Teacher motivation and student learning in India – which is the chicken, and which is the egg?

Blog post by Rhiannon Moore (PhD student, School of Education, University of Bristol) and Anustup Nayak, (Project Director for Classroom Instruction and Practice, Central Square Foundation)

What do we know? Teacher motivation and student learning

Teacher motivation is a commonly discussed topic within policy and research in LMICs. Such discussions tend to have two main points of focus: firstly, that teacher motivation is worryingly low; and secondly, that this is having an impact on student learning. In this blog, we are particularly interested in exploring the latter of these two points. We largely focus our discussion on teachers in India, where our experience and research suggests that it may be helpful to consider this relationship as a two-way cycle instead of an input-output process. Thinking about teacher motivation in this way can change the way we think about both teachers and students, asking that we challenge the often over-simplified picture of a poorly motivated teacher whose behaviour inhibits their students’ learning, and instead start to consider teachers as dynamic agents whose own needs may not be being met. (more…)

Voices from Small Island Developing States: priorities for COP26 and beyond

This blog is written by Dame Pearlette Louisy; Dr Merle St Clair-Auguste; Dr Aminath Muna; Dr Aminath Shiyama; Dr Rosiana Lagi; and the ESSRG Leadership Team, and first published on the Cabot Institute for the Environment blog

The School of Education’s Education in Small States Research Group (ESSRG) in collaboration with the Cabot Institute for the Environment and the Centre for Comparative and International Research in Education (CIRE), have produced a short (15 minute) video as a direct contribution to COP26 in Glasgow. This has been developed from the zoom recording of a joint online event titled ‘Voices from SIDS at the Sharp End of Environmental Uncertainty: Small Island Developing States (SIDS) Speak to COP26’ held on 5 October 2021. (more…)

From ‘hearing’ to listening – In conversation with policymakers on students’ lived experiences of access

Blog post by Dr Jennifer Jomafuvwe Agbaire , Research Associate at the School of Education, University of Bristol

“Those young students can just talk anyhow. If you really want to know about university admission in Nigeria, ask those in charge.”  Just before I set out to begin my doctoral research, I got strong forms of this proposition from colleagues.

It was not surprising that previous research on the topic scarcely included students.

Fast-forward to several years and a PhD award later, I was organising an ESRC-funded exploratory impact event to share my doctoral research findings from students with ‘those in charge’.  Yes indeed, I had defied the popular convention and gone ahead to explore Nigeria’s university access system through the lived experiences of students who are subjected to it.

(more…)