Strengthening Teacher Professional Development for Multilingual Foundational Learning at Scale

Project Abstract
In most French-speaking African countries, governments have long been exploring ways to implement education and language policies that incorporate local languages alongside French to improve the quality of teaching and learning. Growing research evidence has demonstrated that using French alone as language of instruction impedes foundational learning for students who do not speak it at home or have it as a second language in their immediate environments.
This project builds upon recent research findings indicating that children in Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Senegal are transitioning to French before they are developmentally prepared. It aims to address the lack of effective and efficient pre- and in-service training of teachers to teach foundational skills in one language and smoothly transition into another.
To achieve this objective, the project teams from the American Institutes for Research and Dalberg will adapt and evaluate the effectiveness and scalability of their innovative and tested teacher training package and approaches on teacher and student outcomes in the three countries. They will mobilize knowledge through well-established stakeholder networks in West and Central Africa to develop locally owned, scalable, and effective teacher professional development models that can be used in other multilingual contexts. The project will explore how gender impacts both barriers and supports in teacher training. It will also consider linguistic and socio-economic factors. Finally, the project will offer targeted policy and program recommendations aimed at reducing inequities and inequalities.
The project will utilize mixed methods, randomized controlled trial design with teacher and student surveys, classroom observations, interviews, and discussions. Gender equality and social inclusion variables will be factored into the methodological design to ensure their consideration in data analysis.