Professor Esther Care, of the University of Melbourne, serves as the lead trainer for the ALiVE Academy, working closely with ALiVE leadership to shape and guide the overall training programme. She began by mentoring a select cohort of eight experts who were trained as Master Trainers and now play a central role in designing and delivering capacity building sessions across the region.
Increasingly members of the Academy will co-facilitate learning sessions drawing on their local experience. In the peer learning sessions, interested members facilitate topics they have researched. Where necessary and relevant, other teachers will be sourced based on expertise.
Professor Esther Care is a renowned researcher who works with government and non-government organisations on education reforms, with a focus on 21st century skills and assessment. She is currently working with RELI Africa in East Africa on assessment of life skills through the ALiVE initiative. Pro. Care serves as the technical lead at the ALiVE Academy. This is one among many of her global roles that span decades. Her expertise lies in psycho-educational assessment, expanding to the mainstream education sector over the past decade. She is the author of several books focussed on 21st century skills, as well as writer of many academic articles on psycho-educational assessment, formative assessment, education system reform, and collaborative problem solving. We caught up with Prof. Care amid her global trips and here is the flow of that conversation:
I first dealt with issues around learning that was not associated most strongly with cognitive functioning when I worked in careers education. During that time, I learned about the importance of interests, values and attitudes, all which impact life choices.
Later in my academic career I specialised in the measurement of “difficult to measure” constructs which include many of those that we identify as social emotional learning, and which are associated with concepts of personality and temperament. In addition, in the 1990s I explored, researched and practiced around values education. This was brought about by my work with large industry employers who were looking to identify what values among workers would best suit the work environment.
Then, from around 2011 onward, I developed expertise in the assessment of 21st century skills which include both cognitive and social emotional constructs. This was all against the background of my academic and practical expertise in assessment more widely.
From my experience in the careers and employment space, it is essential that employers look at competencies of their workforce beyond their technical skills or their cognitive skills. Other aspects such as how you want to contribute to society or how you see your place in that society are very important to workforce satisfaction. So, it is important that we enable adolescents to understand themselves, their values, and their attitudes if they are to reach fulfilment in the workforce and their lives more generally.
I am the lead facilitator for the Academy. In that role my major goal is to ensure that participants develop their understanding and expertise sufficiently that they can work in this area independently, that they understand what they do not know and need to find out more about, and that they are able to build the capacity of others.
The Academy is critical in the context of integration of life skills and values into the four educational jurisdictions across Kenya, Tanzania mainland, Zanzibar and Uganda. This competency-based education initiative that we have seen across the world in the last decade is not an easy thing to implement. Part of the reason for this is that in the education space, we tend to be experts in just one sector, for example, in assessment or in curriculum or in pedagogy. When we introduce concepts of life skills and values, these are cross-curricular and that means that we need to think much more holistically about how the education system integrates the principles and goals.
Note that in the Academy we originally focussed on assessment. As the relevant jurisdictions shifted to think more deeply about integration, so also the Academy has increasingly been exploring this issue. Paramount has been the need to be aware of the multiple approaches to integration, and how we link across the three different sectors (assessment, curriculum, and pedagogy) and how we ensure understanding of the implications of integration of these constructs into the daily classroom.
The ALiVE Academy has taken slightly different forms across its lifespan. But overall it has consisted of four to five days of intensive in-person workshops, during which time there is a mix of instructional sessions, exercises, critical discussion, and practical assignments. In the first quarter of this year, we have met virtually and have discovered some of the pitfalls of virtual learning, which include issues of timetabling and availability.
The degree of expertise of Academy participants has significantly increased. Unfortunately, over time, we have lost a couple of participants, which is a loss not only for their own development, but also for the group’s development.
One of the things that we endeavour to do is to rely on peer-based learning. For example, each participant engages in a critical review of their peers’ presentation or understanding of the issues. This means that all can develop their confidence in a non-threatening environment and at the same time, acquire tools and materials that they can use for their jurisdictional work while supporting partners.
As is clear from the diversity of requests from the education jurisdictions in which ALiVE is functioning, ALiVE is seen as a group that has a key understanding of the multiple aspects of competency-based education integration with a focus on life skills. As members of the Academy continue to increase their understandings, they can take a constructive ‘learning by doing’ approach that responds to the jurisdictions’ local needs and context.
Measurement of life skills and values is only important insofar as an education system needs to understand the degree to which its goals are being met. Therefore, it is essential that each system is clear about the learning outcomes it seeks to achieve. Only with this clarity can we measure or assess life skills and values in a way that will provide information back to the system for system accountability. At the same time, if we can develop a better understanding of how these constructs develop, then the information can be integrated back into curriculum and teacher guides such that teachers themselves have much better support for nurturing their students’ capacities.
I am very proud to see how individual members of the Academy step in to respond to questions or comments of others in the group, providing required and additional information. This denotes their level of confidence and expertise, knowing that each can build the capacity of others, without constant reliance on external inputs.
I see the building of local capacity as something that is best achieved through group processes and the inputs of individuals with different sets of expertise. This differs substantially from what may be termed training workshops, where there is an assumption that everybody is at the same baseline and everybody has the same learning needs. As we know, learning is best achieved through the application of the knowledge and skills that are being accumulated. Hence, the increasing capacity of individuals in the group to inform their jurisdictions as well as contribute to each other’s needs for expertise is testament to the learning that has taken place.
In one sense, the Academy Is a fragile thing. Its sustainability depends not only on the interest and engagement of its participants, but also on the willingness of their employing organisations and the ALiVE consortium that provides the space for learning. This is an expensive undertaking and cannot be taken for granted. Additionally, participants commitment can also be strained by their typical workloads, given employer commitments.
All things constant, I see the current Academy members each leading particular streams of capacity building, both within their jurisdictions and across other jurisdictions. They could provide the substance and a considerable set of resources to help countries beyond the borders of East Africa!
As implied by my comments about the future of the Academy, it is essential that employing organisations as well as the ALiVE Consortium value the Academy sufficiently to support it organisationally. That requires employers to acknowledge that time can be set aside, not only for in-person or virtual sessions, but also for associated learning. It also implies a recognition of what Academy members can contribute to the continuing endeavour and valuing their qualifications to provide expertise.
