The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) recognizes the need for international collaboration with partners in forming an effective global response to the pandemic. The Centre has put out a call for research projects addressing urgent local needs, building local capacities, while focusing on the most vulnerable populations.  These projects will be geared towards building more resilient, inclusive, and sustainable societies, economies, and environments.

The TPD@Scale Coalition for the Global South is one of the grantees of this initiative, and will be working with school leaders in marginalized contexts to build their capacity to use data to develop and test solutions to problems of practice in a blended (online/offline) improvement science approach. School leaders and researchers at each research site will work together as a Networked Improvement Community (NIC) following a series of PDSA cycles (Plan, Do, Study, Act) to design, implement and assess local adaptations to school, classroom and community processes which foster and develop individual and collective resilience in learning, with particular attention to digital practices. Where appropriate, changes will utilize digital pedagogies to disrupt the reproduction of educational inequalities and improve learning engagement for all students. Changes may be implemented within or without classrooms depending on the local conditions in response to COVID-19. 

The project aims to contribute to strengthened practice of school leaders in a range of marginalized contexts through use of data-driven decision-making, and to contribute to policy and practice through establishing the extent to which an improvement science approach offers a methodology for school leaders to affect pedagogic change in their school systems. The project will work in four countries in three regions: Chile, the Philippines, Kenya and Uganda. 

The project will be implemented by the Foundation for Information Technology Education and Development (FIT-ED) in partnership with SUMMA and Worldreader, all members of the TPD@Scale Coalition for the Global South.

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