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Background: Acute allergic reactions to messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines are rare but may limit public health immunization efforts. Objectives: To characterize suspected allergic reactions to the first dose of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) mRNA vaccine and to assess the safety and utility of a two-step graded-dose protocol for the second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in patients with a history of low suspicion of anaphylaxis to their first dose. Methods: This was a retrospective evaluation of referrals to the allergy and immunology clinic for a presumed allergic reaction to the first dose of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna) between December 17, 2020, and February 28, 2021. Recommendations for the second dose and outcomes were evaluated by trained board-certified allergists. Results: Seventy-seven patients presented with a Pfizer-BioNTech reaction (56 [72.7%]) or with a Moderna reaction (21 [27.3%]). Most patients (69.7%) had symptom onset within 4 hours. Most commonly reported symptoms were cutaneous (51.9%), cardiovascular (48.1%), and respiratory (33.8%) symptoms. Recommendations included to proceed with the single dose (70.1%), two-step graded dose (19.5%), or deferral (10.4%). Twelve of 15 patients completed the second dose with a graded-dose protocol. Of these patients, five reported at least one or more similar symptoms as experienced with their first dose. Conclusion: Of the patients with presumed allergic reactions to their first dose of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine, most were able to safely receive the second dose. For those with a low suspicion of anaphylaxis, the two-step graded protocol with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was well tolerated. A graded-dose protocol could be an effective strategy for second-dose vaccination in those who may otherwise defer the second dose.

Tutors working in colleges of education in sub-Saharan Africa are responsible for teaching, and inspiring hundreds of thousands of aspiring teachers. Yet they have received little attention in the literature, often being depicted as a conservative cohort of professionals, unprepared for their role, yet resistant to change. This study reports on how 39 tutors from eight colleges in Uganda see their professional role and their responsibilities, and if professional development OER will have any impact on their professional role. The research adopted a storytelling approach. Tutors were supported in developing a (true) story about their work that they felt would give previously untold insight into their profession. The stories were analysed through a professional identity lens. The group emerged as agentive and caring, committed to developing as teacher educators but with a highly individual approach to their work. The nuanced understanding of tutor professional identity facilitated insights into why professional development OER aimed at this group did not have the intended impact. Tutors working in colleges of education in sub-Saharan Africa are responsible for teaching, and inspiring hundreds of thousands of aspiring teachers. Yet they have received little attention in the literature, often being depicted as a conservative cohort of professionals, unprepared for their role, yet resistant to change. This study reports on how 39 tutors from eight colleges in Uganda see their professional role and their responsibilities, and if professional development OER will have any impact on their professional role. The research adopted a storytelling approach. Tutors were supported in developing a (true) story about their work that they felt would give previously untold insight into their profession. The stories were analysed through a professional identity lens. The group emerged as agentive and caring, committed to developing as teacher educators but with a highly individual approach to their work. The nuanced understanding of tutor professional identity facilitated insights into why professional development OER aimed at this group did not have the intended impact. Tutors working in colleges of education in sub-Saharan Africa are responsible for teaching, and inspiring hundreds of thousands of aspiring teachers. Yet they have received little attention in the literature, often being depicted as a conservative cohort of professionals, unprepared for their role, yet resistant to change. This study reports on how 39 tutors from eight colleges in Uganda see their professional role and their responsibilities, and if professional development OER will have any impact on their professional role. The research adopted a storytelling approach. Tutors were supported in developing a (true) story about their work that they felt would give previously untold insight into their profession. The stories were analysed through a professional identity lens. The group emerged as agentive and caring, committed to developing as teacher educators but with a highly individual approach to their work. The nuanced understanding of tutor professional identity facilitated insights into why professional development OER aimed at this group did not have the intended impact

Reimagining learning spaces involves an increased focus on the opportunities and challenges implicit in ICT-based teaching and learning. OpenSTEM Africa: Ghana, is a collaboration between The Open University (OU) UK, Ghana’s Centre for National, Distance and Open Learning (CENDLOS) and the Ghana Education Service (GES), in an initiative guided by the Ministry of Education (MoE) to help improve teaching and learning in the sciences and, given a near doubling of the SHS student population since 2017, to address the pressure on laboratories and science equipment in many Senior High Schools (SHS). The partnership has worked on co-creating PC-based onscreen science applications to develop skills in practical science; on co-designing continuous professional development materials for science teaching and learning, and on co-developing a leadership programme for heads of science to create ICT-focused communities of practice. Covid 19 has presented significant challenges to progress, as schools in Ghana closed in March 2020, only starting to re-open January-March 2021. We planned further face to face co-design and review for our first materials, planned to be loaded onto the ‘iBox’, a CENDLOS-designed local server intranet in each of 148 low-resourced upper secondary schools.\ud \ud Arguably the landscape is changing. During school closure the Government of Ghana launched an internet version of the iCampusgh platform used on the iBox, and while this could negatively affect disadvantaged, rural or more remote contexts, it opens up the possibility to engage a higher proportion of Senior High School science teachers and students via laptop, tablet and/or mobile phone as well as PC. It opens up engagement via connectivity outside as well as inside the classroom - via the online teaching and learning formats developed by MoE and schools during school closure, in informal leadership groups, with coaches or mentors, in student study groups, with friends and independently. Implementation is delayed, but the OU and Ghana academics and learning designers have continued to produce and review materials via an OU ‘sandbox’ website and video conferencing. This paper examines the co-creation and co-designing of the OpenSTEM Africa resources and the extent to which remote working has enhanced new ways of collaboration.

This study examines the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in six teacher education institutions in three contrasting East African settings – Mauritius, Tanzania and Uganda – all of which had previous engagement with OER initiatives. Drawing primarily on interviews with teacher educators, the study examines how and when teacher educators engage with OER, the factors that support and constrain sustained OER engagement, and the influence of such engagement on their teaching practice. It seeks to answer the following three research questions: What kinds of OER are teacher educators aware of and how do they access them? How and for what purpose are they using the OER? What intended and enacted pedagogic practices are associated with OER use? The study takes a sociocultural approach, paying attention to the practices of teacher educators and the context and culture of the teacher education institutions within which they work, as well as the national policies relevant to these institutions. Surveys were sent to academic staff at each of the participating institutions who were, or had been, involved in curriculum development work involving OER. Male and female educators from different disciplinary backgrounds and with varying roles and periods of service within the institutions were targeted. From the respondents, selected individuals were asked to participate in semi-structured interviews concerning OER and their pedagogical practices. A total of 58 surveys were completed by teacher educators along with 36 in-depth teacher educator interviews and six institutional stakeholder interviews. The results of the study indicate that teacher educators’ understanding and use of OER is highly fragmented, with little traction at department or institutional level. At all the study sites there was dissonance between the ways in which individual educators are using OER and the dominant institutional values and discourse. There were also numerous structural and cultural factors acting to limit agency with regards to OER use. The demands of curriculum and assessment, professional identity, digital skills, provision of equipment and connectivity, values and weak cultures of collaboration all exerted an influence and enabled or constrained teacher educators’ efforts to achieve agency with OER. For a small number of teacher educators (OER “champions”), OER provides a tool for extending their agency to move towards more participatory practices. In their interviews, several of these educators spoke of the formative role of academic training and many were linked to external OER networks. These elements of historic identity formation influence how they respond to OER, and enhance their confidence to take risks in moving beyond conventional practice. Enabling educators to act in an agentive way with OER is not easy. Moving forward, attention should be given to issues of access so that educators are able to locate and view OER relatively easily and experiment with their use. This study recommends that time be made available for educators to enhance their skills in working digitally and to become familiar with principles of learning design such that these become integral dimensions of their professional identity. It is also argued that extending and deepening engagement with OER requires opportunities for professional dialogue and collaboration to support the development of productive educator identities with OER and transformation of the community’s field of practice.

The title of this paper is taken from a story written by Norah Nakitto, a tutor at Jinja Primary Teachers’ College (PTC) in Uganda. Like a majority of stories generated during a storytelling research project with Ugandan tutors, Norah’s focuses on professi onal learning. In this paper we explore tutor learning and professional identity in the context of national programmes promoting more inclusive and equitable teaching at the primary level (MOES 2019, UNAPD 2019), which have an impact on how tutors are expe cted to work. We draw on an analysis of 39 stories from research led by the TESSA (Teacher Education in Sub - Saharan Africa) programme in collaboration with Kyambogo University. The study was initiated to understand the impact of a TESSA - MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on tutors’ practices. However, the early stages of the research suggested that, despite well - articulated examples of impact from those who had engaged with it, uptake in the Ugandan PTCs was limited; none of the tutors who participated in t he storytelling strand were aware of the MOOC. As these tutors worked in colleges where staff members had participated in a workshop to introduce the MOOC, this raised questions about knowledge - sharing. The research focus shifted to learning and collaboration in colleges to better understand the mechanisms for knowledge sharing, and the research design was adapted accordingly.

This study examines the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in six teacher education institutions in three contrasting East African settings – Mauritius, Tanzania and Uganda – all of which had previous engagement with OER initiatives. Drawing primarily on interviews with teacher educators, the study examines how and when teacher educators engage with OER, the factors that support and constrain sustained OER engagement, and the influence of such engagement on their teaching practice. It seeks to answer the following three research questions: What kinds of OER are teacher educators aware of and how do they access them? How and for what purpose are they using the OER? What intended and enacted pedagogic practices are associated with OER use? The study takes a sociocultural approach, paying attention to the practices of teacher educators and the context and culture of the teacher education institutions within which they work, as well as the national policies relevant to these institutions. Surveys were sent to academic staff at each of the participating institutions who were, or had been, involved in curriculum development work involving OER. Male and female educators from different disciplinary backgrounds and with varying roles and periods of service within the institutions were targeted. From the respondents, selected individuals were asked to participate in semi-structured interviews concerning OER and their pedagogical practices. A total of 58 surveys were completed by teacher educators along with 36 in-depth teacher educator interviews and six institutional stakeholder interviews., Citation: Wolfenden, F., Auckloo, P., Buckler, A., & Cullen, J. (2017). Teacher educators and OER in East Africa: Interrogating pedagogic change. In C. Hodgkinson-Williams & P. B. Arinto (Eds.), Adoption and impact of OER in the Global South. Chapter 8 advance publication. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.161285 Corresponding author

Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) is a community of teacher-educators in HEIs across Africa, led by the Open University UK. FAWEMA is the Malawian chapter of FAWE, the Forum for African Women Educationalists, committed to girls’ and women’s education in Malawi. TESSA/OU and FAWEMA have been working together since 2010, and in 2013 are beginning a new 4 year project, funded by DFID Malawi. The project is to facilitate rural women’s access to teacher education, by means of a 2 year ‘school experience programme’ where the women work as Teaching Assistants in local rural schools; and a programme of supported self-study, where the women take the secondary exams which could give them entry to teacher training college. The new project has provided a context for TESSA/OU and FAWEMA to interrogate how each constructs the partnership: the opportunity to look back and look forward. Negotiating the shape of the project, the share of the budget, and the parameters of responsibilities has allowed a much wider reflection on our relationship. The perspective of DfID Malawi has been key: their oversight is both of our project and of the ‘Keeping Girls in School’ programme, of which this project is one strand. This reflection by TESSA/OU and FAWEMA on our partnership has not been a particularly comfortable process, and this paper focuses on what continue to be some of the challenges ahead, as well as the opportunities.

Since its inception in 2005, TESSA has been closely associated with primary education. The current TESSA OERs are a toolkit of subject-specific pedagogical resources for teachers, for teaching primary-school level literacy, numeracy, science, social science, creative arts and life skills, created to map onto the national primary curricula of countries across Africa, versioned for specific countries and written in Arabic, English, French and Kiswahili. The OERS are written to provide innovative and active teaching and learning, and to deal with the challenges of teaching in schools with large classes and few resources. That the ambition of TESSA in 2005 focused on primary education was due to the influence of the EFA agenda and MDG goals, and the success in the early years of the 21st century in increasing access to primary education in many countries across Africa. In 2013, globally, the world is looking to its new agenda post-2015. Early indicators and draft recommendations suggest a widening of the focus and that the goals will be both to expand access and to improve the quality of education comprehensively from early childhood education to at least the end of lower secondary school.

Four million extra teachers are needed across Sub-Saharan Africa by 2015 if the Millennium Development Goal of universal access to primary education (UPE) is to be met (COMED/ADEA 2011). In addition there continues to be urgent need to improve the quality of teaching of existing teachers in primary classrooms. There is not sufficient capacity to meet those demands through teacher training or continuous professional development (CPD) courses at Higher Education Institutions (HEI)s and teacher training colleges. In many countries in Africa, particularly but not exclusively in the rural areas, in-service training or CPD outside the school is difficult for teachers to access or to finance. In any case, the school itself has increasing importance as the locus of professional development for teachers. School-based CPD can focus directly on teaching practices and the practicalities of improving the quality of teaching. There is a substantial literature on the benefits to sustainability and long-term change of professional development which arises directly out of classroom practice. The Open Educational Resources (OERs) created by the Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) community have been developed to help teachers improve practice, and they lend themselves to this type of school-based professional development. However, leadership is critically important for this kind of school-based teacher education. Without the direct and strategic support of school leaders, it is difficult to organise and sustain this kind of CPD. \ud \ud This paper explores the ways in which Egerton University, Kenya, is working directly with head teachers, deputy head teachers, subject panel heads and teachers in collaborating schools to encourage them in their use of school-based professional development using the TESSA OERs. This paper conceptualises and discusses the kinds of leadership practices which are in evidence and which are helpful to increasing and sustaining this kind of school-led teacher education.

The conflict in Sri Lanka, which has recently ended, has spanned several decades and affected generations of children in the north and east of the island. This paper, based on field research carried out in 2009 just as the conflict was ending, explores the obstacles to providing quality education to children caught up in the conflict. Despite the efforts of the government and national and international NGOs to provide an alternative education, significant numbers of the children fail to progress: the reasons include a lack of priority given to education during times of conflict and a focus on short and medium term solutions which do not address the children’s long-term needs. A central argument in this paper is that it is an understanding of the effects of ‘serial disruption’ suffered by these children and their families, where they are moved frequently and at short notice from place to place, which is key to understanding this failure. The paper draws together the successful features of several initiatives from Sri Lanka for a discussion of what needs to be in place to provide quality education for children on the move, in terms of infrastructure, curriculum and teaching.

The Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) consortium has developed Open Educational Resources (OERs) to support school-based teacher education and training. Egerton University has been involved in the creation and development of TESSA materials since 2005. TESSA materials are used particularly in the B.Ed. (Primary) programme for in-service teachers and are integrated into the relevant pedagogy courses. In Kenya, there have been changes in the minimum requirements for joining primary teacher education programmes. This has led to an increased interest among teachers to upgrade their qualifications, improve their competencies and the quality of their practice. There are incentives for them to do so, including paid study leave, incremental credits on salary and promotion upon completion of their studies. For in-service teachers taking a qualification, part-time and distance learning is a necessity: because they need to fit their study around their own teaching. The expectation is that periods of residential study during holiday times, materials supplied as part of their programme, and school-based assessment, provide the basis for the development of their practice in their schools. This paper explores some of the challenges of these changing circumstances. We examine, through analysis of interviews which have been carried out with teachers and teacher educators, the opportunities and the constraints offered by a qualification designed to develop teaching practice. We explore the ways in which the use of TESSA OERs help support the development of teaching practice, and we map the challenges faced by teachers and by teacher educators in changing practice and in fitting new practices into existing school cultures.

The potential benefits of a cross-hierarchical school staff group to engineer change in a school have long been recognised. For the work of such a group to be successful, there needs to be belief in the advantages of both collective and shared leadership, and a concomitant relinquishing of control. However, the benefits which a School Improvement Group (SIG) can bring are usually premised on stability in the circumstances of the school and the instability brought about by the ‘challenging circumstances’ faced by schools in poor neighbourhoods affects the long-term sustainability of such a group. This paper draws on evidence from a school improvement project involving eight schools 'facing exceptionally challenging circumstances' to suggest that there are serious obstacles to the development of a school improvement group in situations of institutional instability and external pressure.

This paper draws on evidence from a DfES funded school improvement project in the UK to explore leadership development in secondary schools in exceptionally challenging circumstances. Initiatives aimed at leadership development are briefly described. Central to these initiatives is the idea of expanding leadership opportunities for staff in these schools. The early impact of this development work is examined and some cautious comments are offered as to their long-term potential.