Geneva Global Ethiopia and Kotebe University Partner to Strengthen Teacher Education Nationwide

In August, Geneva Global Ethiopia took a significant step forward in building upon our work of the past few years to support the government’s national implementation of its competency-based curriculum, first introduced in September 2023.  Since the curriculum’s adoption, Geneva Global has drawn on our 15-year Speed School experience to conduct several training workshops on the core aims, concepts, and practices of competency-based teaching and learning for university and college of teacher education faculty from half the country’s regions. 

In Oromia, Geneva Global provided technical assistance to the Regional Education Bureau in revising the full teacher training curriculum.  In 2024, Geneva Global trained the master trainers mobilized by the Ministry of Education to lead a nationwide three-week training of over 40,000 secondary school teachers and school leaders in the design and delivery of fully competency-based lessons.  Many of the same master trainers led a similar national training this past summer that reached 84,000 primary and secondary school teachers across the country.

Consistent across these many efforts by Geneva Global was a fundamental message.  This was, for teachers to gain the capacity, confidence, and commitment to implement the competency-based curriculum effectively and consistently, their training must feature three essential elements: 

1. Training must prioritize the practical aspects of competency-based instruction and learning over the theoretical elements; 
2. Trainers must use regularly the many competency-based instructional methods when training teachers (and other frontline educators) that they expect their student teachers to use eventually with their own students; and 
3. No matter how superb a training program may be, teachers will not become expert, so all training must aim also to cultivate in teachers a growth mindset and equip them with strategies to grow continuously their skill and performance with competency-based instruction back in their classrooms, working on this both alone and with their peers.

Motivated by the accumulated effort and evidence of Geneva Global’s support in this domain, the Ministry of Education recently tapped Kotebe University of Education and Geneva Global to create a hybrid certificate course on Training Teachers to Implement the Competency-Based Curriculum.  The stated aim is to equip and motivate faculty at all of Ethiopia’s 38 colleges of teacher education and its five main faculties of education to overhaul how they ready teachers for the classroom and local education leaders to support these teachers.  Basically, the proposed course will provide teacher educators with the core concepts and practices of competency-based instruction, both to deliver as content and practices and to employ as pedagogic strategy.  The plan is to combine online webinars with practical applications and small group reflection sessions that occur on a bi-weekly basis over a ten-month period.

Supported by Joshua Muskin, a team from Kotebe University of Education met over four days in early August to begin planning the course, establishing the syllabus, articulating the delivery modalities, setting participation goals for the first cohort (about 500 faculty and regional staff), and agreeing on other operational aspects.  The proposed initiative should occur as a collaboration between the Ministry of Education and Kotebe with technical collaboration from Geneva Global.  We look forward to sharing more in the future when the course eventually begins.