Miss Claire Hedges

Professional biography

I am the Centre Manager for The Open University’s Centre for the Study of Global Development.  I am a member of the Centre Directorate team that guides the Centre’s research strategy, vision and values.  I have over 15 years of international teacher and community education for development, research and programme management experience. 

My interests are in inclusive and collaborative education and health initiatives, that are driven by and situated within the wider lives and contexts of communities, learners, educators and health workers.  I have a specific research focus on the cost-effectiveness of programmes and initiatives.  Currently, I am the Cost-Effectiveness Study Lead for the EdTech Hub funded 3MPower (Mobile Learning for Empowerment of Marginalised Mathematics Educators) research project in Bangladesh.

I have co-led teacher professional development programmes designed for high scale, high impact and low unit cost, using available technology, with social support networks for learning at their core.  These include being a founder member of the Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa network and co-leading The Open University’s component of English in Action, a national school-based teacher development programme in Bangladesh.    More recently, I have co-led large scale teacher and community education programmes in Zimbabwe to improve the teaching and learning of foundational literacy and numeracy.  

I have also contributed to The Open University’s Covid-19 response to continue learning in low-income communities, including being a co-author of UNICEF and World Bank Remote Learning Packs (2022).

At the 2021 UKFIET (The Education and Development Forum) 16th Conference on International Education and Development 'Building Back Better in Education and Training?: Reimagining, Reorienting and Redistributing', I was co-convener of the 'Rethinking the Education Workforce' theme.