School Leaders as agents of change towards equity and inclusion

Wolfenden, Freda; Cooper, Deborah; Dawadi, Saraswati and Noacco, Elena (2024). School Leaders as agents of change towards equity and inclusion. Foundation for Information Technology Education and Development Inc (FIT-ED), Manila, Philippines.

URL: https://nicsforschoolleaders.tpdatscalecoalition.o...

Abstract

School Leaders as Agents of Change Towards Equity and Inclusion was a GPE -KIX funded project which sought to explore how professional learning communities for school leaders – Networked Improvement Communities (NICs) – working with continuous improvement tools accessed through an open learning platform, could be harnessed as a system-wide scalable method for school improvement in different contexts across South Asia. The specific focus was developing school leaders’ capabilities to bring about sustainable changes in school practices that address inequalities in student access and learning in schools. The project consortium worked in three locations: public school systems of Nepal and Pakistan, and schools serving refugee Afghan students in Peshawar, Pakistan.
Key activities: Scaling research was carried out in three phases. Phase 1 established the specific inclusion policy environments within which school leaders work, the nature of school leaders’ current inclusive practice and their levels of digital expertise in Afghanistan, Nepal and Pakistan. Policy analysis was complemented by mixed methods research with school leaders. Phase 1 findings provided justification for field testing for scaling of the innovation in these contexts. (The specific innovation being field tested for scaling is school leader NICS with a facilitator and continuous improvement tools accessed through an open course.) The findings were shared with stakeholders and informed the co-creation of original localized open resources in Phase 2. These were organized as an open digital course that guides school leaders to work collaboratively on small experiments to tackle ‘micro-challenges’ of inclusion in their schools. The course comprises eight units, available through each country partner’s learning platform, and adapted and translated for each country context. (After the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, the project moved from Afghanistan to work with school leaders in schools serving Afghan refugees in Peshawar.)
In Phase 3, empirical research was undertaken to understand the impacts created by the innovation. Small groups of school leaders formed NICs in two locations in each project context. NICs met regularly to work through the activities of the Open Course supported by a facilitator. School leaders accessed the open resources through a digital tablet supplied by the project. Researchers generated data on how the school leaders collaborated in the NIC, changes in their attitudes related to inclusion and the ways in which they exercised agency (or not) to improve inclusion in their schools. Researchers undertook semi-structured interviews in three cycles (baseline, midline and endline) with all the school leaders and facilitators, and collected data from the learning platform on school leader engagement with the digital resources, together with observation notes from facilitators.
Alongside fieldwork, there was considerable engagement and cooperation with a range of stakeholders (total number 264) in each project context. This activity aimed to both enhance stakeholder knowledge and skills in related areas and sensitize them to this work and its emerging findings. Towards the end of Phase 3, several knowledge mobilization activities (evidence cafes and workshops) were held with approximately 20 stakeholders in each country to discuss the project findings and explore how they might be drawn on to inform system improvements in education inclusion. These activities also functioned as research sites for further data gathering. A participant observation approach was used at these events to help understand what is taken up by whom and in what ways for scaling impact. Knowledge mobilization was supported by numerous secondary knowledge outputs – blogs, national and international conference presentations, infographics, policy briefs, school leader vignettes and video animations, available on the project website.

Plain Language Summary

Equity and inclusion in education are policy priorities yet many children and young people are frequently excluded from quality education. This project investigated how networks of professional communities could be adapted and deployed in three contexts—, Nepal, Pakistan and refugee camps for Afghans in Pakistan —to develop the capabilities of school leaders to identify barriers to equity and inclusion, and enact data-driven solutions towards sustainable change in access and learning of girls, children with disabilities (CWD) and other marginalized learners.

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