Aligning levels of instruction with goals and the needs of students (ALIGNS): Varied approaches, common principles

• In Event: Instructional (In)coherence: How greater alignment between curriculum, instruction and children’s learning levels can improve student learning

Proposal

Persistently low learning outcomes in many developing countries are caused, in part, by a disconnect between what students know and can do, and what they are being taught. Recognizing this disconnect, a growing number of approaches have realigned instruction to meet children where they are and have brought about large gains in student learning. This paper presents a structured synthesis of these approaches, which we call ALIGNS approaches because they all Align Levels of Instruction to Goals and the Needs of Students. We find that four common principles implicitly underlie the success of these approaches.

The first principle that this body of approaches implicitly shares is setting realistic learning goals that are coherent with children’s current learning levels. In most developing country contexts, particularly for primary school ages, this means focusing on foundational literacy and numeracy. Second, ALIGNS approaches make instruction coherent with both children’s current learning levels and the learning progress children are expected to make in the short-term, through a variety of means. Different approaches act on different components of instruction – by changing national curriculum standards, the content taught in the classroom, classroom pedagogy, assessments, or teaching and learning materials – and many approaches act on multiple instructional components at once so that they are more internally coherent. Third, ALIGNS approaches actualize their intended changes to instruction through extending coherent support to teachers. This is often delivered through practical, ongoing coaching rather than traditional teacher training. Finally, each approach that we group into this body of approaches has found contextually appropriate ways to meet the preceding principles. They therefore vary greatly in many dimensions of implementation, and are not commonly associated with each other even though we contend they are guided by the same underlying principles to improve learning.

We substantiate these principles by reviewing interdisciplinary evidence from the cognitive science, education, and program evaluation literatures. We also present 3 in-depth cases- from a national curriculum reform in Tanzania, a national literacy program in Kenya (Tusome), and a remedial program operating in multiple countries across South Asia and Africa (Teaching at the Right Level) – and show how these seemingly disparate programs each follow the core ALIGNS principles.

Authors

• Jason Silberstein, RISE Programme

• Yue-Yi Hwa, RISE Programme

• Michelle Kaffenberger, RISE Programme