Ms. Angel Caglin coordinates the Saint Lucia Education Innovation Lab, a space focused on nurturing teacher-led innovation at the classroom level that will influence the design of policy at the Ministry of Education level. This Lab is part of an IDRC funded Social Innovation in Education collaborative project between the State University of Haiti (L’Université d’État d’Haïti), Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, and Raise Your Voice Saint Lucia Inc, a non-profit organization. She has been in the education field, as a trained classroom teacher from 2002, then as a Literacy Coach working directly with teachers, before joining the Curriculum and Materials Development Unit as a Subject Specialist for English in 2018. She has also been a Literacy Trainer with the Peace Corps Primary English Literacy Project from its inception in 2014, and the Focal Point for the OECS/USAID Early Learners Programme, focused on improving the reading achievement of students in Grades K to 3. In addition to her practical experience in the classroom, she has also studied literacy and reading, examining and testing out best practices in teaching in the Primary and Secondary classroom. Her more recent qualifications include a Masters in Educational Leadership, Management and Emerging Technologies, a Masters in Elementary Literacy and Reading, and a Graduate Certificate in Curriculum & Assessment.
Session Description
“Collaborative education innovation in Saint Lucia and Haiti”
For the last two years, researchers from the State University of Haiti (Limonade), Wilfrid Laurier University, and the non-profit group, Raise Your Voice Saint Lucia, have been implementing and studying a model for education innovation in Saint Lucia and Haiti. The model combines core elements of the human-centred design approach to social innovation (IDEO, 2015) and emerging theories of innovation management (OECD Observatory for Public Sector Innovation, 2022) to position teachers as innovation leaders within a supportive innovation ecosystem. Teachers, principals and education administrators each play significant but connected roles within this system. Teachers are empowered to be key agents of change by empathizing with and learning from stakeholders, identifying opportunities and needs at the school level, and collaborating with teacher peers to prototype (test) new solutions. Principals foster an innovation culture at their schools and communicate findings from innovation projects to their peers and ministry leaders. Administrators within ministries of education are learning how to nurture and support teacher innovation teams and monitor a ‘portfolio’ of teacher-led innovations for strategic insights and promising solutions that can be further evaluated and scaled for broader impact. This session will describe the model of education innovation being evaluated and provide examples of innovations developed by teacher teams in Haiti and Saint Lucia. It will also highlight the changing perceptions and mindsets of principals and administrators regarding teacher-led innovation.