RTI’s International Education Division is supporting education development around the world by strengthening education policy, management and practice in order to achieve measurable improvement in teaching and learning. From our well-established reputation in education system strengthening, to innovative work in early grade assessment and learning, RTI is improving education quality, relevance and efficiency through implementation of projects funded by USAID, as well as other donors and clients.

RTI International has received funding from The LEGO Foundation to research the scaling of playful pedagogies through in-service Primary Teacher Professional Development. RTI will be conducting an impact evaluation in five countries: Bangladesh, Kenya, Vietnam, Ghana and Rwanda.

RTI International has also received funding from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through the Center for Global Development to conduct the Learning at Scale research study. Learning at Scale examines successful large-scale education programs in low- and middle-income counties to establish the ingredients for improving learning at scale.

To support these research studies, we seek a qualified Program Officer 3 for a 12 month role (April 1 2022 – April 1 2023) to support two activities:

1. Serve as data collection coordinator (including planning and leading data collection trainings) for LEGO Play Accelerator midline and endline studies. This will include coordinating with teams across up to 5 low- and middle-income countries.
2. Support to the Learning at Scale activity, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, managed by the Center for Global Development. Support for this activity will include providing assistance to the technical team in piloting and revising tools and planning for and implementing data collection (including leading assessor training). This will include coordinating with teams across up to 6 low- and middle-income countries.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Lead and coordinate planning activities for LEGO and Learning at Scale data collections, including:
  • work with consultants to obtain research approvals
  • oversee translation of all necessary tools and training materials
  • review and update training materials as needed
  • Ensure all tools are correctly rendered in Tangerine
  • Coordinate travel for trainers
  • Coordinate planning with data collection firms through bi-weekly check in calls
• Lead some in-country trainings, supporting a team of consultants to train on different study tools and ensuring all assessors meet a required standard for reliable and high quality data collection (using the Assessor Accuracy Measure).
• Liaise between RTI statisticians and data collection firms to troubleshoot issues during data collection
• Ensure samples and lessons learned from each data collection activity are captured for annual reports
• Candidate will support the research team with other tasks as needed, which may include piloting and finalizing tools, undertaking initial country visits, writing findings briefs and coordinating dissemination events.