Education and Aspirations Hub

Mission

Our mission is to build a global conduit between education, trade, and industrial communities to raise aspirations and support young people to develop critical skills and competencies needed beyond the 21st Century. 

Vision

Our vision is to become the premier education and career guidance provider for pre-tertiary learners in Ghana and across Africa by establishing stronger connections between local and international education, trade, and industrial communities. 

Values

Sustainability: We develop services and products for generations now and beyond the 21st Century. 

Intentionality: We tailor our services and products to encourage intentional education and career choices among young people. 

Inspirational: We stimulate extraordinary aspirations among young people beyond their immediate mediate horizons. 

Service Goals

1. Connecting industry and education

2. Connecting formal and informal skills development sectors

3. Facilitating education career guidance, and counselling

4. Building a bank of longitudinal educational data for academic research and evidence-based policies
   

The Team Lead is the Founder and CEO of Education and Aspirations Hub. She plays the following roles:

1. Strategic Decision-Making: She makes major corporate decisions, sets long-term plans, and drives the company toward strategic goals. Dr Amegah oversees the overall operations and direction of the organization.

2. Resource Allocation: She allocates resources (such as capital, talent, and technology) to achieve business objectives. She decides how to invest in growth, innovation, and efficiency.

3. Board Communication: Dr Amegah serves as the main point of communication between the board of directors and corporate operations. She reports to the board, donors and partners, ensuring alignment with the company’s vision.

4. Public Face: She serves as the public face of the company, representing it to stakeholders, donors, and the media. The small nature of our organisation requires that she be hands-on with day-to-day functions.

Dr Alice Amegah (Team Lead) and Madam Affi Agbenyo (Director of Programs) bring a wealth of experience in project management, and research, especially in TVET, STEM and education policy.  Their experiences in managing funds and program execution will ensure the effective execution of our programs and risk management. Having extensive research experience means that Dr Amegah can conduct qualitative and quantitative analysis. Although she is based outside Ghana currently, she has extensive connections with relevant stakeholders including the Ghana Education Service of the Denkyembour District where the current program is based. Therefore, coordinating research with the help of stakeholder buying will be easier. 

Also, the team began data collection for evaluation and monitoring processes on the program to help show our current and potential sponsors the impact of the Inspiring STEM-TVET program. Therefore, the team has adequate prior knowledge and skills that are transferable. These skills will position the team to deliver the LEAP program regardless of other existing commitments. The team has already worked in a resource-limited context which is evidence of our adaptability: to different tasks and thriving in dynamic environments. They can shift focus as needed, without compromising LEAP’s progress. Also, the LEAP will complement the existing workflow and allow the team to show flexibility. If unexpected priorities arise, our team will adjust timelines and resources, ensuring LEAP remains on track.

Empowering and skilling girls through education and career guidance in STEM and TVET.

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) are crucial to sustainable development goals 4 (ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all) and 8 (Promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all). However, fewer females enrol globally in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education (Wingate, 2017). For example, 27% of females and 73% of males enrol globally in engineering, manufacturing, and construction courses (Wingate, 2017). Even worse is females’ STEM-related technical and vocational education and training (TVET) participation (UNESCO-UNEVOC, 2019). More than ever, it has become imperative to intentionally drive practical steps to address this problem because of the global need and increase in STEM and TVET careers.

Inspiring STEM-TVET is an intentionally designed programme to address this problem. Inspiring STEM-TVET events are usually in-person but virtual events where a facilitator presents information about STEM education in TVET and STEM-TVET careers. As practical evidence, the event features videos of young people’s narratives, especially young women studying STEM-TVET courses and those in STEM-TVET careers. Inspiring STEM-TVET is tailored for lower secondary school pupils ages 12-14 preparing to transition into upper secondary schools. The programme then provides guidance and counselling services for young women who gain placement in any STEM-TVET course at a technical institute in Ghana. 

Formative Research

The organisation is a natural outgrowth of a PhD study at the University of Cambridge on girls' participation in STEM-TVET: "The non-conformist choice: the lifeworld of young women pursuing STEM-related TVET in upper secondary technical institutes in Ghana". This research contends that exploring the lived experiences of girls who study STEM-related TVET courses and analysing TVET policy design can provide insights into enablers that can improve young women’s STEM-related TVET education and career choices. The current study employed the expectancy-value theory of achievement-related choice as the theoretical framework to investigate the research questions. 

The interpretative phenomenological analysis of 26 young women sampled from four Technical Institutes in Ghana’s Central and Northern regions revealed five core themes. These core themes emphasised the duality of young women’s experiences that harnessed their identities, agency, and capabilities. An original contribution of the study is that enablers, such as practical learning modes, career guidance and counselling, and inclusive school environments, are crucial to improving young women’s agency to make STEM-related TVET education and career choices. The study recommends reconceptualising STEM-related TVET policies to move beyond human capital to adopt the critical-capability approach of TVET.

The final implication of the findings is that young women conceptualise themselves as empowered citizens with the agency to set an example for other young women. These young women’s self-confidence, self-efficacy, determination, agency, and self-regulation show how young women can be capable citizens with the agency of choice. Therefore, a suitable environment and support can enable them to achieve their freedoms. These young women and others who continue to make non-conformist choices are setting the standards and clearing a path for more young women to join STEM-related TVET fields. The current finding has added to a growing body of literature on capability, highlighting the agency of girls and women. These young women are excellent examples of how the voices and agency of girls can define their freedom to choose what they value as social agents regardless of the challenges they have to navigate.

The second implication of the findings suggests that pre-technical drawing, science, and maths teachers in JHS can lead young women in identifying their interests and aptitude in STEM-related TVET courses. These teachers can then direct such young women onto the STEM-TVET and educational pathways. Particularly for teachers who teach these STEM-related courses at JHS, their critical role as first-hand witnesses of what young women exhibit as interests and abilities in STEM-TVET subjects are crucial to this identifying and recommendation process. Unlike school counsellors, teachers have first-hand knowledge of young women’s engagement through teaching and non-teaching hours.

Teachers and parents as social actors should consciously and intentionally support and encourage young women who show interest in pre-technical drawing, science, and maths, regardless of their actual academic or intellectual performance. Thus, teachers should use various means of assessment, such as practical lessons in school, as a necessary form of
assessing of interests and abilities of young women in STEM-related TVET programmes. For instance, maths and science teachers should not undermine young women who underperform in science, maths, and pre-technical theoretical exams but can use their practical knowledge and skills. Instead, it is an opportunity for teachers to capitalise on young women’s knowledge, interests, and abilities in practice to encourage them to project a positive sense of self-efficacy in their theoretical performance.

These young women have shown that they can improve their academic performance with more specialised support for their theoretical performance. The STEM-related TVET course instructors at these Technical Institutes have shown how this extra commitment and
encouragement can motivate young women to improve their studies. The relevance here is that young women may not always exhibit standardised ideas of intelligence or characteristics a scientist or engineer should have. Instead, look out for those obscure yet relevant characteristics, such as interest in practical work or self-confidence in the ideas of studying
STEM-related TVET courses or working in a STEM-related TVET field, could be a beginning to get young women to choose and retain STEM-related TVET courses and occupations.

Education and Aspirations Hub plans to conduct large-scale quantitative of its programs. The main variable of interest is the career decision efficacy of young people who access our programs in the Denkyembour district in the Eastern Region of Ghana. 

We are currently working in the district as our final piloting period of the programs. At this final pilot stage, there is a critical need for rigorous quantitative research to provide evidence of the impact of the programs, especially Inspiring STEM-TVET. We recently organised a STEM-TVET Awareness Day. The day's events exposed over 500 girls to STEM-TVET activities such as robotics, plumbing, electrical, medical sciences, food sciences, and general science. In May 2024 the hub will organise a one-day teacher training and workshop on STEM-TVET education and career guidance for about 60 teachers to support activities at the school level. 

We surveyed 500 girls before STEM-TVET Awareness Day, and with the existing data now is the ideal time to conduct a comparative analysis of girls who participated in the exposure activities and non-participants.

The evidence from the impact of these programs will be critical to the next phase of the Education and Aspirations Hub. The evidence will inform necessary changes and help us raise funds to expand our services.

Research Question 1: Do girls exposed to STEM-TVET activities have higher career decision self-efficacy than those unexposed to STEM-TVET activities?

Research Question 2: Do girls exposed to STEM-TVET activities develop a higher interest in STEM-TVET than those unexposed to STEM-TVET activities?

The desired output will be a first report on Inspiring STEM-TVET for girls. The report will be a piece of strong evidence that the organisation will share with stakeholders, partners, current donors, sponsors and prospective sponsors and partners.

Another output is to convert the report into a PowerPoint presentation that we can use to engage our audience to peach the outcomes for the expansion of our work.

The output of the LEAP project will define the following action

The first will be the development of an action plan. Based on the core findings of the analysis, our team and the LEAP team will create a practical action plan that will provide specific steps to address the issue and enhance our practices. The action plan will have clear goals and objectives to help restructure the 3-year strategic plan we developed for the 2024-2027 fiscal years

The second will be the publication of a report. The writing and publication of a report from the study will be our first flagship report on our activities in the Denkyembour District. The report will provide the necessary evidence for stakeholders. The Ghana Education Service, parents, teachers, counsellors, partners and sponsors to understand the relevance of our programs and potential impact. The evidence and recommendations in the report upon publication should give us additional exposure and increase our current stakeholder buy-in and visibility to partnership and sponsorship outlook.

The third is to use data collection instruments and processes from this research to strengthen our initial evaluation and monitoring system. A stronger evaluation and monitoring will ensure the continuous assessment of the impact of our programs. We could then revise our approaches and try alternative strategies.

The first desired long-term outcome is to use the research evidence to change social stereotypes about STEM and TVET education and careers in the Dekyembour district.

The second desired long-term goal is to broaden STEM-TVET aspirations and improve girls' achievement in the district.