Pedagogy and Program Manager, FLN

Role Purpose

This role owns the pedagogical and assessment integrity of a full FLN product portfolio, alongside its program execution in low-resource environments across Sub-Saharan Africa. This is a hands-on pedagogical role designed to bridge curriculum/assessment design, data science, and government education operations. The primary mandate is grounding AI-driven assessment tools (ASR/OCR) in rigorous learning sciences and pedagogy while ensuring field data collection is tailored to child capacity.

Key Responsibilities

1. Pedagogical Design, Assessment Design, and Quality Assurance (50%–60% — Non-Negotiable)

• Hands-On Pedagogical Architecture: Own the instructional and assessment design logic across both literacy and numeracy tools: item construction, scoring rubrics, benchmarks, grade-level calibration, and alignment to national curriculum frameworks.
• Applied Learning Sciences & Phonetics/Error Analysis: Apply core learning sciences and pedagogical principles (how children acquire literacy and numeracy skills, common error patterns, developmental progression) directly to shape product design decisions—such as calibrating word difficulty repositories based on phonics/pronunciation rules and building diagnostic error typologies for math tools (e.g., carry-forward failures in addition).
• Psychometric & Pedagogical QA: Validate that AI-scored outputs are pedagogically and psychometrically sound, not just technically accurate, ensuring outputs reflect real classroom progression rather than simple answer-correctness scoring.
• Contextual & Multi-Language Adaptation: Work with literacy, numeracy, and assessment specialists and local content partners to adapt assessment content across multiple languages and national curriculum contexts.
• Classroom Progression Logic: Ensure numeracy tool design reflects sound classroom pedagogy and progression logic, not just answer-correctness scoring.

2. Program Execution & Child-Centric Data Delivery (20%–30%)

• Child Capacity & Field Protocols: Design and manage end-to-end field data collection cycles across both literacy and numeracy instruments: enumerator training, school-level rollout, quality checks, and troubleshooting. Tailor assessment instruments to child capacity (e.g., structuring appropriate reading durations and paragraph lengths to prevent cognitive fatigue).
• Operating Calendar Management: Own and manage the operating calendar across multiple countries and multi-partner environments, sequencing rollouts against local school terms and government academic calendars.
• Implementation Tracking: Build and maintain an implementation tracker covering timelines, sample sizes, data quality flags, and blockers, disaggregated by literacy and numeracy workstreams.

3. Government and Partner Interface (10%–20%)

• Pedagogical Representation: Serve as the pedagogy and assessment-credible face of the organization to Ministries of Education, teacher training institutes, and implementation partners across both FLN domains.
• Government Policy Insights: Translate assessment outputs into policy-usable insights for government counterparts at classroom, district, or system level.
• Technical Proposal Input: Support proposal and concept note development with technically sound literacy, numeracy, and assessment sections for institutional funders.

4. Evidence, Reporting, and Risk Management

• M&E Frameworks: Design M&E frameworks that connect AI-scored literacy and numeracy data to learning outcome claims that hold up to funder and government scrutiny.
• Donor Reporting: Own FLN workstream inputs for donor reporting across both product lines.
• Pedagogical Divergence Flagging: Flag where AI tool performance, pedagogical validity, or assessment reliability diverge, before a government or funder counterpart catches it.

Preferred / Strong Plus:

Must-Have:

5–7+ years in education program management with direct, hands-on experience in early childhood education / FLN (Grades 1–3), featuring a heavy focus on hands-on pedagogy, instructional design, curriculum development, or assessment creation (literacy and/or numeracy).

Deep subject matter expertise in pedagogy, phonics, reading fluency calibration, and foundational math error analysis.

Direct field experience running academic programs, interventions, or data collection in low-resource, government school settings.

Strong comfort working with assessment data (assessment scores, sampling, basic statistics, item-level analysis) without requiring software programming skills (AI/tech concepts will be coached on the job).

Proven experience managing multi-country or multi-partner program operations across complex operational environments.

Preferred / Strong Plus:

Master’s degree or formal training in Pedagogy, Elementary Education, Instructional Design, Psychometrics, or Learning Sciences (e.g., M.Ed / B.Ed in Elementary Education).

Applied experience spanning both literacy AND numeracy pedagogy, rather than just one domain.

Familiarity with ASR/OCR, AI-based assessment tools, game-based learning platforms (e.g., GeoGebra), or prior edtech pilot experience.

Existing relationships with Ministries of Education, DIETs, or teacher training institutions in relevant geographies (particularly Sub-Saharan Africa).

Experience writing technical assessment and pedagogy sections for institutional donor audiences.

Local language fluency relevant to target program countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.