Abstract:

Students, especially girls from low socio-economic and remote backgrounds in underdeveloped countries, are less likely to attend secondary school, critical to empowering them for life and work (UNICEF, 2020). Distance education that fosters inclusive learning offers promise for such students, but realization of the benefits is hampered by lack of teacher capability.

Traditional teacher professional development programs often utilize expert-driven approaches without consulting key stakeholders. This model may not be relevant to teachers’ realities. Contextualized professional development is needed to build teacher capability in leadership, and design, development and facilitation of high-quality inclusive learner centered distance education.

In this paper, we have proposed that in order to provide such contextualized professional development a participatory research framework is needed, which will enable stakeholder input and increase potential for change (IDRC, 2019). Collection of rich stakeholder input from diverse local community members including community, teachers and industry voices will facilitate contextualization. The approach will support development of strong partnerships between schools and in-country trainers and distance education providers.

Pilot scale trials are needed to build partnerships and community confidence in efficacy of new approaches. The first stage would be to collaboratively develop a shared vision for distance education and an understanding of the context and requirements of training in inclusive distance education and leadership between the implementation team, representative trainees and key stakeholders. The second stage would be to develop a blueprint for contextualised inclusive distance learning professional development for a pilot group of teachers. The professional development would be online and model best online practice for distance education. The third stage would be mentoring for the newly trained teachers who would teach students at local schools using distance education approaches. Mentors would be recruited from the local community. Rigorous evaluation of lessons learnt across all stages would contribute to refinement of resources and processes, and prepare recommendations for the fourth stage, knowledge mobilization to other regions and scale up through advocacy (Gilleri, 2020). Learning 'before, during and after' is a simple model to facilitate knowledge mobilsation (NHS, 2000) Support of internet providers would be essential for scale-up and sustainable adoption of distance learning over the long-term.

The blueprint for professional development would use a design template such as the trifocal lens of structure, support and strategy from Graham, Woodfield and Harrison (2013). Structure would include utilizing existing distance learning models for effective distance education teacher training and support (Picciano, 2017); support would include consideration of sustainability of distance education after teacher training, through developing the leadership capability of teachers and setting up of distance educator networks (Archambault et al, 2010); strategy would focus on knowledge mobilization of pilot project outcomes including recommendations for scale-up, identifying the best practice process to design the professional development, mentoring for other regions and policy recommendations for Government.

Keywords:

Professional development, distance education, rural disadvantage, inclusive approaches, participatory research framework, scale-up.