Education Research Specialist

Job Description

The IRC has been working in the DRC since 1996, and currently operates in five core programming areas – primary health care, community-driven reconstruction & local governance, the prevention and mitigation of gender-based violence, education, and emergency preparedness and response. The United States International Agency (USAID) in DRC is funding a 5 year project, Opportunities for Equitable Access to Quality Basic Education (OPEQ), to provide youth and children improved equitable access to quality basic education in North and South Kivu and Katanga. This project objectives are to: 1) improve in-service teacher training system; 2) improve quality of teaching and learning; 3) improve equitable opportunities for basic education; and 4) increase opportunities for out of school youth. The IRC is seeking a Education Research Specialist to undertake key research related activities linked to the 2^nd objective.

To test the effectiveness of the teacher training systems and community-level participation to produce positive outcomes on teaching and learning, the IRC has partnered with NYU on a large-scale randomized control trial randomized at the cluster level, involving 350 schools. There are three main objectives for the impact evaluation of the OPEQ initiative:

1. To estimate the impact of the teacher training on: teachers’ motivation and performance; children’s social-emotional learning and psychosocial wellbeing; and children’s reading and mathematics abilities.
2. To examine whether the impact of the integrated intervention varies by certain important features of participating individuals, schools and communities.
3. To utilize data from the impact evaluation both to make incremental improvements in the intervention over the course of the initiative and to inform similar program and policy initiatives.

The Education Research Specialist is responsible for assisting in the development of a monitoring system with indicators, tools, and monitoring plans to reflect the project design and ensure that IRC is able to understand what aspects of the project’s strategy is successful and what areas need to improve to obtain better results.

SCOPE OF WORK: : The Education Research Specialist will assist with the direct teacher observations, the development and implementation of a project monitoring plan, and as needed the planning and implementation of the baseline for the scaled up phase of the teacher training intervention. The Education Research Specialist will also design a unified monitoring system (including tools, data collection strategies, and data use policies) and build the capacity of existing monitoring and evaluation staff to use the system. Finally, the Ecuation Research Specialist will assist in other tasks related to the overall research being done in the impact evaluation.

The Educaion Research Specialist will report to the OPEQ Education Technical Advisor based in Kinshasa and will work closely with the National M&E team. S/he will receive technical guidance and support from New York University, the Child and Youth Protection and Development technical unit and the Research, Evaluation and Learning unit in IRC headquarters.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Direct Teacher Observation (DTO)

• Lead the development of the teacher observation tool, including scientific and cultural validation studies.
• Assist the country team in its efforts to coordinate with the Ministry of Education and other key education partners to develop teacher observation tools.
• Train and supervise staff to perform direct observations.
• Plan and budget for implementation of direct observations in coordination with other data collection cycles in the impact evaluation.
• Assure data quality; aggregate and clean collected data.
• Liaise with the IRC Research, Evaluation, and Learning team and the research team from NYU to give updates and collaboratively problem-solve.
• Provide guidance on how items and elements of the teacher observation tool can be included in policy recommendations to the Ministry of Education for its national teacher performance management system.
• Assist with the translation of the teacher observation tools and accompanying guidelines into French.

Development and Implementation of a Monitoring Plan

• Design OPEQ’s monitoring plan, including tool development, data collection strategies, and data use strategies.
• Build staff capacity to oversee the implementation of the monitoring plan, emphasizing the importance of choosing indicators/data that give a full picture of the program, timely data collection, and timely integration of monitoring data into program planning.
• Assure that the OPEQ M&E database is used properly.
• Assist in compilation, analysis, and use of the monitoring data to refine and improve both the design and implementation of the OPEQ intervention, particularly in teacher support and development, and community mobilization.
• Assist the OPEQ team to create a community monitoring plan using school report cards

Other responsibilities related to the impact evaluation

• Manage and coordinate day-to-day activities, like data collection progress, field deployments of enumerators, and budget management.
• Prepare and co facilitate presentations on DTO to different audiences: USAID; MEPSP and other relevant partners.

REQUIREMENTS:

• Masters degree in relevant field
• 3-6+ years experience with education monitoring and research in a low-income country, including instrument development and piloting, data collection, data quality, and data entry
• Demonstrated understanding of research and program priorities, considerations, and concerns
• Experience in successfully designing and implementing education programs that includes the use of teacher observations for evaluating teacher performance or providing teacher support
• Fluency in French and proficiency in English

WORK ENVIRNOMENT:

The IRC will provide group housing with electricity and internet, and access to a driver and car that is shared amongst IRC staff. The Specialist will work out of the IRC field office in Kinshasa, Lubumbashi or Bukavu as needed.

Please apply at: http://tbe.taleo.net/NA2/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org=IRC&cws=1&rid=7586