Call for expressions of interest: Opportunity to join SPANA’s education advisory panel

Advisory panel

We are seeking members for an expert advisory panel to quality assure our education work. The panel will convene between 2024 and 2027, with the initial term taking place over 2024 and focusing on a competency framework.

We are seeking expertise from a range of global locations and in the following fields:

• Development and humanitarian education
• Veterinary and animal health educationalists
• Environment/conservation
• One Health
• Public health
• Animal welfare

The intended start time for the panel is the beginning of March, and it is expected that meetings will be held bi-monthly for one year. All sessions will be online. Honoraria will be provided to all members. Please refer to our Terms of Reference for more details about the nature and scope of the panel.

Overview

In 2023, we celebrated our centenary: 100 years of supporting and improving the lives of working animals across the globe. Looking back, the world has changed inordinately in that time, and while we are rightly proud of our incredible successes as a charity, the challenges that working animals and the communities that rely on them are still numerous and increasing in severity. These range from the intensification of the climate crisis, growing political and economic instability, and the increase of global health risks such as zoonotic diseases. Demand for our vital work has never been more acute.

In response, we have launched a new, ambitious strategy with the mission to transform the welfare of working animals in a world where animals, people and the environment are respected and thrive. Our vision is a world where every working animal lives a healthy and valued life.

SPANA currently provides vital veterinary treatment for working animals in need, trains animal owners in animal care, and teaches children about animal welfare. While our Treat, Train and Teach approach will remain foundational to our work, our new direction sets out our ambition to Transform the lives of working animals, through new, innovative activities, partnerships, and advocacy. For education, a focus on human behaviour change will augment our existing work building knowledge and compassion towards working animals.

We are expanding our emergency capacity in response to the greater need, primarily tied to climate change-related issues such as droughts and floods. In addition, we are working to build local capacity for animal welfare services provision and quality assurance activities.

After an intensive review of all our educational work, we are developing our programme to meet the challenges of the 21st century more strategically. We aim to become more progressive, inclusive, and work in a more holistic way. We recognise that to best meet the needs of working animals, we must engage with the people who care for them. Therefore, we aim to support anyone involved with working animals – be that a child who look after their family’s donkey, a young person who uses a horse for work, or a vet who looks after the community’s camels – to develop the essential knowledge, attitudes, and skills required to support improved quality of life for their animals.

As the people we work with are varied in their demographics, the education and training required is similarly complex and diverse. Consequently the expertise required to guide and support the development of our education programmes is necessarily broad.

SPANA Education Advisory Panel Terms of Reference

Background

Established 100 years ago, SPANA’s mission is to transform the welfare of working animals in a world where animals, people, and the environment are respected and thrive. With the launch of the new strategy in 2023, the aim is to achieve lasting, transformative improvement in the quality of life for working animals that builds on the conditions set by the five freedoms of animal welfare1, through:

• expanding programmes’ geographical reach,
• building awareness of the value that working animals contribute to communities and economies,
• and working within the nexus of people, animals, and the environment to develop resilient working animals and communities.

As part of new strategic direction and after careful evaluation, SPANA is evolving its education programme in an ambitious undertaking which includes the establishment and launch of a new competency framework that contributes to improved working animal welfare across five competency domains, new content packages that meet these competencies, and an array of new delivery methods.

The competency framework was inspired by Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, where the foundational, concrete needs, such as water and shelter, come at the bottom, and abstract and aspirational concepts such as ‘self-actualisation’ appear at the top. SPANA’s competency framework is also organised as a hierarchy, with the knowledge, practices, and attitudes acquired through engagement with the education programme starting from least complex to increasingly more complex as they move from bottom to top.

The aim of the competency framework is to ensure consistency of messaging, quality, and rigour across all SPANA’s education and training work globally. It is being developed by a team of stakeholders from across SPANA’s programmes to ensure a holistic scope and technical precision.

Education expert advisory panel

SPANA is convening an expert panel to support and quality assure this work, providing critical independent advice to the team between 2024 –2027. The initial term for the panel will be one year (2024). Thereafter, we will explore two-year terms, with some carry-over from one panel cohort to another to foster continuity.

The panel will consist of no more than five members at any one time, with at least one alternate available to ensure robustness of review in the event a member is temporarily unavailable. We seek diversity and complementarity amongst our panel members. This will include experts from different fields and geographies, such as development and humanitarian education specialists, veterinary and animal health educationalists, and those from the fields of environment/conservation, One Health, public health, and animal welfare.

It is expected that the time required from each expert should not exceed one day per month between February and October 2024.

All work and meetings will be conducted remotely using panel members’ own resources, with no travel or face-to-face meetings required.

The process and time expected:

1. Receive papers at least one week prior to meeting.
2. Send feedback in the week before the meeting.
3. 1.5-hour meeting to discuss feedback.
4. Quality assurance final deliverable due between 1-2 weeks after meeting.

A small honorarium will be provided for panel members.

Nature of anticipated support

While details of the required advisory support to be provided 2025-2027 are in development, the expectations for 2024 are as follows.

In 2024, advisory panel members will help interrogate and quality assure:

1. Teaching professional capacity building plans, including methodologies, learning objectives, lesson plans for short-courses, and developing a continuous peer development strategy;
2. SPANA’s draft competency framework. In so doing, curricular standards will be established, underpinning content creation. Specifically, the panel will:
3. Review the competency framework and provide critical and timely feedback on its coherence and internal logic, content, scope, and relevance to indigenous, national, regional, (where feasible) and/or international curricular frameworks and policies.
4. Act as a sounding board for ideation of the competency framework’s operationalisation.
5. Plans for co-creating classroom-focused teaching and learning materials with and for SPANA colleagues and partners, using the competency framework as the guide.
6. Draft classroom-focused facilitator, teacher, and learner materials, developed in Q3 or Q4 2024 as “beta tests” turning the curricular framework into useable content.
7. Plans for developing social marketing-based education (SMBE) materials from the curricular content.
8. Data collection tools and methods for monitoring, evaluating, being accountable for, and learning from the education programme’s implementation.

In 2025, advisory panel members might help:

1. Interrogate and quality assure:
2. Education staff continuous professional development options
3. Content development and delivery
4. Quarterly monitoring reports
5. The baseline report
6. Problem solve any emergent quality assurance concerns arising from monitoring efforts
7. Steer any required modification to curricular, content, or delivery plans
8. Support the conceptualisation of a package of “low-risk, high return” content that is made available publicly as a “global good”
9. Help frame social marketing-based education (SMBE) pipelines
10. Identify potential research partners for and funders of a rigorous, controlled trial of SPANA’s SMBE and classroom-focused intervention models.

In 2026, advisory panel members might help:

1. Interrogate and quality assure:
2. Education staff continuous professional development outcomes
3. Content development and delivery
4. Quarterly monitoring reports
5. The mid-term review
6. The package of “low-risk, high return” content that is made available publicly as a “global good”
7. Social marketing-based education (SMBE) pipelines and delivery method
8. Problem solve any emergent quality assurance concerns arising from monitoring efforts
9. Steer any required modification to curricular content, or delivery plans
10. Sense-check the ongoing appropriateness of the competency framework to SPANA’s strategic focus, partners, and any relevant indigenous, national, regional, (where feasible) and/or international curricular frameworks and policies.
11. Secure research partners for and funders of a rigorous, controlled trial of SPANA’s SMBE and classroom-focused intervention models.
12. Identify and/or facilitate opportunities for SPANA staff to speak on panels and/or publish formative research.

In 2027, advisory panel members might help:

1. Interrogate and quality assure:
2. Education staff continuous professional development outcomes
3. Classroom-focused content contextualisation and delivery
4. Quarterly monitoring reports
5. The design of the baseline evaluation
6. The package of “low-risk, high return” content that is made available publicly as a “global good”
7. Social marketing-based education (SMBE) pipelines and delivery method
8. the design and start of a rigorous, controlled trial of SPANA’s SMBE and classroom-focused intervention models.
9. Problem solve any emergent quality assurance concerns arising from monitoring efforts
10. Steer any required modification to curricular content, or delivery plans
11. Sense-check the ongoing appropriateness of the competency framework to SPANA’s strategic focus, partners, and any relevant indigenous, national, regional, (where feasible) and/or international curricular frameworks and policies.