Pre-Service Teacher Training in Zambia
Funding Partner: Gates Foundation
Principal Investigator: Dr. Stephanie Simmons Zuilkowski
Project Announcement
October 8, 2024
Tallahassee, FL – The Learning Systems Institute (LSI) at Florida State University has received its first-ever grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The grant aims to build evidence on the impact of pre-service teacher training on foundational learning. Dr. Stephanie Simmons Zuilkowski is the principal investigator on the project, which will be implemented in Zambia.
The study will examine the knowledge and pedagogy of student teachers who have completed their pre-service teacher training in public colleges of education supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Transforming Teacher Education Activity, implemented by LSI, School-to-School International and the University of Zambia. Data will also be collected on primary grade reading performance of children in the student teachers’ classrooms.
The grant has the potential to contribute to the sector's understanding of the role of pre-service teacher training on teacher classroom practices and student learning outcomes. Little empirical research has been conducted on pre-service teacher education outcomes in low- and middle-income countries, and this research offers the opportunity to shed light on Zambia’s teacher training program and generate lessons for the wider sector.
“I’m excited to have the opportunity to continue working on pre-service teacher education in Zambia, and grateful to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for recognizing the importance of supporting evidence generation in this area,” said Dr. Zuilkowski. “Rigorous empirical evidence on pre-service teacher education will support decision making by government policymakers, funders, teacher training institutions, and other education stakeholders.”
2025 Update
This year, LSI received its first-ever grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The grant aims to build evidence on the impact of pre-service teacher training on foundational learning in Zambia. The study will compare the pedagogy of student teachers who have completed their pre-service teacher training in public colleges of education supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Transforming Teacher Education Activity to that of student teachers who completed their programs in other colleges. The grant has the potential to contribute to the sector's understanding of the role of pre-service teacher training on teacher classroom practices and student learning outcomes. Data collection was completed in three provinces in summer 2025, and results will be disseminated later in the year.
2026 Update
This study evaluated the United States Agency for International Development’s Transforming Teacher Education (TTE) in Zambia Activity. Implemented by the Learning Systems Institute, and led by Dr. Stephanie Simmons Zuilkowski, with support from partners School-to-School International and the University of Zambia, TTE aimed to strengthen the capacity of Zambia’s pre-service teacher training institutions to improve student learning outcomes in early grade reading instruction. This outcome evaluation of the TTE activity compared student teachers who attended TTE colleges with student teachers who attended comparison group colleges on their literacy content knowledge, general pedagogy and classroom management, and literacy-specific pedagogy, using data from observations, student teacher assessments, and semi-structured interviews to address these questions.
The study found strong positive associations between attending a TTE college and student teacher performance on both the general pedagogy and literacy-specific subscales of the observation tool. Cohen’s d, a measure of effect size, was calculated at .97 for general pedagogy and .86 for literacy-specific pedagogy. The pattern of results was similar when examined within each province, with TTE colleges’ student teachers outperforming the comparison group colleges’ teachers. The team also identified statistically significant, negative associations between class size and both pedagogy subscales. In a country where class sizes range up to 90, this is an important contextual factor for consideration in pre-service teacher education.