Field Notes: 2012–Present

Nairobi, Kenya

In 2012, I conducted my first fieldwork in Nairobi while working as an elementary school teacher in Korea and completing my master’s training in international development education. Until then, my understanding of education reform had been largely theoretical. Entering Kenyan schools, NGOs, and the Ministry of Education exposed me to the lived realities behind policy frameworks and development models. Being welcomed by local mentors, including Dr. Kinyanjui, and engaging directly with institutions such as the Ministry of Education and the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE), shifted my perspective from abstract reform concepts to system practice. This experience marked the beginning of my focus on how policy, institutions, and classroom realities interact, an orientation that continues to shape my research on literacy reform, implementation, and education systems today.

Lusaka, Zambia

This was my first independent fieldwork. I arrived not just as a researcher, but as a former teacher, viewing the Zambian educators as my peers. I witnessed a Principal whose leadership commanded deep respect from her teachers and the community: a caring leader who held high standards. I learned so much and produced far more than I anticipated, largely due to the wholehearted support of Shakazo Mzyece from the Examinations Council of Zambia. He connected me to institutional insights I never could have accessed on my own. One of the key outputs from this collaboration was my paper, "Making Do." In it, I documented how teachers, despite persistent textbook shortages, were still able to provide meaningful learning opportunities. It was here that my perspective shifted: we need to find ways to institutionalize these grassroots strategies, rather than overrelying on top-down mandates.

Nampula & Gaza, Mozambique

During the second year of my PhD, I traveled across Mozambique as a SUPER Fellow (Save-University Partnerships in Educational Research). My goal was to document what was really happening in literacy classrooms beyond what the policies said should happen. I saw firsthand why literacy education is so incredibly difficult here. Teachers are navigating instructionally challenging environments, severe resource shortages, and complex language heterogeneity. Yet, simultaneously, I witnessed profound teacher agency, just as I had in Zambia. In a rural school with no textbooks, I saw a teacher find ways to engage students by having them practice writing letters on the ground outside the classroom. On a simple blackboard, another teacher masterfully diagrammed how phonics combinations work, turning a bare wall into a rich learning tool. These observations, which later led to two journal articles (here and here), confirmed a critical truth: even when the system is strained, teachers are creatively organizing their environments to make learning happen.

Zombia, Malawi

I returned for a second SUPER Fellowship in 2016, this time in Malawi. Here, my research lens widened. In Mozambique, I had focused on the cognitive mechanics of literacy. In Malawi, I began to see the whole child. I thought I would't understand learning by just looking at a chalkboard. I had to look at the cross-system ecology. I expanded my scope beyond just primary classrooms, tracing the learning journey across the entire ecosystem, from Early Childhood Education (ECE) centers to the Initial Teacher Education colleges that prepare educators. I wanted to understand the connections (and disconnections) across a child’s developmental ecology. I found that learning wasn't just about phonics; it was deeply intersected with the social and emotional learning (SEL) environment at home, school, and community. The Life Skills curriculum became a focal point of this research. It represented the system's attempt to address this holistic development, acknowledging that a child’s social-emotional well-being is the foundation upon which all academic learning is built. This fieldwork became the foundation for a series of research papers capturing the critical intersections of this ecosystem: Parental SEL Engagement, Teacher SEL Pedagogy, SEL Curriculum Implementation, Role of Teachers' Own SEL, and Home-School-Policy Alignment. Through it all, it became clear that a child's learning is deeply intersected with the social and emotional environment created by the adults around them.

Zomba, Lilongwe, & Machinga, Malawi 

This trip marked a new chapter: my first consultancy after earning my PhD. I returned to the "Warm Heart of Africa" with my friend/mentor Flavia to conduct a needs assessment for a Higher Education grant proposal, focused on STEM. FSU valued the deep networks I had built over years of fieldwork. For me, the joy was personal: reconnecting with old colleagues and introducing them to new partners. But this trip also expanded my professional horizon. I had spent years studying Early Childhood and Primary education. By engaging with the Higher Education sector, I finally got to see the entire education system in action from the foundation to the summit.

Maiduguri, Nigeria

Holding a UNHAS boarding pass is a stark reminder that you are entering a different reality. My research took me to regions where Boko Haram is most active: places where conflict has inflicted profoundly detrimental harm on children’s lives and schooling. Here, the "holistic needs" I studied in Malawi took on a darker urgency. I wasn't just looking at social-emotional learning; I was witnessing deep, violence-related trauma. I worked with committed partners like International Rescue Committee and FHI360, who were mitigating these effects through non-formal education. However, a persistent challenge remains: transition. While we can provide emergency non-formal education, transitioning these children back into the formal school system remains incredibly difficult. This experience fundamentally widened my horizon. I stopped seeing children as a single population. I saw survivors with diverse, desperate needs, circumstances that require deeply specialized, trauma-informed support just to make learning possible again.

Rwanda, the Land of a Thousand Hills 

Between 2022 and 2024, I led a multi-country diagnostic of primary education book supply chains in Rwanda, Honduras, and Cambodia to trace how instructional materials move from procurement to the classroom. Working closely with faculty at the University of Rwanda, we conducted a system-wide audit across four provinces, visiting public schools, private academies, and inclusive education centers, observing specialized instruction such as sign-language literacy, and interviewing key publishing stakeholders to assess domestic production capacity. The findings showed that Rwanda’s progress is structural rather than rhetorical. Reliable infrastructure enabled consistent textbook delivery, provincial administrators exercised strong accountability in implementing national policy, and a growing private publishing sector demonstrated the capacity to meet system-wide demand. Together, these conditions created a functioning last-mile delivery system that supports learning at scale. This fieldwork was complemented by my peer-reviewed research on children’s book preferences, which examined how learners engage with materials once they reach the classroom.

Tamale, Ghana

In 2023, I led a research co-creation initiative in Northern Ghana examining the role of low-cost private schools (LCPS) in expanding access to quality education in underserved regions. The work was built on long-standing partnerships in the region. I traveled with my former UND colleague Edward to launch the effort and rejoined my former co–principal investigator, Dennis, in Tamale. Dennis and I had previously collaborated on a two-year randomized controlled trial (RCT) evaluating the causal effects of a transitional bilingual reading intervention in public primary schools. To mark our continued partnership, Dennis welcomed us with traditional Northern attire, which we wore as a symbol of collaboration and mutual respect. To ground the new study in system priorities, I met with senior leaders from the Ghana Education Service (GES), the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA), the National Schools Inspectorate Authority (NaSIA), and partnered with organizations including FHI 360 and Opportunity International to identify pressing policy questions. I then led a three-day co-creation workshop, guiding stakeholders through the design of a wait-list control RCT to examine the mechanisms through which LCPS might achieve learning outcomes comparable to effective public school interventions. While this demand-driven, collaborative approach required greater time and coordination, it ensured that research addresses real system challenges and feeds directly into policy and practice rather than remaining abstract. The technical rigor of the study was also grounded in classroom realities. In one LCPS classroom, I observed a teacher delivering reading instruction with her own child strapped to her back, balancing caregiving with her commitment to her students’ learning. Moments like this underscore why rigorous evidence is essential to equip these schools with the structures and support they need to succeed.

Accra, Ghana

I returned to Accra for a different purpose: a one-year follow-up after the close of FHI 360’s nationwide transitional bilingual reading intervention. I wanted to understand whether teachers sustained the trained reading pedagogy and continued using instructional resources once external implementation support ended. The results were mixed. Some teachers maintained core instructional routines and continued applying structured reading strategies. Others struggled as supervision, coaching, and material replenishment diminished. The withdrawal of trained coaches and regular monitoring reduced the consistency and intensity of implementation. Yet many teachers persisted, adapting materials and routines despite reduced external support. These sustainability patterns became the empirical foundation for my study on principal implementation leadership, which examined how school leaders influence the durability of instructional reform. The analysis showed that leadership engagement mattered. But it was not sufficient on its own. Sustained implementation depended on a broader institutional ecology: continued access to materials, internal monitoring structures, professional collaboration among teachers, and alignment between district expectations and school-level practice. This follow-up reinforced a central lesson of my broader research: literacy reform becomes durable when instructional routines are embedded into school systems, not when they rely solely on external supervision. Leadership plays a critical role, but sustainability ultimately requires coherent structures that outlast donor-supported rollout. 

Kigali, Rwanda 

In 2024, I returned to Rwanda to lead a national diagnostic on school leadership implementation. Rwanda has made significant progress in formalizing leadership through national standards and the establishment of the African Centre for School Leadership (ACSL), a regional hub for professionalizing school leadership across the continent. In partnership with FHI 360 and their Tunoze Gusoma team (Schools and Systems), we examined how these national leadership expectations travel across the education system and are interpreted in everyday school practice. Rather than evaluating individual training programs, the study traced where alignment holds and where breakdowns occur as standards move from national policy to district supervision to principal practice in public primary schools. This required engaging stakeholders across system levels, including Ministry leaders, NGO partners, mid-tier supervisors, principals, and classroom teachers. Preliminary findings suggest that leadership functions as a multidimensional practice that extends beyond the instructional focus emphasized in current national standards. While pedagogical leadership remains essential, principals also navigate operational management, relational accountability, and system coordination that are not fully reflected in existing frameworks. The results point to opportunities to refine national standards so they better support the realities of school leadership while maintaining ambitious system goals.

Kinshasa, DRC

In early 2025, my former UND colleagues and I led a week-long research co-creation workshop in Kinshasa to design a study on the implementation of integrated literacy and Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) interventions. While these dual-focused programs have shown effectiveness globally, they often struggle to translate those gains within African education systems. Rather than concentrating only on outcomes, we framed the study through implementation science to examine how integration takes hold in practice, where it weakens, and why. Through intensive dialogue with NGOs, teacher trainers, USAID, and Ministry officials, a range of systemic barriers surfaced, many of which mirrored challenges in foundational literacy reform. These insights refined the study’s focus toward the institutional conditions required to embed integrated instruction into everyday classroom practice, align program expectations with local social and linguistic contexts, and strengthen the training and supervision structures that carry reform into schools. Although funding cuts halted the full study, the co-creation process produced a demand-driven research agenda grounded in system realities. The work reinforced a central lesson across my research: sustainable reform depends less on program design alone and more on the institutional architecture that supports implementation at scale.

Accra, Ghana

In 2025-2026, I supported Ghana’s Ministry of Education in designing a national research roadmap for Ghana Education Evidence and Data Lab (GEEDLab)  and the Research and Learning Agenda (RLA). I led a week-long stakeholder engagement process to identify where rigorous evidence is most needed within Ghana’s education system and to align these priorities with the National Education Strategic Plan. The process required translating diverse evidence needs into a shared set of priorities anchored in Ghana’s National Education Strategic Plan. By convening universities, international research institutions, development partners, and government actors, I surfaced competing questions, clarified where evidence could most directly inform policy choices, and facilitated agreement on a focused research agenda. The result was a roadmap that reflects both system demand and national strategy, creating clearer pathways for evidence uptake.