On Thursday 8 September, the CSC Alumni Team hosted the latest Development in Action webinar on ‘Girls in STEM: case study of a secondary school in Nairobi’ delivered by Commonwealth Alumnus Margaret Kamau. This webinar addressed the CSC development theme of Access, inclusion and opportunity.
The CSC’s Development in Action webinar series aims to highlight the work and research of Commonwealth Alumni across a range of development impact areas.
About the speaker
With over 20 years’ experience working in the education sector, Margaret understands the challenges faced by young people and teaching professionals who support their development. Having previously worked as a project designer and manager, Margaret is currently the Education Technical Lead with the Education Development Trust, a project funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) under the Girls Education Challenge (GEC) umbrella.
Margaret is a 2014 Commonwealth Distance Learner Scholar from Kenya. She completed an MA in Education and International Development at the UCL Institute of Education.
The door to STEM subjects for girls in Kenya
This webinar coincided with International Literacy Day 2022 – a day to celebrate literacy and learning as cornerstones of human rights and dignity across the world. To mark this important day, Margaret discussed her work in engaging marginalised girls in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) at a local secondary school in Nairobi. As part of her discussion, Margaret outlined the innovative teaching and learning approaches she had developed to support students and teachers in improving learning outcomes.
Margaret began by highlighting the social challenges faced by secondary school girls during their education which leads to perennial underperformance in STEM subjects and low uptake of STEM courses at university. Following this, Margaret talked about her experiences of using a multi-activity approach to address the learning barriers that girls faced and how this helped to narrow the attainment gap in STEM subjects. This featured a number of strands including school science fairs, mentorship, STEM career talks for parents, teacher training, and wider community engagement.
Margaret’s approach was developed with support from the CSC’s 2022 Alumni Community Engagement Fund (ACEF) which aimed to promote girls’ education.
This webinar presentation was followed by an interactive Q&A session with Commonwealth Scholars and Alumni. You can watch the webinar and previous events in the series by visiting the CSC’s YouTube channel.
Join future Development in Action webinars
The CSC’s Development in Action webinars take place each month and are open to all Commonwealth Scholars and Alumni.
To find out about upcoming webinars, please visit the CSC’s events webpage.
