How do teachers learn to teach reading and writing? Designing and conducting a baseline assessment of pre-service teacher education in Honduras.

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Wednesday III)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: From baseline assessment to evaluating interventions in teacher education programs focusing on reading and writing instruction in Nigeria and Honduras.

Proposal

In early 2018, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Government of Honduras launched the "readers to leaders" program (De Lectores a Líderes, also known as the USAID Honduras Reading Activity). The project implemented by Education Development Center (EDC) and its partner Florida State University (FSU) targets regions according to Development Objectives (1) Citizen Security increased in high violence zones; and (2) Extreme poverty sustainably reduced. The five-year project is aimed at strengthening the capacity of the Ministry of Education to implement evidence-based reading approaches to improve the learning rates in reading and writing of at least 700,000 students from first to sixth grade in 2,500 schools across 60 municipalities; train more than 15,000 in-service teachers in evidence-based teaching practices; provide 1,000 existing or new school libraries with a collection of 1,200 books to promote reading opportunities. The project is also aimed at building the capacity of pre-service teacher educators at the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional Francisco Morazán (UPNFM). The main goal is system strengthening and therefore the project will work to align pre-service and in-service teacher education around a common understanding of quality expressed in academic standards. The project addresses a gap created by recent educational reforms that terminated the ‘escuelas normales’ as teacher training centers for those seeking a high school-level teaching certificate to teach in primary schools (grades 1-6). Since 2016, all primary school teachers must have a college degree and a teaching license provided by UPNFM, the only institution in the country providing teacher certifications. FSU’s main role in this project is to collaborate with the UPNFM and to provide technical assistance to better integrate educational standards and evidence-based teaching practices applied to both pre and in-service teacher training programs. FSU will support UPNFM faculty teaching ‘lectoescritura’ (reading and writing) courses to close the gap left by the reform, and provide professional development focused on early grade reading instruction at the university level. For this purpose, we developed a series of data collection tools to assess the current situation and readiness of UPNFM faculty, administrators and students to effectively embrace the new policies and impart evidence-based teaching practices aligned with current efforts to reform policies, especially in the development and implementation of academic standards and formative assessments. In this presentation, we will discuss the results of the baseline assessment conducted in September 2018 to examine the current state of pre-service teacher education provided by UPNFM. We conducted a mixed-methods baseline assessment of how [lectoescritura] is being taught at the pre-service level, examining administrative structures, teaching methods, and specific strengths and constraints in the context of the UPNFM in Tegucigalpa as well as in its Regional Centers. We observed 12 classes at UPNFM and 5 at primary schools; administered 134 surveys, 12 interviews, and 13 focus groups with faculty, administrators, and students to better understand the context of reading and writing instruction in the Basic Education and Spanish Language Programs in Honduras.

Authors

• Flavia S. Ramos-Mattoussi, Florida State University

• ANA HELGA MARTY, FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

• Carla Maria Doolin Paredes, Florida State University