Case study · Programmes, trainings & workshops

Helping teachers deliver consistent and efficient tablet sessions

Client: Appleseed, for Imagine Worldwide
Year: 2026
Role: Behavioural Strategy Lead
Where: Sierra Leone

Children in green school uniforms sharing tablets at a wooden desk — A tablet learning session in a primary school in Sierra Leone

The challenge

Imagine Worldwide's Pikin Tab programme puts tablets and headsets in the hands of Sierra Leone's primary school learners, giving them structured, self-paced time with high-quality literacy and numeracy content. The content works, but only if teachers run enough sessions, and run them well, for every child to reach 60 minutes of focused time on task a week.

After two years of implementation, only around half of the schools were reaching that target. With the programme already in more than 270 schools and scaling towards 750, the gap between what teachers needed to do and what was actually happening had to be understood before scale amplified it.

The question: what is getting in the way of teachers running consistent and effective tablet sessions?

My role

Led the analysis of the programme's baseline data and the challenges in meeting its targets, and defined the target behaviours and the Theory of Change.
Led a joint team of Appleseed, Imagine Worldwide and Ministry of Education researchers through three weeks of ethnographic fieldwork in 17 primary schools across four districts: urban Freetown, rural Bo, peri-urban Port Loko and remote Bonthe, where some schools on Sherbro Island can only be reached by boat.
Ran the research in three cycles of fieldwork and synthesis, so each round tested the emerging hypotheses and went deeper on what mattered most. We shadowed teachers, visited homes and spoke with headteachers, pupils, field officers, government officials and community leaders.
Coordinated the synthesis of the findings into a strategy, co-designed with Imagine Worldwide, that keeps implementation grounded in local context and aligned with the needs of communities and stakeholders.

Pupils in blue uniforms working on tablets at worn red desks — Focused time on task, the behaviour the programme depends on

A class in progress in an unfinished concrete building, with broken desks and water on the floor — Learning conditions vary widely from school to school

Children in the yard of a rural primary school with a corrugated roof and palm trees behind — A primary school in rural Sierra Leone

Key findings

The research surfaced a set of key findings on what helps and what hinders teachers, from motivators and barriers to the systems around the classroom. Each finding was tied back to the two target behaviours: running sessions consistently, and running them effectively.

The example below shows how one finding was visualised for the client.

Example of a key finding: diagram of how a hardware issue travels from a student to a teacher, a field officer with 5 schools, a regional manager with 25, and up to programme managers overseeing 400 schools — Example of a key finding from the report: how a hardware issue travels from one child up to a programme manager overseeing 400 schools

Outcome

17primary schools

4districts

3weeks in the field

5strategic aims

We delivered a strategic playbook that moves from the target behaviours to the key challenges, five strategic aims, and the moves and tactics to achieve each one.

Every tactic is marked as a quick win or a longer-term investment, so all of them are actionable and ready for Imagine Worldwide's team to implement.