Sierra Leone: Curriculum Specialist

Background to IRC

The International Rescue Committee (IRC), one of the world's largest humanitarian agencies, provides relief, rehabilitation, and post-conflict reconstruction support to victims of natural disaster, oppression, and violent conflict in 42 countries. The IRC is committed to bold leadership, innovation, and creative partnerships. Active in public health, education, livelihoods, women's empowerment, youth development, and protection and promotion of rights, the IRC assists people from harm to home.

Present in Sierra Leone since 1999, IRC supports the Sierra Leonean institutions - government, civil society, community-based organizations and private sector - to provide improved social services. The IRC does this through programs and partnerships designed to improve the life of women, youth and children by implementing Health, Education, and Women's Protection and Empowerment programming.

Scope of Work

The International Rescue Committee (IRC), lead agency, together with Save the Children, IBIS, Concern Worldwide, World Vision, and Catholic Relief Services (CRS) will collaborate on a new project that focuses on development of quality lesson plans of core subjects for teachers in Sierra Leone. With the aim of improving students learning outcomes in the country, the project will develop and make available simple to use quality lesson plans for teachers. The development of lesson plans of Language Arts/English and Mathematics across all school levels is planned to take place between August and September 2016.

The IRC is seeking a Curriculum Specialist for two months who will provide support to four lesson plans development teams to develop quality lesson plans for English and Mathematics teachers across Sierra Leone between August, and September 2017. The teams include four international consultants, six national consultants and 62 English and Mathematics specialists.

With support from the Education Consortium team, he/she will be responsible for ensuring successful and timely completion of the 'lesson plans' development process. The daily work includes providing consultation to consultants, consortium team, Ministry of Education to ensure best practices related to high quality instruction are also considered.

The position will be based in Freetown, and it is for 60 days, with possibility of extension. The position will report to the Education Consortium Coordinator while maintaining close coordination with the in-country consortium partners technical teams.

SPECIFIC RESPONSIBILITIES

• Develop brief guidelines which will help subject specialists to ensure consistency across lesson plans and incorporate best practices in the lesson plans. The guidelines shall address topics such as how to develop quality lesson, how to create easy linkages between the lesson plans, and the existing curriculum materials, how to ensure integration of contents, and progression of skills across grades, and the core principles to follow while developing the lesson plans. The guidelines will also be used, together with other materials to facilitate the three-day orientation workshop to the lesson plans writers.
• Together with EdCo team, facilitate a two-day orientation to foster better understanding amongst lesson plan writers and consultants on the objectives of the lesson plans development project as a whole, core principles and guidelines to follow while developing the lesson plan materials. Agreed work plans with realistic timelines will be produced by the end of the workshop.
• Provide support to the consultant's teams to develop the lesson plans with the necessary quality and timeline.
• Ensure that best practices in Language Arts/English and Math and active teaching practices suitable for children are integrated into lesson plans, and strategies that are amenable to a low-resource teaching environment are used.
• Arrange and oversee the testing of the lesson plans.
• Coordinate the review, editing and formatting of the lessons plan modules as they are developed
• Support development of two teachers training materials on the use of lesson plans; one two-day training material for primary school teachers and the second one for secondary school teachers
• Continue to support technical assistant to the Education Consortium team and share experiences and knowledge.

Job Requirements

• A minimum of a Bachelor's degree (Master's preferred) in Education or related field.
• At least 5 years of teaching experience in primary and/or secondary level.
• Strong knowledge and technical experience in areas of curriculum development or design.
• Strong knowledge of teacher experience and needs in low-resource context in developing countries
• Strong knowledge and experience with education research.
• Excellent communication skills, cultural awareness, flexibility, ability to improvise, team player.

Duty Station: Freetown and Remote

Assignment Duration

August and September, 2016.

Travel:

IRC will be responsible for all accommodation and transportation associated with work conducted in Sierra Leone and will cover the Curriculum Specialist's round trip ticket.

Please follow this link to apply: http://www.aplitrak.com/?adid=a2F0cmluYW1pbGxlci4zNjcyMC4zODMwQGlyYy5hcGxpdHJhay5jb20