De las siguientes variables, ¿Cual amerita una mejora de calidad del servicio?

Joanna O. Masingila Syracuse University Agnes W. Gathumbi Kenyatta University

Kenyatta University (KU) and Syracuse University (SU) have recently been awarded a grant funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through Higher Education Development (HED) and the Africa-U.S. Higher Education Initiative (http://soeweb.syr.edu/centers_institutes/Kenya_partnership_projects/default.aspx). The Africa-U.S. Higher Education Initiative aims to strengthen African higher education capacity through partnerships with U.S. institutions of higher education. In February 2009, almost 300 partnership proposals were submitted to HED for consideration for $50,000 planning grants in six focal areas—agriculture, health, science and technology, engineering, education and teacher education, and business.

Thirty-three partnerships were awarded six-month planning grants of $50,000 each to develop a strategic plan with a ten-year vision. Eleven of these 33 partnerships, and their resulting strategic plans, were chosen for two years of funding in 2010. There is the possibility of these partnerships being funded for years three to five, and hopefully up to ten years. These 11 partnerships are in 10 African countries—Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan and Uganda. Kenya has two funded partnerships—one at Kenyatta University with Syracuse University focused on teacher education, and one at the University of Nairobi with Colorado State University focused on drylands. Each of these partnerships will work with the USAID mission in the African country and other relevant government agencies and stakeholders.

The Kenyatta University and Syracuse University partnership will build capacity at the secondary school level through quality teacher preparation across the span of teacher education—from preservice teacher preparation, to novice teacher induction, to practicing teacher continual growth. The task of preparing teachers is among the most important jobs in which higher education institutions are engaged, and teacher preparation and the

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continued professional development of practicing teachers are keys to economic development and transformation in any country.

Context

Through the institutional situation analysis and needs assessment we completed during our planning grant, we identified the following institutional and policy constraints: (1) large student numbers in courses and teaching practica (problem of massification), (2) heavy workloads for faculty members due to large student numbers, (3) lack of adequate information technology skills among faculty members, (4) lack of access to modern methodology and technology for preparing teachers, (5) lack of well-equipped science laboratories (i.e., biology, chemistry, physics), (6) lack of language laboratory, (7) lack of a modern resource center for preparing teachers, and (8) lack of transport to project schools and participating institutions.

We also identified the following programmatic needs: (1) the teacher education curriculum at KU is in need of revision, (2) teachers need to be prepared to support all learners, (3) teachers need to be prepared to use IT in teaching and learning, (4) teachers need to be well prepared in content and pedagogical content knowledge, and (5) teacher education needs to be coherent and supported from preservice teacher preparation, through induction and professional development for continual learning.

The areas we identified through our needs assessment align with Kenya’s national development goals for education, as articulated in the Kenya Education Sector Support Programme (KESSP), which outlines the education sector agenda for national development. Section 16 of the KESSP deals with the Secondary Education Investment Programme and the points at which our goals are particularly aligned are: (1) strengthening of secondary education through inservice training, (2) establishing a national system of monitoring and evaluation, (3) enhancing information computer technology (ICT) in secondary education, (4) integrating ICT in teaching and learning, (5) building teachers’ capacity to use ICT, (6) enhancing participation of partners in secondary education, and (7) enhancing access to and quality of secondary education for disadvantaged students.

Our goals also align with a number of the sector-specific goals of USAID/Kenya. In the education sector, the goals of USAID/Kenya for which our strategic plan goals are particularly aligned are: (1) improving the quality of education, (2) improving teacher training practices, and (3) providing professional development for teachers and administrators.

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In our strategic plan, we identified our core areas of collaboration as focusing on building capacity (1) of the KU teacher education faculty to prepare high quality teachers, (2) of the teacher education program to conduct research, (3) of the teacher education program to review and revise its curriculum based on performance data from its graduates, and (4) of Kenyatta University to provide quality service to education stakeholders with regards to teacher preparation. We will work with USAID/Kenya, the Ministry of Education in Kenya, the Kenya Institute of Education, the Kenya Secondary School Heads Association, and other partners in this collaborative work.

Partnership Description Identified Issues

Through our needs assessment of teacher education at Kenyatta University and in Kenya, we identified five issues related to current teacher preparation, induction and professional development. These issues are:

1. The teacher education curriculum in Kenya is not systematically revised based on evidence of teacher knowledge and performance.

2. Teachers in Kenya are not adequately prepared or able to support all learners. 3. Teachers in Kenya have limited information technology (IT) skills.

4. Teachers in Kenya lack deep and connected content and pedagogical content knowledge, including adequate practical skills.

5. There is no link in Kenya between preservice teachers’ preparation and teachers’ work in schools allowing for coordinated monitoring of induction and professional development.

Related to issue #1, there has not been a systematic review of the teacher education curriculum at Kenyatta University since the curriculum was put in place in the mid-1960s. Further, any revisions that have taken place have not been informed by evidence of teacher knowledge and performance. Thus, faculty members at Kenyatta University do not know if graduates have been prepared in the best ways to meet the challenges of the classroom. Constraints related to issues #1 include a lack of documented evidence of changes that are needed based on teacher knowledge and performance, structures that are slow to change, and distance and the number of preservice teachers. Given that data are not currently available on how teacher education graduates of KU are performing and that teacher performance expectations are not in place, it is not clear what revisions might need to be made. The university structure, at present, does not have a protocol for developing indicators, developing data collection instructions, collecting and analyzing data and revising

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course curricula in light of the data. KU graduates might be placed anywhere in the country to teach and given that there are literally thousands of graduates, collecting data from them is challenging logistically.

Concerning issue #2, the teacher education curriculum that is in place prepares teachers to teach “typical” students. Thus, teachers are not prepared to teach all learners, especially those with special needs. Currently, there is a move towards inclusion in Kenyan schools and away from segregating students with special needs. This means that there is an even greater need for teachers to be prepared to support all learners in learning. Constraints related to issue #2 include the current curriculum that focuses on “typical” learners, time in existing courses, the pressure of national examinations, and a lack of support for implementing new teaching strategies, among others. The Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examinations influence instruction quite a lot at the secondary level. Teachers feel pressured to prepare their students for the exams, and given the limited time in the classes to cover a large syllabus, teachers often feel compelled to teach to those students who are “typical” and feel constrained in trying to support all learners in their classes. Related to issue #3, technology is part of the primary and secondary curricula and teachers need to be prepared to support learners in using technology in learning. The current teacher education curriculum does not prepare teachers to be able to use technology appropriately and effectively in supporting student learning. Constraints related to issue #3 include availability and accessibility of equipment and the IT capacity of the teacher education faculty members. While the government of Kenya has a goal of getting computers in all secondary schools in the very near future, computers are not currently available to most teachers to use with their students. At the university level, the teacher education faculty members are often not knowledgeable about technology that can be helpful to support student learning and thus this technology is not incorporated into university teacher education courses.

Concerning issue #4, recent research in Kenya on teachers’ knowledge (cf., Japan International Cooperation Agency, 2007) indicates that the majority of Kenyan teachers lack deep and connected knowledge of the subject matter they are teaching, and are uncertain of how to support students’ development of conceptual knowledge of many topics in the curriculum (cf., Miheso-O’Connor, 2009). Constraints related to issue #4 include the limited exposure of teacher education faculty members to other ideas and opportunities for professional development, a lack of guiding frameworks and models for thinking about supporting teacher learning, and a lack of access to research on teacher education.

Issue #5 arises from the university concentrating almost exclusively on the preparation of teachers with little or no connection to what happens to these teachers once they leave the

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university classroom. While at the university level faculty members have been most concerned with teachers at the preservice level, we realize the critical importance of developing capacity by addressing these problems across the whole continuum of teacher education—from preservice teacher preparation through the induction period of novice teachers through continual learning with in-service teachers—and working with the Ministry to Education to support teachers at all stages of their careers. Constraints related to issue #5 include the lack of teacher performance expectations and assessments at each stage of teacher education, the lack of a feedback protocol for gaining information about how teacher education graduates are performing in their teaching practice, and the need to have governmental support, among others.

Additionally, to achieve these ends it is useful and necessary to build the capacity at the institutional level. This means providing faculty members access to ongoing professional development focused on these issues, as well as systematically revising the teacher education curriculum. Improvements in these areas will provide a foundation for increased capacity of high quality instruction at the national level.

Partnership Vision and Goals

As research institutions with strong traditions in teacher education and a strong connection to each other, Syracuse University and Kenyatta University are uniquely positioned to collaborate on the challenge of preparing highly qualified teachers. Our partnership began when the two universities created institutional linkage in 2000, following a Syracuse University faculty member’s time as a Fulbright Scholar at Kenyatta University in 1998. Kenyatta University’s School of Education has been a leader in teacher education in East Africa since its founding in 1965. It is the oldest institution in Kenya that prepares secondary teachers. The School of Education has undergraduate, masters and doctoral degree programs. The university enrolls 30,000 students, of which 19,000 are in teacher education programs.

The Syracuse University Board of Trustees established the all-University School of Education in 1934, which incorporated the Margaret Olivia Slocum Teachers College, founded in 1906. SU’s School of Education pioneered the inclusion movement in the United States, making way for all learners to participate fully in mainstream classrooms and other inclusive learning environments. Syracuse University enrolls approximately 16,800 students, of which approximately 1,000 are in teacher education programs.

Through the KU-SU institutional linkage a number of collaborations have already taken place. Fourteen Kenyan students have completed or are completing Ph.D. (nine) or M.S.

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(five) degrees at SU in teacher education since 1999. In July 2009, the Schools of Education at KU and SU co-sponsored an international conference on education that was held at KU and planning is underway for a second co-sponsored international conference on education to be held in July 2011 at KU. As can be seen, changes in capacity built through the KU-SU partnership will have wide-ranging impacts; there is particularly the potential for wide impact in teacher education in East Africa.

Our partnership objectives are to (1) strengthen the capacity of the KU teacher education faculty resulting in improved teacher preparation for the education sector in Kenya, (2) strengthen the research capacity of the KU teacher education program resulting in improved knowledge to produce more effective education, (3) enhance the KU teacher education program resulting in improved instructional capacity, and (4) provide quality service to education stakeholders resulting in improved instruction in secondary schools in Kenya. Along with these objectives, we have a long-term goal of developing and establishing a model for teacher preparation and education that we will share with other universities in Kenya and other East African countries. Parallel to all of these objectives is our goal of building awareness of issues and successful strategies related to capacity building at the departmental, institutional and national level among the SU faculty members and other partners through our collaborative activities.

Over the next ten years and beyond, we envision our collaborative work enhancing quality teacher preparation to have a great impact on how teachers are prepared, inducted and supported in continual learning in Kenya and throughout East Africa. We will work with USAID/Kenya, the Ministry of Education in Kenya, the Kenya Institute of Education, and other partners in establishing the goals and vision listed below. In brief, our five-year goals, ten-year goals and long-term vision are as follows.

Five-year goals. In Years 1-5, we will begin at the departmental and university levels and will: (1) develop a protocol for continuing professional development for teacher education faculty members, (2) review the teacher education curriculum, develop a protocol for collecting data from teachers about their preparation, and create a protocol for revising the teacher education curriculum based on evidence collected from the field, (3) work with the Ministry of Education to establish Teacher Performance Expectations and Assessments, and (4) develop a preservice teacher mentoring model.

Ten-year goals. In Years 6-10, we will work with the Ministry of Education to: (1) develop a mentoring model for novice (beginning) teachers, (2) develop a professional development program for practicing teachers and align this with the mentoring programs for preservice and novice teachers, and (3) create a model for collaboration between and among the

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education stakeholders through the establishment of an educational consortium to serve as advisors to and partners with the Ministry of Education for teacher preparation and education.

Long-term vision. At the end of ten years, we will have: (1) developed a center of excellence for faculty development at KU housed at the Department of Educational Communication and Technology, (2) developed an institute at KU devoted to teacher development, research and policy, (3) developed a research program to examine the impact of the revised teacher education curriculum, and the newly implemented mentor and professional development programs, and (4) have a model for teacher preparation and development that can be shared with other universities in Kenya and other East African countries, as well as other Ministries of Education in other East African countries. As noted above, these goals are well aligned with Kenya’s national development goals for education and with the sector-specific goals of USAID/Kenya.

Innovative and Entrepreneurial Initiatives

Through this collaboration, we will develop high-quality teacher education instructional materials that can be distributed to other universities and colleges for a fee. They will be sold in Kenya and in other East African countries, and later can be made available to all African countries. These materials will be developed for use at the preservice, induction and inservice levels and will be in the form of CDs, DVDs, practical kits, modules, written materials and instructor guides. The materials will grow out of the data-driven curriculum revision that we will undertake in our teacher education courses, covering the areas of mathematics and science, humanities and social sciences, and languages, and paying particular attention to supporting all learners, developing IT skills, and developing content and pedagogical content knowledge. In preparing and marketing these materials, we will work together with the Quality Assurance and Standards Officers from the Ministry of Education as well as staff at the Kenya Institute of Education. Companions to these materials will be materials for the professional development of teacher education faculty members and others who will work with preservice, novice and experienced teachers. Another initiative through our collaborative project is the establishment of an electronic teacher education journal to share research findings as well as articles of best practice. We will invite firms and bodies to advertise in the journal to provide funding for the journal and its work. The journal will enable us to make our research findings and developed teacher education practices available to other African universities and colleges, as well as make known the availability of the materials that we have available for sale.

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In order to achieve our objectives of (1) strengthening the capacity of the KU teacher education faculty resulting in improved teacher preparation for the education sector in Kenya, (2) strengthening the research capacity of the KU teacher education program resulting in improved knowledge to produce more effective education, (3) enhancing the KU teacher education program resulting in improved instructional capacity, and (4) providing quality service to education stakeholders resulting in improved instruction in secondary schools in Kenya, we will have the following project components. Note that while the current funding is for two years, we are listing here activities for five years so that the project components can be seen more coherently.

Building human capacity. We will begin our capacity building of the KU teacher education faculty to prepare high quality teachers by instituting ongoing professional development, scholar exchanges, and support for KU faculty members to complete doctoral degrees (Objective 1). We will start with faculty members in the Department of Educational Communication and Technology (teacher education faculty members) in Years 1-5 and then expand to other School of Education faculty members in Years 6-10. Our long-term goal with regard to this capacity building component is to develop a center of excellence for faculty development at KU.

Building program capacity. Our second component of capacity building is at the program level (Objectives 2 and 3). We will strengthen the research capacity of the teacher education program through collaborative research projects and having experienced researchers mentor KU researchers. We will also institute a protocol for reviewing and revising the teacher education curriculum during Years 1-5. This protocol will include collecting data from KU graduates who are novice and experienced teachers. Our long-term goal for Years 6-10 is to develop an institute at KU devoted to teacher development, research and policy. Members of this institute could work together with the Ministry of Education toward a type of accreditation of teacher education institutions in Kenya to ensure high quality preparation of teachers.

Building national capacity. Our third component in capacity building is at the national level