Scaling the impact of a pre-service teacher training module for teachers in violent conflict

 

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the education of over 1.5 million children has been disrupted and more than 1,000 schools were shut in 2022 due to violence and natural disasters. Students exposed to violence experience trauma and psychological distress, with gender-specific patterns. Teachers develop practical competencies and expertise through their experience of teaching in such contexts, and there is an urgent need to mobilize this knowledge and leverage it into formal training.

This project will generate and mobilize evidence on how to scale the impact of a pre-service teacher training module on teaching in violent contexts. It will consolidate a pre-existing module with a focus on reducing gender and ethnolinguistic discrimination as well as pedagogy and support for teachers and students dealing with trauma and violence-related mental health problems. The module will be implemented in three teacher training institutes and evaluated through semi-structured questionnaires, classroom observations as well as a scalability assessment.

The project will enable Congolese pre-service teacher-training institutes to equip future teachers with the knowledge and tools needed to mitigate the impact of violence and trauma on teachers and students, thereby enabling them to reduce teacher burnout and support students who are at risk of dropping out. This will occur through the incorporation of the module into the national teacher-training curriculum, thereby reaching 132 teacher-training institutes across the country. Key project outputs include the final teaching module, two journal articles and a policy brief.

This project is funded through the Global Partnership for Education Knowledge and Innovation Exchange’s Emerging Priorities initiative, a joint endeavour with IDRC.