Coaching school leadership in Primary Education in Rwanda. Evolutions in Head Teachers’ self-assessment
Abstract
School leadership is identified as a crucial element for improving the quality of education. This article describes a project on school leadership in Rwandan primary education, in which different groups of head teachers received inputs in varying degrees input on school leadership and follow-up coaching by their sector education officers. A self-assessment tool has been developed to map training needs and to measure professional capacity development, addressing eight dimensions of school leadership. By comparing the mean self-assessment scores of about 196 head teachers, over the course of the first year of the project, we identify how the different experimental groups perceive similar training needs, especially on the dimensions of “reshaping conditions for teaching and learning”, “enriching the curriculum” and “enhancing teacher quality”. However, even at the start of the project, the different experimental groups seem to use the self-assessment tool in different ways. We discuss that further research is needed on the use of the self-assessment tool as measurement as well as capacity development instrument.
Keywords: school leadership; primary education; coaching; self-assessment; capacity development
Kigali Institute of Education (KIE) was issued with copyright registration Certificate No. Rw-C10000866 by the Office of the Registrar General in accordance to the Rwandan IPR Law No. 31/2009.
N.B.: KIE is now a College of Education, constituent of the University of Rwanda in accordance to the Rwandan Law No. 71/2013 of 10/09/2013 establishing the University of Rwanda (UR), and the College of Education as shown on its website: http://www.ce.ur.ac.rw/