point where temporary and apparent success will not suffice any more. We need to make fundamental shifts in the nature of relationships and processes within the system so we can generate the best possible outcomes for each child. A collective answer is needed to the question: What should we now do differently to overcome the limitations that inevitably creep upon us as we make our quality improvement efforts? 

This requires re-examining the issue of large-scale implementation with a view to incorporating some of the key lessons learnt into ongoing and future efforts. That is what I will try to do in the series of posts that follow under this title.

These ‘lessons’ have been derived from intense engagement with and close observation of most of these efforts over the last twenty years.  What they reveal is that two ‘areas of clarity’ and three kinds of ‘readiness’ seem essential to be able to take educational quality improvement to scale in an effective and lasting manner. These are:

Is there clarity on:

1.     How the very design of education perpetuates marginalization of the disadvantaged, and

2.     The theory of change on which up-scaling is founded?

Next, is there:

3.     Codification readiness

4.     Societal readiness, and

5.     Systemic readiness?

The next several posts will detail each of these. 

If you are developing in-service teacher training

If you are developing an in-service teacher development programme, here are some things you might like to keep in mind.

1. Why are you doing it?

What is it that you want to see happening in the classroom that is not happening at present? What do you want to see children doing, and therefore what do you want to see teachers doing or stop doing? It’s very dangerious to develop training programmes where a long list of inputs/topics is made without clarity on exactly what the outcomes are going to be!

While deciding this, though, it would be useful to know what has already been done with teachers in previous years’ in-service training. Are you running the danger of repeating the same things that didn’t work before? What do you need to do differently to ensure that limitations of earlier processes are not repeated? Sometimes, the answer to this question may not be ‘academic’ – for instance, better logistics might help, or improved follow-up at the classroom and school level, or ensuring a consistency of message teachers receive from the in-service training with what is said by HMs, supervisor, CRCCs, school inspectors.

2. What do teachers want to learn?

Once you are clear on the outcomes it is useful to remember that every training should be able to adequately answer the following five questions always there in every teacher’s mind:

1. What exactly do I have to do, during, before and after my class?
2. Why should I do it?
3. How can I do it in my own way, in my own situation?
4. How do I know I am doing it right?
5. What should I do if it is not working?

3. A broad training design

It is not a good idea to simply tell teachers what to do. They need to experience the new, desired process for themselves. (How can the implement something they have never ever experienced?) This generates reflection as well as the desire to understand it more, and work out how they would do it in their own context. Therefore, the last day or so of the training can be devoted almost exclusively to the five questions where you discuss in a businesslike way what is to be done.

Use the ERAC learning cycle (which I’ve written about in detail elsewhere in this blog) to design your training. Broadly, in the early part of the training you need to generate a lot of interesting, challenging and engaging learning experiences for the participants. This could include a variety of activities, tasks, projects, readings, even lectures (just don’t overdo any one kind!). In a five-day workshop this could happen for the first day-and-a-half to two days. A variety is needed through the day so that tedium does not set in. Also these have to conducted very well and every participant’s involvement ensured. Basically you are modeling the process that they are expected to generate – and if they get to experience a poor version of it, a poor version of it is what they will do in their own classrooms.

The next day or two should involve a great deal of reflection on what has been experienced, including discussions around the reasons behind it. If the experiences you generated were powerful, then teachers will be willing to struggle with theoretical underpinnings that justify them. It is equally important that there should be constant discussion on what they will do in their own classrooms and whether they would do it differently or just the way it has been done during the training workshop.

Finally, in the last phase, or the consolidation phase, you would discuss the five key questions, summarizing some of the earlier discussion but also focusing on enabling each teacher to plan out his or her own classroom, at least for the month ahead. It is very important that teachers leave the training with a sense of clarity in terms of at least the next few weeks.

It would also help if teachers’ plans are well known to those undertaking follow-up and support, such as HMs and cluster resource centre coordinators or school inspectors. That is because teachers are bound to be in need of support – if that is not forthcoming they will experience failure and start giving up. Slowly they will come to believe that things they have learnt in their training do not really work. Therefore, planning for the follow-up is part of the training design.

4. Develop your session plans

Plan your sessions around ERAC too. This learning cycle applies to individual sessions as well; though in the early parts of the training there will be greater focus on generating challenging and engaging experiences. In the later parts of the training these will reduce and a greater proportion of time used for reflection and application tasks.

When planning for these sessions don’t forget to include a list of preparation required and the materials that should be available. (Not all your activities and ideas will work, therefore it is useful to have some ‘spare’ ones, especially for activities.) Resource persons who are conducting the training should be able to see the session like a video in their mind’s eyes – or they will not be able to conduct it very well. That is why it is also not a good idea to have resource persons who come and go – they should work as a team and stay there through all the five days if possible. In case you have to call in an ‘expert’, the main trainers who are conducting the workshop should be present and take the experts session in as an input in a longer process. They will provide a frame within which the expert’s inputs can be linked with the rest of the training in the participants’ minds.

5. Generate ownership of the training’s outcomes

It is important to weave in a little flexibility in the sessions – and have space and time for participants’ views, doubts and questions. (You don’t have to answer all the questions yourself – you can ask fellow participants to address at least some of the queries.)  Often, the participants’ questions are more important that what we might be wanting to say. If what you have planned does not get ‘covered’ because some important questions came up, don’t worry. Our job is not to thrust our views on the teachers but to help them formulate their own views better. Ultimately people implement only that which they believe from deep inside themselves – and therefore addressing their questions and needs is far more valuable than ‘giving’ our stuff.

6. Develop a ‘usable’ module

What kind of material or ‘module’ should you prepare? Obviously material that: 

• helps teachers attain clarity on the five key questions mentioned, and
• can be used by them when they are alone in their school.

It is very important that the material should be written in a very easy to understand language, otherwise it will only lie on the teacher’s shelf. Similarly it should be designed so that it is very easy to find anything very quickly or refer to in the middle of teaching. If not, it will only be a resource that is underutilized. In many states at least 20 modules have been produced for teachers over the last two decades. This time at least make sure your module is highly usable!

Another aspect which can really help is to leave some space for teachers to write their own views, ideas, experiences, and suggestions. When the training is conducted, give them time during sessions to actually fill in some of thee spaces as notes to themselves. This will help the module become a personalized material and increase its usefulness.

7. What are your own training standards?

Finally, ask yourself: what would be the indicators that our training is going well? These will be at two levels – online, or during the time when the training is actually being conducted, and later when the teacher is in the classroom. The online indicators would be used by those conducting the training, while the classroom ones could be used by those undertaking the follow-up and perhaps by teachers themselves. Without the first, the latter will not happen, and if the latter does not happen, the training has been pointless!

Therefore, start by developing your own indicators of what it means to conduct this training well.  (You can find some help in the ADEPTS documents where performance standards for trainers are given.) Look at your training design, session plans and the materials to ensure that these are designed to help achieve your indicators of good training. Then discuss with your fellow trainers and agree on what you (as a team) will do to achieve these indicators. Work out a process by which you will keep each other informed about how well the training is going. I would go so far as to give both sets of indicators to teachers and ask them to rate my training (and later, their own teaching).

Each in-service training can take place once and only once in our lifetime – so we just have to do our best to ensure that every moment of it is worthwhile for teachers and, through them, for children.

Unexpected and Unintended – Consequences of Curriculum and Material Development Processes

The following piece was difficult to write since it appears to make a tall claim. All I can say is that it is based on events that actually took place, and is true.

What started in Nagaland…

It was in the fourth workshop in Nagaland, in 2000, that participants stopped me and said they had something to share. All the education stuff they were learning was certainly very useful but what they valued far more was this: People from all the 16 tribes of the state were present in one room and, for the first time, they said, were not fighting! The process had somehow led all of them to feel like a family and they cherished this even more than the curriculum that was emerging from it.

How did this happen, I wondered. It was not being attempted (and in fact there was not even the awareness that something like this was required in the first place). So what went right? A little probing led to the realization that not being aware of who was from which tribe or occupied what social / professional position, the facilitation process could not distinguish between participants – no one was treated as being more ‘important’ or ‘different’.

A second feature was that much of the process revolved around generating a common set of experiences such as activities, school observations, classroom trialling, and intensive group discussions around key questions that had a larger canvas while also affecting state-specific decisions and implementation. The opportunity to evolve a common vision, agree upon the aims and objectives around which the curriculum would be built and developing consensus around the practical means to be adopted – all this led to ‘feeling like a family.’

Could this effect - that had happened ‘by mistake’ - actually be deliberately implemented? That is, could disparate groups who believed they had conflicting interests be brought together to ‘feel like a family’ through a consciously implemented version of this process?

It was not long before an opportunity to test this presented itself – in Afghanistan.

…Continued in Afghanistan

‘My brother from India,’ said a fearsome-looking senior member of the National Resource Group in Kabul, part of the Teacher Empowerment Programme, in 2003-04. It was the first effort to implement a country-wide in-service teacher training programme after the war. ‘My brother from India, do you know that we have in our group some people who are bandits! And we have to develop training with them!’

Before I could respond, another equally fierce gentleman thumped his desk, stood up and bellowed, ‘Our professor from India, when we were fighting the Russians in the mountains, some people were sitting in luxury in the USA!’ No one else seemed discomfited by this except me. How do you work with a group where members seemed intent on settling long-standing personal scores through you?

Once again it was really useful not to know who was exactly what. During the security briefing, I had been given a small chart depicting the various factions that had been at war with each other and now comprised the post-war nation. I had carefully put the chart away without looking at it. And had then thought about the kind of questions would work with this gathering of conflicting factions.

Therefore, as in many other places, the first question the participants got to work on was: ‘What games did you play as a child? And can you name at least 40 of them?’ In just a few moments the mood in the group had changed dramatically. People were gesturing, doing actions of the games they were describing, prodding each other to remember the names of the games they could recall, smiling more and more as their childhood seeped up and transported them into another time when they didn’t have this animosity. From then on, over the next several months, the process continued, with the fearsome gentlemen becoming less and less ferocious till they were actually good friends, and contributed greatly to the outcomes. Along with them, whatever factions that might have been there within the group also shed such reservations as they might have had about the ‘others’. By the end, in fact, it really was difficult to make out the groups that might have been there earlier….

And in a very different setting

Could there be a more difficult situation than Afghanistan? Actually, there could. During the thick of the LTTE-Sri Lankan Army war, I found myself in a workshop for writers, about half of whom were Tamil with the other half being Sinhala. Tamil writers arrived late to the venue, a few hours away from Colombo, as they had been held up again and again along the way by police and other security authorities – on the ground that they were Tamils moving around. One of the writers had just learnt that his brother had been arrested by the Sri Lankan police, on suspicion. Tamil and Sinhala writers were clearly unwilling to mix; in fact, there were many who did not know the other group’s language or English. It was the sensitivity displayed by the organizers and all others present that enabled the workshop to be held at all. However, a sense of awkwardness and whispered conversations pervaded the atmosphere and made it difficult to start.

Working through interpreters, one for each language, the challenge was to have a group that achieved some degree of comfort with each other and would relax sufficiently to enable a creative process to flow. Listening to lectures from the facilitator, however wonderful, was unlikely to achieve this. In this case the strategy of not knowing who was who was obviously not going to work…

What did work, however, was the use of ‘idea triggers’, which are ways to get people to think of things they otherwise would not. For example, take two completely unrelated words (such as ‘rocket’ and ‘goat’) and see if you can make a long and interesting sentence (at least 10 words long) that contains both the words. (Try this out a few times with the same two words and see what happens). Or, take an ordinary object – such as a spoon – and think of a place where it will usually never be found (e.g. on a branch high up on a tree) – and think of how it got there, what happened afterwards – and you will soon begin to get a story in your head.

As these ‘triggers’ began to be used, the ‘writer’ in the participants began to come to the fore. They bounced ideas off each other, laughing at the ridiculous and funny juxtapositions that were cropping up, teasing them into ideas for stories, applauding each others' creativity and slowly forgetting that that they were two peoples affected by being on the opposite sides of an ongoing war…

What did school impose on you today?

I was in a remote forest village, field-testing material with tribal children. It was a story about a dog who meets a wolf in the forest. The dog is well-built but the wolf looks thin and weak. The dog invites the wolf over to his master's place - 'there's food there' he says. When they reach the master's house, the wolf sees that the dog is kept in a kennel, and is chained at times. The dog says, 'yes, that's true, but I get food'. At which the wolf says, 'I'd prefer to be free and starving in the forest than well-fed and chained at the master's.' And he leaves...

In narrating the story to children I really highlighted the wolf's point of view. I asked them who they supported, but 28 of the 33 children present kept saying that the wolf made a mistake. It was only after persisting for a few minutes in support of the wolf's notion of freedom that I realized that these children were exactly in the same position as the wolf - they were free to roam the forest but did not have enough food. And what they were telling me was: 'freedom from hunger is what freedom is about.'

I wonder what other urban middle-class 'values' our textbooks try to impose on children who know much better...

How Training Leads to Learning in Teachers

What kind of training do teachers need in today’s context? Now that nearly two decades of in-service training has been implemented across the country (under DPEP and SSA, and now beginning under the RMSA as well), here are some key principles / expectations that have clearly emerged as being essential. The following section, drawn from ‘ADEPTS’ (which was the first systemic statement in this regard) brings together some of the key principles / aspects to be borne in mind. I’ve underlined some words – take a look and ask yourself what’s special about these!

How Training Leads to Learning in Teachers

ADEPTS views training as a partnership between the trainer/facilitator and the trainees/participants towards bringing about agreed upon changes. In this approach trainers need to ask themselves the question – what will the teachers be doing after this training that is different from before? Therefore, what do they need from the training? And what would be the best way to enable them to develop the competence to put the performance indicators into practice?

Training ideally brings together both the desirable and the feasible. While trainers expect to share with teachers a vision of what might be, they also need to work collaboratively with them towards how it might be attained. The intention is to enable teachers to envision the new classroom, be aware of the details involved in bringing about the change, as well as the sequence in which to attempt this change for the greatest likelihood of success.

The training experience visualized under ADEPTS will present to teachers a range of experiences on which they will be ‘incited’ to reflect and consider how they would apply the insights gained from such reflection into their own classroom situation. This reflective process has to occur before the emerging consensus is consolidated by the facilitator.  Thus the learning process within a training interaction mirrors the kind of pedagogy desired in the classroom. In other words, the approach to training needs to model the very qualities of the classroom that teachers are expected to be able to generate. Experiencing such learning perhaps communicates much more to teachers than handouts, lectures or presentations.

The above approach inevitably requires the trainers to have a certain degree of autonomy in conducting the training and related decision-taking.  The trainer is not merely a recipient of training to be passed on, but ‘re-constructs’ it according to specific situation / needs of his trainees, which is what leads to more effective training.

The nature of relationships generated within a training programme is critical to its success. Starting out as ‘trainees’, participants eventually become ‘colleagues’ of the trainer at which stage, real change begins to occur. Experiencing success within a training programme as well as getting mutual respect and acceptance appears to trigger the desire to bring about improvement. This is naturally more possible in workshops and programmes where the same group of trainers consistently interacts with a group of teachers. Training programmes that rely on a ‘visiting faculty’ approach tend not to attain worthwhile results.

Here, too, enabling teachers to learn during training requires an equally great attention to planning, preparation and management. Finally, ensuring effective follow-up allows the impact of training to be actually visible in the classroom.

A key concern and criticism is that training still tends to take a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Using an analogy from irrigation, there is a need to move away from ‘flood irrigation’ to ‘drip irrigation’!

From 'Teacher Condemnation' to 'System Condemnation'?

Years ago, it was felt that the root of all problems in education is the teacher. In fact, the MLLs (Minimum Levels of Learning, which served as the de fact national curriculum framework) in the late 80s and early 90s were designed to ensure 'teacher accountability' in terms of the minimum that would be achieved. A popular programme, Rishi Valley's multi-grade teaching  (adopted/adapted as 'activity based learning' in many states) actually originated from the desire to get children to be able to learn without needing the teacher (which is why there is so much of self learning in it).

People still continue to condemn the teacher and hold him responsible for all the ills in education. However, with the proliferation of so many 'reports' on education all around, there is now a great sense of intolerance towards the education system itself. The belief seems to be that not only government teachers and schools but the government education system itself is condemnable. Among NGOs, academics, commentators, researchers and intellectuals the general notion seems to be gathering steam that everything and everyone in the government system is the problem!

But what is a system if not the people in it, the way they work and the frame within which they work? From that point of view, I have to say that some of the finest people I've come across are 'system' people. Every year I get the chance to work with thousands of teachers who I see putting in 12-14 hour days when others from outside the system (e.g. NGOs) fade away after only 8 hrs of input. This is not to say everything is OK with the system or the policies or the people - it's just point out that a black and white view doesn't help. And that just as it is not possible to change a teacher while condemning him, it is not likely to be possible to improve a system while condemning it!

From Shirking To Working

One of the defining features of the government offices we visit is the number of people who seem to be comfortably sitting around doing nothing. Literally – nothing. You might find a chair occupier arrive, put away his lunch-box, arrange his things, have a drink of water and then sit down on his chair, make himself comfortable and then – simply sit there, look unseeingly in front. The more social / active among this population might move around talking with ‘friends’. The scholarly ones might unfurl a newspaper and go through it, all the while putting away files and documents absent-mindedly.

However, it would be really unfair to blame those in government service, for the desire to sit around and do nothing, especially if one is paid for it, may be found in almost as many places as you can imagine. The common view that ‘the moment a person becomes permanent he stops working’ does have plenty of reason to be so common! Those paid to do any work, if they do any work, often appear to be doing it under duress or at least clearly wishing they did not have to be doing it. So great is the aversion to actually working that it is common to hear people praise jobs where ‘pay is good but work is not hard.’

So why exactly is not working seen as better than working? Why would one deprive oneself of the satisfaction of becoming good at something, of being successful (and useful), of achieving results or a reputation? I think the reason is that these are precisely the things that most people in such positions can’t hope for. That is why for them, doing nothing is perhaps a better option.

Maybe a whole sociological / psychological / some-other-cal inquiry is needed to find out the underlying causes of this massive phenomenon. My amateurish take is that these people are in jobs that do not require them to think, take initiative or be responsible in any serious way. Their role is merely to follow instructions or – more commonly – pass on those instructions. Their chance of ever getting credit – is zero. Because there are no standards as to what it means to be ‘good’ in their work, they can never be appreciated or recognized or gain a real reputation.

So how do they respond? We know the answer…

The question for us: Is there any way in which shirkers can become workers? It might be simplistic but if we want to convert shirkers into workers we have to create conditions for success, where doing nothing is definitely worse than not working because it so clearly deprives you of so much that is so much more valuable! We need to think on the following:

•        Clarify where professional decisions must be taken by each ‘level’ of person
•        Identify standards of doing any task/job ‘well’ – so that it becomes possible for people to take pride in doing something well
•        Instead of relationships based on instructions, how about developing partnerships? 

This naturally seems idealistic, but one great thing is that this is one of those efforts that can begin at the top. Which means that instead of mobilizing masses, we need to convince a relatively smaller number of people. Once they do implement any of this, the results would speak for themselves.

PS:

The reason for my optimism? I’ve seen this work in far too many places to feel it can’t be done!