Transforming early math education in Côte d’Ivoire: challenges, lessons learned, and plans for sustainability

• In Event: Mathematics teaching and learning in world education programs in Ghana, Nepal, and Cote d’Ivoire: taking stock of where we are and sharing lessons learned

Proposal

Following the civil wars in the 1990’s, the Ivorian government has been making strong efforts to rebuild their education system. However, most of these efforts have been dedicated towards improving access to education after the destruction of the wars. There have been limited donor and government initiatives focused on improved quality education, including for numeracy, or math education. In partnership with Jacobs Foundation, World Education, Inc. (WEI) designed a pilot program to improve early grade literacy and numeracy for first and second graders in rural Ivorian communities. This pilot program focused on three main objectives to improve quality education for first and second graders: 1) developed contextually-appropriate supplementary learning materials that complement the existing government curriculum and standards; 2) established a teacher training and support program to ensure consistent application and use of the teaching and learning materials (TLMs); and 3) and strengthened school management committees to monitor and ensure the provision of quality education. WEI worked closely with both local and national Ministry of Education partners and teachers to develop and refine the materials and teacher support system.

To evaluate the effectiveness of the pilot, WEI, designed a monitoring system that examines both teacher performance and student performance. The teacher performance evaluation consisted of simple KAP survey and regular classroom observation, while student performance was measured using the student learning assessment tool, ASER. The ASER test was adapted according to Ivorian grade-specific standards and administered to both intervention and non-intervention schools. At baseline, results showed that, while many intervention teachers felt relatively confident about their ability to use the constructivist methods promoted in the pilot TLMs, they did not actually practice them in their classrooms. With respect to math learning outcomes, students demonstrated strong abilities in counting (55% of first graders and 88% of second graders), but more complex skills, such as number recognition, quantity comparison, and addition, proved to be much weaker.

This paper will draw comparisons between the results from the baseline and midline evaluation. It will discuss the evaluation results from the teacher and student performance outcomes evaluations in numeracy, as well as the correlation between numeracy outcomes and teacher performance. The paper will also provided limited analysis of the link between student literacy and numeracy learning in terms of developing numeracy competency. Finally, the paper will end with a description of the pilot’s collaboration with Ivorian Ministry of Education partners to contribute to the program’s sustainability, including an in-depth discussion of the challenges and lessons learned gained along the way. The results of this pilot will contribute to ongoing global research that will help to inform the transformation of education systems to become providers of quality math education, particularly in developing countries.

Authors

• Huai Ming Sanchez, World Education, Inc.

• Miguel Doran, World Education Inc.