Technical Lead, Education at International Rescue Committee

Position Summary:

IRC is seeking a Technical Director for a five-year, private foundation-funded five-year project in Kenya to improve children’s holistic skill development and well-being through improvement of the quality and equity of teacher professional development in refugee counties in Kenya.   The Technical Director will provide quality technical assistance and leadership to ensure the overall quality of the technical design and implementation, which includes the quality oversight of the adaptation and/or creation of teacher professional development materials.    The Director will ensure that programs generate lessons learned, promising practices, and evidence generated across refugee and local contexts in Kenya; as well as represent the project in appropriate national, regional and global forums to share with the larger education sector.  S/he will also have a specific focus on quality technical assistance to support programs to test, rigorously evaluate, and scale appropriate teacher professional development methodologies.
 
Job Responsibilities:

• Provide technical leadership and assistance on the overall approach with a real focus on teacher professional development; as well as approaches for testing and scaling up teacher professional development approaches to improve learning outcomes.  
• Leads efforts to identify and incorporate best practices and innovations into programming and ensure that the best practices and innovations are documented and disseminated.
• Coordination of technical approaches, content development, and influence across field sites; ensuring lessons learned, practices and evidence are shared across camps,  settlements, and local communities
• Support program staff to use project data to track progress and engage in meaningful course correction discussions at regular and frequent intervals; as well as ensure data is tailored to facilitate similar discussions at the global and senior management level. 
• Leads the development and oversees the implementation of technical quality assurance strategies and activities, including technical guidelines, standard operating procedures (SOPs) and supportive supervision. 
• Provide ongoing capacity building, training and technical assistance as needed of program staff, government counterparts, humanitarian coordination decision makers and partners to ensure high quality programs with a focus on uptake and use of effective teacher professional development approaches
• Oversee a team of education technical experts.
• Represent the project’s evidence, lessons learned, and achievements in external meetings, panels and conferences; as well as participate in technical working groups as relevant.
• Give input to relevant communication materials such as fact sheets, briefs, papers, and presentations that can be disseminated and used for influence at the national and global level;  
• Conduct regular visits to project sites, as possible, to provide technical assistance and ensure proper implementation and monitoring of project activities as well as facilitate work planning and regular technical meetings for all project partners
• Produce inputs to monthly, quarterly, semi-annual and annual reports for the Project Director and donors, as needed.

 Requirements:

• Advanced degree (PhD or MA) in education, or closely related field;
• At least eight years’ experience in education programming, with at least four years of experience with work specifically in crisis or conflict-affected contexts is required, preferably in East Africa.
• Significant prior experience with material development, active learning methodologies, and capacity building/training;
• Experience in social emotional learning interventions, monitoring and evaluation, and research in relation to Education is highly desired. Experience in strategy development and working across sectors or disciplines is highly desired;
• Strong negotiation skills and the ability to develop relations with local counterparts, donors, and other stakeholders;
• Strong communication skills, both oral and written;
• Fluency in English required;
• Ability to travel at least 30% of the time