Teachers Without Borders

Program: Clinton Global Initiative

Program Description:

Teacher professional development for Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, and Rwanda. Supported by the Cisco Public Benefit Investment Group, Teachers Without Borders is providing the TWB Toolset for members and partners, our Certificate of Teaching Mastery (connected to each of the national standards), and support for both local non-governmental organizations and the Ministries of Education.

Program Long-Term Success:

LONG-TERM SOCIAL BENEFITS OF TEACHER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
overall goals:
Correlation between TWB activities, programs, products, services and the following:

§ Increase in student retention, particularly of girls (coding of teacher, student, parent surveys, correlation with demographic data,

§ Increase in teacher retention (government and NGO sources, limited regression analysis – i.e. connection between independent and dependent variables, factoring in culture and context)

Program Short-Term Success:

• Teacher professional development in Kenya and Rwanda for respected and targeted teacher leaders, education partners and local NGOs. Where appropriate, offer the TWB Toolset to facilitate collaboration over best practices and practical content. Design and implement a peer-support structure for local leaders (face-to-face and online) to supervise the project locally, conduct site visits to determine degree of classroom implementation, and participate in the formative evaluation design
• 2.0 metrics and public impacts beginning with TWB’s own teacher-education activities, followed by those of partners (listed above). Design ideas for a system of open-source formative assessment and community evaluation

§ Support for CGI’s leadership team to enhance effectiveness of all Cisco-CGI partners

Support Cisco-CGI with applicable research on ICTS in sub-Saharan Africa

Explore idea of how Cisco can play a leading role with CGI by networking the commitments

Program Success Monitored by:

FOR THE CERTIFICATE OF TEACHING MASTERY
(self-reported/mentor reviewed)
Quantitative and qualitative measurements of the effect of low-cost online and offline teacher professional development, on a global scale.   Focus: 

§ Ability to model teaching strategies and teacher expectations of student learning as applied to subject areas. In this regard, teachers will be able to pose tasks that are based on problem formulation and problem solving.

§ Tangible evidence (artifacts) of 11 applications in the classroom, plus six additional assessment tasks that promote higher-order thinking skills.

Develop leadership skills within the school-site instructional improvement in order to encourage self-reliance and a wider reach of high-quality teacher training for larger and larger populations

Program Success Examples:

FOR THE EVALUATION OF ONGOING AND NEW PARTNERSHIPS
overall goals

§ Deep and wide data-base of local organizations capable of promoting, integrating, and adapting TWB products, programs, and services

§ Reaching the people who reach the people in order to enable local development

§ Partnership Packet designed to facilitate adoption of those TWB products, programs, and services that meet local needs

§ Capacity for partnership process to be replicated and scaled

components

§ Inputting into Salesforce of partnership inquiries, progress

§ Level of commitment to elements of MOU

§ Periodic questionnaires for progress reports for TWB or partner regional support

§ Site-visits, where possible

Level of promotion, by partner, of TWB programs, products, and services

Program: China

Program Description:

Teachers Without Borders seeks support to extend, strengthen, and scale our ongoing work in Dujiangyan, Sichuan – China in order to support online, face-to-face, and blended professional development and care for three areas that define our operations:  

è Science Inquiry Methods (Middle/High School) supported by the TWB Toolset and Certificate of Teaching Mastery

è Emergency Education (Preparedness, Safety)

èPsycho-Social Services (Teacher wellness/student care)

Program Long-Term Success:

Provide 5 filmed inquiry-science implementations in American Middle-School and High-School classrooms per  topics to be determined by the Dujiangyan Bureau of Education and shown/discussed using video-conferencing facilities in Dujiangyan

Develop a white-label version of the TWB Toolset so that the Dujiangyan Bureau can ensure clarity and scalability.

Coordinate implementation with the Bureau of Education who will ensure that the program is implemented with large numbers of teachers in Dujiangyan

Collaborate with HR and curriculum teams to assemble, supervise, and nurture teachers in each of the subject areas

Support classroom implementation based upon seminars led by curriculum teams, to be filmed for reuse

Observe and document competitions of in-classroom examples that demonstrate teacher professional learning through implementation of science-inquiry teaching methods into direct experiences with students

Translate and introduce TWB’s Certificate of Teaching Mastery, to be made available to trainers and curriculum personnel in Dujiangyan

Offer additional coursework leading to (1) specialization certificate in science-inquiry methods for hand-picked curriculum leaders and winners of the science competition and (2) Certificate of Teaching Mastery

Conduct ongoing seminars for curriculum leaders/school leaders

Introduce an ongoing local and virtual mentoring program, involving scheduled video-conferences with experts in the field, devoted to the particular subjects and capable of advancing science-inquiry implementation in classrooms

Support HR/Curriculum teams to extend science training to rural areas through similar program of example, practice, exchange, competition, and outreach, as part of the requirement for completion of a science specialist certificate

Evaluation metrics, rapid feedback loops designed to ensure viability, cohesion, purpose, stickiness. Our experience: it must fit real needs and must nurtured

Program Short-Term Success:

Technology Integration Begun:

1.        Courses:  TWB platform is ready; content can be translated by hand through spit screen

2.        Science-Inquiry Courses: To be tailored to meet curriculum/grade-level needs in China

3.        Working Groups:   To be developed to create space for adaptation/localization/translation

DotSub: integration of software available to TWB for multilingual subtitling

Program Success Monitored by:

Strategy: Provide a practical, openly accessible, content-rich, culturally-portable, best-practice driven, step-by-step, rapidly deployable, measurable solution of emergency-education services.

Assumptions: The success of any such program depends upon the engagement of school leaders, appropriate levels of access to technology, and coordination with various governments.   We shall depend upon and solicit local feedback in order to guide the path process along.

A Human Network: Various cultures orient themselves differently, creating a challenge for a consistent path to be tested effectively in both its preparatory stage and in an actual emergency. At times of emergency, teacher behaviors reflect the wide range of
unpredictable human responses, so the content and pathway must reflect a range of human factors. 

Program Success Examples:

Metrics, Outcomes and Impacts: Given that, presently, there are several emergency education initiatives available, we posit that an open-source, community-oriented path toward emergency education content, using existing platforms, research and available resources can provide a huge, measurable impact for communities who have little in the way of bandwidth, platforms, safety plans, or content

Program: Participatory Evaluation

Program Description:

The Problem:

Program evaluations are often top-down approaches that are disconnected from the individuals, the community and the projects.  Evaluations can consist of inconsequential or missing data, produce results that are delayed and expensive, and most significantly, lack accountability, transparency, and connection to real change. Questions around community feedback must not continue to be ignored.  The reality is that the evaluation of community programs is often an issue of control, one that tiptoes around the status quo of program developers, funders, and those who indirectly benefit from a positive evaluation report.

Why is this important to TWB?

Honest community-based program evaluation is both a moral obligation and a huge gap in international development work.  We have to know that what we do matters.  We know that if you can't measure it, it's as if it never happened.  With Teacher Pulse and other evaluation tools, we hope to revolutionize the field, demonstrate real impacts, and lower costs.  It's no longer enough to simply have good intentions -- we need to raise the bar by stimulating global, yet personal, involvement in program outcomes.  Most importantly, we want to show that education is, truly, the key to development.

 

The Solution:

The community must be involved in the evaluation. We focus on developing programs and supporting local initiatives and organizations that enable community members to share their own voices, expertise and resources. If people cannot measure and review the impacts of a program, it's absolutely unsustainable.

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Program Success Examples:

Program: Technological Improvements

Program Description:

Teachers Without Borders is committed to removing barriers to educational resources available online. In so doing, we are working with the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to provide opportunities such as our TWB Toolset, as well as links to the work of our colleagues, worldwide.

Program Long-Term Success:

Program Short-Term Success:

Program Success Monitored by:

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