Scope of Work for Services & Consultants/Contractors

Overview

 Background

IPA is the Learning and Design partner on the Play our Part (PoP) project for strengthening the early childhood education system in play-based instructional approaches in Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia. While most activities center around teacher in-service professional development, PoP implementing organizations have also conducted important advocacy activities with Rwanda’s Ministry of Education and Rwanda Education Board since 2021.

Collaboration between Rwandan education institutions and PoP organizations is meant to strengthen system actors and policies in regards to play-based instructional practices at the early childhood level. PoP organizations present evidence from in-country activities, engage government officials with field visits to view examples of play-based instruction, and provide educational technical support to working committees, among other activities. IPA is acting on behalf of the PoP project to qualitatively evaluate the value of these activities to Rwandan government institutions.

IPA will investigate the efficacy of PoP national-level advocacy through semi-structured interviews with government stakeholders associated with PoP project advocacy activities. Interviews will shed light on government stakeholders' perceptions of early childhood education (ECE) and Learning through Play approaches (LtP) and offer valuable understanding of the value offered by sectoral ECE and LtP advocacy to governmental policy making and implementation processes.

This study will be used to improve PoP project activities and better inform the field in how to support government institutions for strengthening ECE and LtP approaches. The following research questions will be answered by interviews:

1. What are government stakeholders’ perceptions of ECCE and LtP pedagogy?
2. How do government stakeholders perceive the effectiveness of PoP ECCE and LtP advocacy approaches and why?
3. How do government stakeholders believe PoP advocacy and communications activities can be improved?

Consultants to this project should be well skilled in discussing issues around policy and education implementation processes, in addition to maintaining a high level of professionality at all times. The consultants should also be well versed in the potential languages of interview (Kinyarwanda, English, and French) with a strong capacity to take detailed verbatim notes at a high speed during an interview setting.

 Scope

The scope of work is to conduct and capture accurate, detailed, and clearly written records of IPA interviews with government officials. Consultants will be important actors in establishing and maintaining clear and professional communication with government officials, in addition to ensuring the integrity of IPA research. The consultants will understand the research objectives and the semi-structured interview tool in order to guide interview conversations to specific areas of interest and obtain sufficient detail describing those areas. The consultants will conduct interviews objectively and consistently in order to reduce the risk of biasing the data. The accuracy and detail of data collected will enable IPA to conduct strong qualitative research describing the perceptions of government officials regarding the effectiveness of advocacy activities conducted within the ECE field.

 Objectives

The objective of this contract is to capture detailed records of conversations with government officials that will be used in an IPA qualitative analysis. The deliverable data will answer the three research questions stated in the background section, and eventually contribute to the greater understanding in the field of how government institutions can be effectively supported with advocacy on the topics of ECE and LtP approaches. The resulting work will be shared with Ministry of Education, MINEDUC, and REB officials, in addition to PoP implementation partner organizations. It is anticipated that the research will help to improve PoP advocacy activities in the short term, but also more widely inform the ECE and LtP fields on how to better support government institutions.

Requirements

Requirements for the positions vary based on the role of the consultant. A facilitation consultant will be hired to take the lead in interviews with a focus on guiding the conversation to answer the key research questions. A data collection consultant will have a notetaking role and be responsible for accurate transcripts of each interview.

Tasks

Tasks below are for both consultant roles, unless otherwise stated.

1. Communicate with IPA interviewers to ensure early arrival to all interview appointments
2. Dress and act with a high level of professionality during all engagements with government officials
3. Understand the study objectives, the intent behind the interview questions, and when it may be necessary to probe deeper during the interview
4. Attendance of 15 (max) in-person interviews
5. Introduce the study and informed consent document accurately and in completion to the official (Facilitation consultant)
6. Obtain informed consent by signature and verbally (Facilitation consultant)
7. Lead 15 (max) in-person interviews with national-level officials (Facilitation consultant)
8. Conduct interviews in the language of choice of official (Kinyarwanda, English, or French)  (Facilitation consultant)
9. Cover all interview questions, probing for depth where necessary (Facilitation consultant)
10. Verbatim note taking of interviews in the language of conversation (Kinyarwanda, English, or French) (Data collection consultant)
11. Debrief between consultants shortly after the interview to fill any gaps in the transcription
12. Deliver informed consent forms to the IPA research team (Facilitation consultant)
13. In transcript, include notes on strong reactions, gestures, tone, etc. (Data collection consultant)
14. Preference for typed notes in order to facilitate faster note taking and therefore more detailed transcripts (Data collection consultant)
15. Spend sufficient time revising all interview transcripts to ensure clear and error free transcripts. (Data collection consultant)
16. To ensure accuracy, revisions should be made within a short period of time from the end of the interview. (Data collection consultant)
17. Where interviews are in Kinyarwanda or French, translate interview transcripts to the English language maintaining notes on tone, gestures, reactions, and any statements where exact translation was not possible due to incompatibilities with the language of conversation (Data collection consultant)
18. Clear and accurate labeling of all transcript files (Data collection consultant)
19. Deletion of all data collected from any consultant owned devices (Data collection consultant)
20. Maintain the confidentiality of interviewees and their statements

 Deliverables

The below table shows the key deliverables, outputs and anticipated time periods

 Schedule

The length of the contract is contingent on the completion of all interviews as scheduled by IPA researchers. Unfortunately, it is impossible to anticipate the exact dates of interviews, so an exact period of work cannot be given. IPA will aim to complete interviews by mid-May, and would ask transcripts to be available before the end of May if possible. The consultants should be aware of the need to be flexible to scheduling delays and last minute changes as meetings with busy government officials can be very unpredictable. Please factor unanticipated scheduling events into any bid for the work.

The targeted time periods by task/deliverable are highlighted in the above table of Deliverables section. As noted above, these are estimated periods, with the goal of completing interviewing by mid-May.

 Assumptions

This Scope of Work is based on the needs of the IPA research team conducting the qualitative research project. The research design demands a high level of accuracy in capturing interview transcripts and translations. The policy work conducted by IPA also demands a high level of professionality, and underlines the need for consultants to be skilled in capturing conversation in multiple languages. In conclusion, maintaining integrity of research is of utmost importance to IPA and consultants should be prepared to put forth a sufficient amount of time and effort to ensure transcriptions are accurate, complete, and clear in meaning.

Price schedule

If you are interested, please submit your offer on the following email:

RWA_proposals@poverty-action.org, no later than May 2, 2024, 5PM