Pedagogy Specialist – Foundational Literacy

Location: Remote. Candidates based in the Global South are preferred, ideally in Africa, and India-based candidates are welcome. Candidates from other regions may be considered where the budget fits, on a consultancy basis.

Budget: Up to INR 35 lakh per annum or Approximately USD 39,000 per annum, indicative.

Engagement Type: Consultant | One-year contract with possibility of extension

Role Purpose

A global organisation building AI-enabled learning and assessment tools for public education systems in the Global South is hiring a Senior Pedagogy Specialist on a one-year consultancy. You will establish the pedagogical foundation for its foundational literacy products, which initially focus on public education in Sub-Saharan Africa, including oral reading fluency (ORF) assessment supported by automatic speech recognition (ASR).

This is a hands-on design role and not a programme management role. Working with the strategy, product and technology teams, you will translate evidence on how children learn into practical skill frameworks, assessment specifications and pathways from assessment to diagnosis, remediation and practice. These will be designed for adaptation across languages, curricula and other Global South contexts, and will keep assessment tasks and data collection appropriate to children's capacity.

Key Responsibilities

1. Develop Foundational Literacy Frameworks

• Build evidence-based frameworks that define skills, prerequisites, learning outcomes and developmental progressions across foundational literacy (Grades 1-5)
• Detail out skills in oral language, phonological awareness, decoding, vocabulary, reading fluency and comprehension skill areas
• Define common learner errors and misconceptions, indicators of mastery and principles for selecting appropriate next learning steps.
• Distinguish shared pedagogical principles from language- and curriculum-specific requirements, including English as an additional language and transitions between languages of instruction.

2. Define Assessment Specifications and Quality Standards

• Develop ORF assessment specifications covering sub-task selection, task design, scoring rules and interpretation, with guidance on establishing and validating context-appropriate benchmarks.
• Translate global early-grade reading and literacy frameworks, including the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) and Science of Reading, into technology-enabled assessment tasks, scoring logic and diagnostic outputs adapted to local languages and curricula.
• Work with the technology team to distinguish learner errors from automatic speech recognition (ASR) errors, and specify how uncertainty should affect scoring and feedback.
• Establish review criteria for assessment items, learning content and AI-generated feedback

3. Translate Diagnosis into Learning Support

• Map diagnosed skill gaps to practice activities, remedial pathways and classroom lesson plans, with worked examples for priority skills.
• Translate the frameworks into actionable product specifications for learner progression, instructional scaffolding, feedback, teacher and caregiver-facing recommendations.
• Guide the product and strategy teams on building literacy learning activities; define content repository tags with the technology team to align with the literacy skills framework and to enable progression

4. Support Contextualisation

• Work with national education boards, curriculum specialists and language experts to align the tools with national curricula and classroom practice.
• Represent the organization's pedagogical approach in selected discussions with funders, senior government officials and technical partners, explaining the evidence, design choices and limitations clearly.
• Collect and incorporate feedback from teachers, implementation partners and expert reviewers into the frameworks and document decisions requiring further validation.

5. Deliver and Transfer the Frameworks

• Agree priority countries, languages, skills and review milestones at the start of the assignment so the scope is achievable within one year.
• Deliver editable frameworks, assessment specifications, diagnostic-to-remediation maps, content-review rubrics and sample materials for the agreed scope.
• Conduct handover sessions with the strategy, product and technology teams, and recommend priorities for piloting, validation and further framework development.

Expected Deliverables

• Months 1-2: Review existing tools and relevant evidence; agree the scope and deliver draft foundational literacy skill frameworks and learning progressions.
• Months 3-9: Develop foundational literacy and ORF assessment specifications informed by relevant global frameworks, scoring rubrics, learner-error taxonomies and remediation maps, with sample tasks and activities.
• Months 6-12: Refine the outputs through agreed technical and partner reviews; deliver the final framework package, product guidance, validation roadmap and team handover.

Skills & Qualification
Must-have

• An advanced degree in education, learning sciences, curriculum and instruction, educational psychology or a related field, or equivalent demonstrated expertise.
  10+ years of relevant experience in foundational learning, pedagogy, curriculum or assessment, including direct ownership of learning frameworks and teaching-learning materials.
  Strong understanding of foundational literacy development, with evidence of applying research to instruction and assessment. 
• Demonstrated ability in translating global early-grade reading and literacy frameworks, including EGRA and Science of Reading, into practical technology tools, assessment specifications, scoring logic and learning pathways.
• Experience implementing or adapting frameworks in low-resource public education settings, including multilingual classrooms.
  Proven ability to communicate technical recommendations credibly to senior government stakeholders, funders and education experts.
• Strong writing and collaboration skills, and the ability to produce practical deliverables within the agreed timelines.

Strong plus

• Experience in Sub-Saharan Africa, English as a second language, or language-of-instruction transitions.
• Experience with early-grade reading assessments, assessment validation, digital learning or AI-enabled education products.
• Prior classroom teaching or teacher-training experience, and experience mentoring content-development teams.