When education stakeholders, experts brainstorm at PedaL’s forum

In its quest to transform graduate education and its outcomes, a pan-African not-for-profit organisation based in Nairobi, the Partnership for African Social and Governance Research (PASGR) through its Pedagogical Leadership in Africa (PedaL) programme is not relenting in its efforts towards building the capacity of university academics to use innovative pedagogy to enhance the design, context, processes and content of teaching and learning.

The Executive Director, PASGR, Dr Anthony Mveyange while welcoming stakeholders at the forum , which was held recently as a hybrid of online and face-to-face interactions with few guest hosted at the Movenpick Hotel, Nairobi, as majority participated virtually on zoom, expressed the hope of having a very engaging and illuminating conversations that would positively impact on education in Africa.

According to him, government officials, education policy actors drawn from various national, regional and global organisations; the media, development partners and university teaching staff and students are the esteemed participants at the forum with Dr Julius Jwan, the Principal Secretary, State Department for Early Learning and Basic Education, Kenya being the guest of honour at the event.

Speaking on behalf of the PASGR’s Board of Directors, chairman, Programmes and Research Committee, PASGR, Professor Karuti Kanyinga, advocated the need for Africans to go back to the drawing board and start respecting Science in the formulation their policies, adding “this is so that our development policies can be informed much more by evidences.”

“Researches that are used to form government policies across Africa are such that are produced by the people who use helicopter kind of landing and then go away. It is a common trend that researches that are based on actual realities in Africa inform the government’s policies and in the end they are faulted or have less impact. The reasons for this are many; African scholars are not publishing and when they do they don’t publish incredible articles,” Professor Kanyinga said.

Deputy Executive Director and Director Higher Education Programme, PASGR and PedaL team leader, Dr Beatrice Muganda, while speaking on PedaL’s journey at the forum noted that the event had brought together 300 higher education stakeholders to discuss the outcomes of the Pedagogical Leadership in Africa project and to explore its future pathways.

She hinted that PedaL, as one the eight projects supported by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office through the Strategic Partnership for Higher Education Innovation and Reform (SPHEIR) grant scheme had trained over 2,700 academics in 90 universities as well as 38 Technical and Vocational Education and Training institutions across the continents, adding that it had also catalysed transformations in the management and delivery of university programmes.

Highlighting some of the Partnership for African Social and Governance Research(PASGR) at the event, Dr Muganda stated that “PASGR is leading seven founding partners, namely African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA), Institute of Development Studies (IDS) of the University of Sussex, UK as well as five implementing partner universities: University of Ibadan in Nigeria; Egerton University in Kenya; University of Ghana in Ghana; University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania; and, Uganda Martyrs University in Uganda to develop and mainstream pedagogical innovations in university programmes across the continent.

She added that over the past four years, the PedaL partnership had expanded to include 90 universities in 11 African countries: Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa, Botswana and Malawi with the goal of maximising learning outcomes among students in African universities and subsequently to produce quality graduates who will meet labour market needs.

She said that PedaL training programme is offered both as a face-to-face programme and an online variant known as ‘PedaL Online: Technology for Transformative Pedagogy,’ adding that due to its versatility, PedaL gained momentum and achieved unprecedented growth even in the face of a ravaging COVID-19 pandemic.

“In an independent external evaluation of PedaL by experts who were drawn from -African countries, and undertook between October 2020 and June 2021, it was discovered that scaling pedagogical innovations across education systems would enhance the quality and relevance of education and produce quality job-ready, entrepreneurial graduates to accelerate economic development, build inclusive societies and contribute to the social transformation of their countries,” she added.

In a concept not made available to the Tribune Online, it was gathered that the partnership for Pedagogical Leadership had involved a broad spectrum of education stakeholders throughout the life cycle of the PedaL project; from planning to project design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation and that is the collective and invaluable effort of PedaL stakeholders that has enabled PedaL to spread across different disciplines, levels of education and countries in four years.

According to it, “the main objective aim of bringing an estimated 400 higher education stakeholders included to share outcomes of PedaL emerging from practice as well as the external evaluation of PedaL; strengthen collaboration across universities on pedagogical transformation; discuss options for scaling PedaL across the education system and highlight opportunities for educational reforms.

“The stakeholders’ forum included a combination of opportunities for sharing information and learning from a variety of experiences through a keynote address on teaching excellence for skills development and research; presentations of case studies of classroom interactions and emerging outcomes; high level panel discussions with university leaders on university management structures, enabling environment and collaboration for pedagogical transformation; high level panel discussions with policy actors on opportunities for scaling pedagogical transformation across education system.

“The event which is expected to foster a deeper understanding of issues around pedagogical transformation also provided an opportunity for integrating lessons learnt on how PedaL had approached pedagogical transformation in the design of relevant programmes, sparked broad- based ownership not only for mainstreaming pedagogical reforms, but also broader educational reforms at the university and national levels.

“Against this background, there is need to bridge the gap in skills mismatch of graduates and to improve the overall quality of higher education in African universities which has led to increasing pressures to fast track the adoption of relevant pedagogical skills under the Pedagogical Leadership in Africa (PedaL) programme.”

At the end of the forum which brought together experts from different part of the African nations and across the continents discussed about that changing teaching and learning practices: how to improved student learning outcomes, sustainability of outcomes, mainstreaming PedaL within university centres, progress towards policy changes at university and national levels, what can be done differently, adapting PedaL across the education system-Basic/TVET/Tertiary, widening the regional scope, among others.

The education stakeholders at the forum which was a consortium included, Deputy Governor, Plateau State, Nigeria, H.E. Professor Sonni Gwanle Tyoden; Chairman,  Guest of Honour, Principal Secretary, State Department for Early Learning and Basic Education, Kenya Dr Julius Jwan; Technical Adviser, Reform Implementation Committee of the Federal Ministry of Education, Nigeria; Former Director, UNESCO Regional Office for Education in Africa, Professor Pai Obanya  and other discussants both online and onsite, Vice Chancellor, Riara University, Kenya, Professor Robert Gateru; former Vice Chancellor, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, Professor  Abel Idowu Olayinka;  National Council for Higher Education, Uganda, Dr Syrus Ssebugenyi; Chief Executive Officer, Commission for University Education, Kenya, Professor Mwenda Ntarangwi and Africa Partnerships Manager, British Council, Monica Blagescu.

Others were Dr Jethro Pettit of the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK, Curriculum and Instruction Expert, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, UK, Dr Linda Waldman; Head, Professional Development and Training, PASGR, Dr Pauline Ngimwa; Deputy Director of Quality Assurance, Moi University, Kenya, Professor Khaemba Ongeti; Chief Executive Officer, Commission for University Education, Kenya, Professor  Mwenda Ntarangwi; Deputy Permanent Secretary, Ministry of International Affairs and Cooperation, Botswana, Dr Gladys Mokhawa, among others.