Dr Eric Addae-Kyeremeh

Professional biography

Dr Addae-Kyeremeh's research interests are broadly leadership and management of education, teacher/headteacher professional learning across cultures and contexts, and on distance learning forms of teacher education in low-middle income countries. His research also focus on exploring learning and development of education practitioners across contexts and education phases by offering contextual understandings and constructs that are meaningful and practical to policy makers and change leaders. He has investigated teachers/headteachers professional development experiences in England, India and Ghana and has written and presented academic papers on some of these areas at International conferences. Browse Dr Addae-Kyeremeh's research on Open Research Online. 

His principal areas of interest for doctoral research supervision include:

• Leadership and management of education
• Learning and development of education practitioners
• Professional and practitioner networks and how they contribute to organisational development
• Educational change
• Education policy

Doctoral supervision

• Lynne Stabler  (with Dr Jane Cullen) |   Exploring trust in leadership and how that can help strengthen and sustain school improvement 
• Jane Stevens  (with Dr Gemma Ryan)  |   The role of appraisal within the independent school sector in the United Kingdom (UK) - A case study

Research and development projects

Co-Investigator, Partners in Play Project (P3), Ghana, Right to Play ($CA 500,000), 2020 - 2021.

• An evaluation and exploratory study of RTP’s Learn through Play (LtP) model and to provide evidence that can be used to inform policy to improve quality education for Ghanaian girls and boys aged 4-12, in partnership with University of Cape Coast. Research aims to produce the following: (i) evidence to facilitate discussion and learning regarding program best practices among beneficiaries, community members, Right to Play staff, partners and institutional stakeholders; (ii) evidence which inform organisational strategic learning and continuous improvement to strengthen capacity to carry out quality program design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation in the future.  This will mean engaging closely with the RTP staff to identify key lessons from the evaluation to improve its implementation and sustainability of its outcomes, (iii) evidence to inform realistic and achievable targets that are grounded within the local context – this will mean using the findings from the study to review content of training materials, implementation and monitoring and evaluation strategies.

Joint PI and Technical Lead for middle leadership programme, OpenSTEM Africa, Ghana, Opito (£600,000), 2018 - date.

• A research-practice  programme to support effective teaching and learning of practical science in Senior High Schools in Ghana by (i) creating a Virtual Lab of practical science apps, which helps provide more opportunities for learners to engage with practical science; (ii) professional development for teachers to develop effective ICT-based teaching and learning approaches;(iii) professional support for heads of science to help improve the experiential teaching and learning of the practical science syllabus

Joint PI, Distance Learning in Teacher Education in Ghana, Education Futures Research Cluster- CREET small grants Grant (£4,000), 2017 – 2020.

• A multisite case study  to  examine the pedagogical challenges in developing a quality teacher education curriculum by distance learning. Key research question: (i) How do curriculum developers perceive the pedagogy of distance teacher education? (ii) How do students and tutors perceive quality in teacher education through distance learning? (iii) To what extent do distance education students’ perceptions of quality influence their choice of study mode?

Joint PI, Investigating pedagogic leadership in India, International Development and Inclusive Innovation (IDII) SRA Grant (£2,500), 2016 – 2018.

• An investigation of how school leaders can support pedagogic change in their schools. The following key questions were explored- (i) what do school leaders in India understand by pedagogic leadership? (ii) To what extent are they able to exercise pedagogic leadership? (iii) What would help to develop pedagogic leadership in schools?

PI, Professional development through networking amongst basic school headteachers in Ghana, Ghana, British Educational Leadership Management and Administration Society (BELMAS) Grant (£4,000), 2014 – 2016

• Small scale sociometirc study to explore professional development experiences and practices of Ghanaian headteachers.

Joint PI, 'Enhancing higher education teaching and learning in Bangladesh: Fostering the pedagogical knowledge, teaching skills and research capabilities of early career academics', Bangladesh, British Council as part of the International Strategic Partnerships in Research and Education (Inspire) Project (£36,000), 2014 – 2016.

• Research-practice grant to investigate experiences of early career academics and to implement a support framework to improve pedagogical knowledge, teaching and research skills at the University of Rajshahi-Bangladesh,

Dr Addae-Kyeremeh's teaching primarily focuses on leadership and management in education and has contributed to several of the OUs Masters in Education modules. Between 2011 and 2015 he co-authored four masters modules: E855 Leading professional practice in education, E856 Educational leadership: context, strategy and collaboration, EE812 Educational leadership: exploring strategy and EE813 MA Ed dissertation: leadership and management. Dr Addae-Kyeremeh is also co-author of the popular badged open course (BOC), Succeeding in postgraduate study, a free course designed to offer essential preparation for pursuing masters level study. He has also co-developed several open educational resources (OER) in support of TESS India Project in India and OpenSTEM Africa project in Ghana.

Dr Addae-Kyeremeh has expertise in providing technical assistance to policy makers in LMIC and leading large scale international projects. He worked as OU Academic Director of the DfID-funded  Transforming Teacher Education and Learning (T-TEL)  programme in Ghana 2014 -2015. He was also the critical reviewer of the recent national policy and curriculum framework for Pre-Tertiary Education Curriculum (2018) in Ghana. He previously co-led the school leadership development strand of TESS-India, a £10million DfID funded programme across 7 states in India.

He is currently a Technical Advisor and Researcher on the OpenSTEM Africa project in Ghana providing high level policy guidance as well as leading on the development and implementation of CPD for teachers and middle leaders in senior high schools.

Eric worked on the BBC/OU radio series Project 17 as Academic Consultant with Professor Giles Mohan (OU) and Dr Aravinda Guntupalli (Aberdeen). This co-production is based on the United Nations 17 sustainable development goals (SDG) and was a 17 part broadcast series on BBC World Service. Each SDG was examined from the perspective of a different nation and expressed through the lives of 17-year-olds as they challenged the experts on what action (and inaction) will mean for their futures. Listen to all the episodes via BBC World Service - Project 17.

Don’t Exclude Me (BBC2 - Autumn 2021) -  More recently, Eric and Professor Liz Chamberlain worked as academic consultants on this two-part documentary series that examined the rise of exclusions in primary schools by looking at behaviour in school children in a British primary school. The programme followed training expert and ex-pupil referral head teacher, Marie Gentles, as she sought to remedy behavioural concerns by working with staff, parents and students, in order to keep the pupils in school.

Dr Addae-Kyeremeh has significant experience, knowledge and understating of academic standards of taught postgraduate qualifications and has held external examining positions on postgraduate qualifications in UK HEIs:

• 2021 - Date     Nottingham Trent University               MA Education 
• 2013 - 2018     University of Strathclyde                    PG Diploma/MSc in School Leadership and Management 
• 2012 - 2017     UCL Institute of Education                  MA Applied Educational Leadership and Management

Academic review/editorial work

• 2019 - date      Reviewer, Open Learning: The Journal of Open and Distance Learning
• 2017 - date      Reviewer, Management in Education (MIE)
• 2013 - date      Specialist reviewer, Routledge Education Publications
• 2012 - date      Reviewer, European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning (EURODL)

Dr Addae-Kyeremeh has a range of international links that have been established through his research collaborations and international development work. Most notably, he worked with the Arab OU Education Faculty (2011-2015) as Academic Reviewer with responsibility for the quality assurance and support for their MEd Instructional Technology, MEd Leadership and Management and BEd programmes.

He is often invited to panel discusions and as guest speaker on a range of issues that relate to education policy, educational leadership and teacher professional development. The following are examples of his contributions:

• Keynote speaker at the Partnership Conference: Exploring Practice, Scholarship and Research, 15 October 2021. Nottingham Trent University. Topic: Living your values through leadership.
• Guest Speaker at Pan-India webinar organised by Adhyayan. Topic: Understanding levers of systems reform in education at scale? 15 December 2020.
• Panellist on a webinar organised by ‘on the Couch with Fola Komolafe (Charity). Topic: The Education Experience- is it a fair playing field for this generation? A webinar event, July 2020.
• Plenary presenter- 17 Ways to change the world. Pan Commonwealth Forum (PCF9). Edinburgh, September 2019.
• Panellist at Open Impact conference in Kampala- Uganda. Topic: A journey across Africa - Experiences with extending access to higher education, December 2019.
•  Panellist at the Joint Young Lives and RITES (OU) symposium at UKFIET 2017, Oxford, UK. Topic: Understanding teachers' working experiences: capturing data on teachers as professionals, learners and change-makers in low resource contexts. Rhiannon Moore (Young Lives, University of Oxford), Jack Rossiter (Young Lives), Renu Singh (Young Lives), Alison Buckler (The Open University), Chris High (The Open University), Eric Addae-Kyeremeh (The Open University), Ben Alcott - Discussant (University of Cambridge). September 2017.
• Keynote Speaker at PRESEC-Legon 78th Speech Day Accra, Ghana. Topic: Building institutional capacity to unlock the potential of our young students, November 2016,
• Guest speaker at ‘International Conference on Education Research for Development in Africa (ICERDA), Accra, Ghana. Topic: The Future of Teacher Education in Ghana. May 2015. 
• Lead presenter at the National Forum for Principals in Ghana as part of the Transforming Teacher Education and Learning (T-TEL) programme in Ghana. February 2015 May 2015 
• Co-lead pre-conference workshop on Educational Leadership and Management at the International Council on Education for Teaching (ICET) Conference, Cape-Coast, Ghana, 9 July 2012. ​​​​​​