Teacher Trainers Inducted to the Accelerated Learning Approach

“I was touched by the fact that a grade four child could not read,” one tutor reflected.

“You mean a child has gone through 6 years of school and cannot read Kiswahili syllables? Something must be wrong.”

A result of a four-day session with tutors and chief principals of three Teacher Training Colleges (TTC) in Kenya, these sentiments were shared across the room. We sought to give the team the experience of the potential of accelerated learning approaches to expedite the acquisition of foundational literacy skills, deliver targeted learning sessions with learners lagging in literacy skills, reflect on how this links to Teacher Education practices and generate a learning plan to inform engagement and learning within the existing Indigenous Languages Community of Practice (CoP).

We had a general idea of how the sessions would run but needed to be sure. We have been applying the Accelerated Learning Approach (ALA) in schools across various organisations within the Regional Education Learning Initiative (RELI) and the People’s Action for Learning (PAL) Network. To date, the initiatives within this network have reached over 170,000 learners in the global south. The programmes are implemented by trained and youthful volunteers, applying principles of assessment, grouping, goal setting, targeted learning activities and community engagement to expedite foundational learning. This was, however, the first time we interacted with teacher trainers, a move inspired by the need for the systemic uptake of targeted instruction as the most sustainable approach to ensuring foundations are learnt well and on time. A few questions about the programme still lingered in our minds. How would the sessions run? How would we adapt these approaches to teacher training? How much information was sufficient to start conversations?

Participants were drawn from the Indigenous Language CoP, with each of the tutors present teaching an Indigenous Language as a subject in their respective colleges. From the introductions, there were still questions about how to train trainee teachers on Indigenous Languages. Except for the Diploma in Primary Teacher Education curriculum design, tutors lamented the lack of reference materials. With each tutor expected to research and come up with teaching materials, it was evident that the scope of content was not uniform across different colleges. Moreover, the classes have mixed trainees, while the tutors may have mastered only one or two Indigenous Languages. The implication of the latter is that Indigenous Languages are taught in English, and there is a lot of uncertainty on how to manage the multilingual classrooms.

Amidst these questions, the sessions started on a high note. The attendees received the induction to the approach with a lot of enthusiasm. They embraced the ALA principles of assessment, grouping, goal setting, level-based fun activities within no time. The tutors had a clear picture of how to apply these in their own classes and guide the trainee teachers to do the same with pupils once they get to primary schools. This was made possible through practical sessions in neighbouring primary schools. The seemingly inconceivable figures reported in the latest Uwezo assessment were confirmed.

“While we went through the training, I did not think that the statistics cited in the latest Uwezo report were accurate. But we confirmed that 60% of the learners in our school were not able to read,” one tutor observed.

The most exciting moment was engaging in learning activities with the children. There was a lot of enthusiasm from both the tutors and the primary school children they interacted with. As Dr. Sara Ruto, the Education CAS noted during the opening session – a happy child will produce good results.

The session ended with the following key agreements:

• Share the knowledge gained with other literacy teachers within the institutions
• Apply the Accelerated Learning Principles to teaching and learning in schools
• A proposal to review the practicum process and expectations, where trainees will first assess learners and then engage them
• Introduce Indigenous Language days in colleges to showcase the various innovations
• Collaboration in the development of Indigenous Languages material
• Continuous engagements within the Indigenous Language CoP and create smaller CoPs for independent discussions

The training concluded with one principal promising to support learners for at least 10 days while some tutors promised to ‘adopt’ a school. What a joy to have such outcomes from the training!