Consultancy for Steam Research

**Job no**: 564949

**Contract type**: Consultant

**Duty Station**: Cairo

**Level**: Consultancy

**Location**: Egypt

**Categories**: Education

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

**For every child, **_Care._**

**How can you make a difference?**

**_ Objective:_**

The purpose of the consultancy is to provide insights into the:

- Digital literacy among girls as the foundation for STEAM learning and improved employability;

which will inform the planning of STEAM and digital learning interventions and form the baseline for UNICEF’s country programme.

**_ Methodology:_**

The consultant will work under the technical supervision of the Education Specialist, UNICEF Egypt Country Office, and in close collaboration with the Education Chief, Innovation team and girls’ empowerment focal point.

The Consultant is requested to conduct a research, including developing an inception report, conducting desk review, designing methodology and research tools (including ethical clearances). The research will be conducted in Greater Cairo and selected governorates, data analysis, report writing, development of a brief and presentation of findings to key stakeholders.

Overall, the research will focus on children aged 6-18 years (including children with disabilities), parents and teachers and target Greater Cairo (including host and refugee communities; disaggregated by Egyptians, Syrians and non-Syrians) as well as rural areas in selected governorates (e.g. one governorate from Lower Egypt, Upper Egypt, Suez Canal zone and frontier governorate).

The research will make use of both primary and secondary data. A thorough analysis of the existing evidence and secondary data is needed. The collection of primary data should be done through mixed research techniques, including:

- In-depth interviews and focus group discussions with adolescents (girls and boys), parents and teachers from host and refugee communities in urban and rural areas as highlighted above;
- RapidPro Survey, an interactive two-way mobile survey that will be shared with adolescents, aged 10-18 years, from the Dawwie network;
- Pre
- and post-test (or alternatively short survey) to identify teachers’ perception on relevant topics (e.g. gender perception, perception on STEAM etc.) to be conducted with primary school teachers in public and refugee community schools);
- a more experiential methodology should be identified to provide a snapshot of the perception of girls and boys aged below the age of 10 years, such as analysing the drawing of students.

Students of both genders will be participating in the interviews/discussions and surveys to identify gender-specific differences, bottlenecks and needs. Data shall be disaggregated by gender, nationalities, geographic location, school type and grade level.

The research objectives for this assignment are as follows:
STEAM:

- To understand the influence of role models and their degree of influence in the decision-making process.

Digital literacy:

- To understand self-perceived digital literacy among girls and boys.
- To explore the perceived importance and benefits of digital literacy among students.
- To explore the extent digital literacy education is provided in schools.
- To explore the development of digital literacy skills in their personal lives.
- To understand the perceived challenges in gaining digital literacy skills.

The consultant should provide a detailed research methodology including the selection of the sample of respondents and the proposed research questions as part of the inception report.

The study should adhere to UNICEF Procedure for Ethical Standards in Research, Evaluation, Data Collection and Analysis and ethical participation of children. The individual consultant is required to clearly identify any potential ethical issue, as well as the processes for ethical review and oversight of the research/data collection process. Thus, it is required for the consultant to develop the necessary forms for interviewees according to the UNICEF ethical procedure before conducting the interview. In addition, it is the consultant’s responsibility to make sure that these procedures are being followed and that the forms are collected from all interviewees. The research tools need to be ethically cleared by UNICEF before conducting in-depth interviews and FGDs. In addition, any participant will be fully informed about the nature and purpose of the assignment and their requested involvement. Only participants who have given their written or verbal consent (documented) will be included in the consultations.

Travel by the consultant will be required within Greater Cairo and selected governorat