ERICC Application of the RISE Diagnostic for Teacher Management in Jordan

The present study applied systems thinking to the context of Jordan to assess the wider factors and potential misalignments affecting teacher management in the country. The study was conducted by a team of researchers from New York University-TIES and the Queen Rania Foundation (QRF) in Jordan as part of the Education Research in Conflict and Protracted Crisis (ERICC) Research Programme Consortium. The ERICC team set out to utilise the RISE Diagnostic Framework in the case of Jordan’s education sector, ultimately applying and adapting the tool to identify and prioritise misalignments within the country’s teacher management system. In doing so, the RISE Diagnostic Framework helped the ERICC team to map the varying purposes for which different parts of the teacher management system in Jordan are aligned. Overall, the primary purpose of the study was to pinpoint incoherences within the teacher management system, which serves significant refugee populations as well as Jordanian nationals, and to highlight possible solutions and ways forward to address misalignments that can compromise the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of the education system. A secondary purpose of the study was to consider how systems thinking can be applied to protracted crisis contexts and inform improvements between the humanitarian-development nexus.

The Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE) programme was a multi-country research endeavour running from 2015-2023, conducting research to better understand how countries can address and overcome the global learning crisis. The RISE research agenda is based on applying a systems approach to education research, which postulates that many education systems do not produce better learning outcomes due to a lack of coherence and alignment within and between components of the system itself. The RISE Framework and implementation guidance aim to support researchers in diagnosing, prioritising, and building consensus around points of misalignment within the education system. The RISE Framework proposes that education systems consist of four key relationships of accountability between different principals and agents, only the first two of which were the focus of this study:

1. Compact: Relationship between the highest authorities of the state and education authorities (including the Ministry of Education, or MoE).
2. Management: Relationship between the education authorities and frontline providers of education (i.e., schools, principals, teachers).
3. Voice and Choice: Relationship between recipients of services (i.e., parents, children, and communities – the ‘principal’) and frontline providers of services (i.e., school leaders and teachers – the ‘agent’).
4. Politics: Relationship between citizens (the principal) and the highest executive, legislative, and fiduciary authorities of the state (the agent)

The latter two (Voice and Choice, Politics) were not explored in this study due the fact that the school system in Jordan is highly centralised, with citizens having limited involvement and impact in feeding back to schools or higher government authorities. In addition, the relationship between citizens and the government is a sensitive topic that was beyond the scope and resources of the study to explore. As a result, the study focused exclusively on the Compact and Management relationships within the education sector.

Each of these accountability relationships has five components, or design elements, that help describe and define it in more detail: delegation, finance, information, support, and motivation. Combining accountability relationships and design elements creates a matrix, which serves as the analytic framework to identify system misalignments within or between the elements and relationships.