Designing and Testing Scalable Teacher Motivation Interventions: Using Context-Driven Methodologies in Zambia

This publication presents a behavioural-science-driven study to improve teacher motivation and the quality of Catch Up, a Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) initiative implemented by Zambia’s Ministry of Education. 

Despite nationwide Catch Up scale-up to strengthen foundational literacy and numeracy among Grades 3–5 learners, teachers face challenges such as limited confidence, constrained resources and varied classroom conditions. Led by Busara, TaRL Africa and VVOB, the study uses human-centred design and behavioural insights to identify what motivates teachers, and to co-create scalable, cost-effective initiatives that improve implementation fidelity. The research follows three phases: understanding teacher motivations, designing context-specific solutions and testing them through behavioural lab experiments. Early findings highlight gender gaps in teacher self-efficacy, strong peer norms and external locus of control as major influences on teacher motivation. The study’s relevance lies in its potential to inform policy and programme design for improving teacher engagement and learner outcomes at scale in low-resource settings.