LSI Receives SHARE Grant To Support Strengthening Teacher Education and Practice Activity

November 13, 2024

"Four teachers standing displaying white gloves with lots of writing on their hands."

Tallahassee, FL – The Learning Systems Institute (LSI) at Florida State University has received a Supporting Holistic and Actionable Research in Education (SHARE) Grant. The highly competitive grant will support LSI's current work on the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Strengthening Teacher Education and Practice (STEP) Activity in Malawi.

SHARE is a cooperative agreement by USAID's Bureau for Inclusive Growth, Partnerships and Innovation/Center for Education (IPI/EDU) to the University of Notre Dame that advances global education learning priorities to improve learning outcomes. SHARE Grants are provided to programs that are already operating at scale. Dr. Adrienne Barnes-Story is the Principal Investigator (PI) on the STEP Malawi Activity and will serve as the PI with co-PI Dr. Brenda Wawire on the SHARE Grant. 

“This is an exciting opportunity for the Malawian education system to take a leap forward,” said Dr. Barnes-Story. “LSI will support the Ministry of Education to develop, design and pilot the first e-CPD course in the country. We anticipate a great learning experience for everyone, participants and researchers alike.”

The SHARE Grant will be focused on piloting an electronic Continuous Professional Development (e-CPD) program with teacher educators across Malawi. The LSI team is repackaging professional development content from the STEP Activity, which will be programmed into an online platform (Moodle) and tested in Spring 2025. 

The STEP Malawi team will design and implement a study to test the viability of utilizing a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) with 150 teacher educators across 22 sites to disseminate selected Continuous Professional Development (CPD) materials. LSI will lead the quantitative side of the study and the MOOC programming, while STEP Malawi partner School-to-School International (STS) will facilitate the in-person workshop and lead the qualitative research design and analysis. LSI and STS will triangulate findings between the quantitative and qualitative data and develop actionable recommendations for using this information in future course development and CPD implementation under STEP. 

LSI is at the forefront of developing innovative solutions that bridge theory and practice in education. Our experts' advanced research provides state-of-the-art methods and a clear path for implementation. For 55 years, LSI has delivered systems that measurably improve the learning and performance of organizations and individuals in Florida and worldwide.