Promoting Learning Recovery & Reigniting Intrinsic Motivation Post Covid 19

Education is key to the development of any nation. In 2015, India adopted Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4), which seeks to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all by 2030. At present, we are not on track to achieve this goal. COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on our education systems, leading to widespread learning loss and reversal.

Quality education requires quality teachers. We’re encouraged by the emphasis on the importance of teachers in recent reports and policy documents such as National Education Policy 2020 and the revised National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education. But despite strong policies, students continue to struggle with both academic and life skills. Reason– less focus on the role of motivation across the education sector when it comes to providing quality education

The Centre for Intrinsic Motivation has been established to address this issue, as a flagship initiative of Schools and Teachers Innovating for Results [India]. We see teachers as integral to achieving SDG4 and work in collaboration with governments and partner organisations to cultivate their intrinsic motivation. We aim to instil education systems with the hope and belief that there is no challenge that an intrinsically motivated teacher cannot solve. Over time, we have expanded our activities into three states (Delhi, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu) to reach more than 1.8 lakh teachers and 47 lakh children. 

We offer a system-wide approach to professional development, by providing support to all levels of the system. By developing strong role-modelling and trusting relationships at every level of an education system, we’ve shown that teachers and education officials can be intrinsically motivated to support children to realise improvements in learning. We work with teachers, schools, officials, and districts in our three states in an approach that utilizes the existing government system to maximize sustainability. 

Our research shows that our approach is improving a wide range of important outcomes: 

A 2022 survey of 8,000 teachers across our three states in India showed that they believe their participation in our programme:

• Led to improved reading (85%) and numeracy (86%) outcomes for students. 
• Created safer and happier classrooms (94%).  

Between 2018-2022, our data shows that teachers in Delhi have become more comfortable, engaged and curious. 91% of headteachers in Delhi believe that our programme has helped to improve the academic environments of their schools.

• Teachers who attend our network meetings show significant increases in motivation levels after two years.