Co-creating evidence from the bottom up: The Schools2030 approach to understanding what works in raising holistic learning outcomes.

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Introduction to Schools2030

Schools2030 is a ten-year participatory learning improvement programme based in 1,000 government schools across ten countries: Afghanistan, Brazil, India, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Portugal, Tajikistan, Tanzania and Uganda. Using the principles of human-centred design and focusing on the key transition years of ages 5, 10 and 15 years old, Schools2030 supports teachers and students to design and implement education “micro-innovations” that focus on improving holistic learning outcomes for the most marginalised learners worldwide. The Schools2030 programme is supported by a consortium of ten donors that bring their collective technical expertise and financial resources together to promote and scale effective innovations for improving holistic learning outcomes.

Schools2030’s Human Centred Design approach is rooted in the traditions of participatory action research, which combines action and reflection through the participation of local education stakeholders - in this case, teachers, school leaders, learners and the wider school community - who together seek practical solutions to local educational concerns. The collaborative and participatory inquiry process that Schools2030 offers seeks to contribute to the overall improvement of the quality of schools and engagement of the school community. By adopting participatory action research methods, the Schools2030 human-centred design process is transformative rather than simply informative. It seeks to operationalise what Chambers describes as a ‘paradigmatic shift from things to people, from top-down to bottom-up, from standard to diverse, from control to empowerment’. To support this journey, we have developed a customised Schools2030 human-centred design process that is supported through a set of toolkits and training modules. All our human-centred design resources are available freely and open- sourced on schools2030.org.

Our bottom-up approach, which involves co-creating contextually relevant solutions with and for local stakeholders, strongly aligns with the conference focus on the importance of place – by combining forces with local, regional, national and global actors we are seeking to develop locally-rooted solutions that are globally informed and aligned to rigorous standards of quality, inclusion and equity.

Schools2030 research

Through the generous support of the Jacobs Foundation, Schools2030 is working with six independent research partners to increase our understanding of how holistic skills are taught and learned at classroom level; what factors can explain variability in holistic learning outcomes; and how school-driven innovations in holistic learning can lead to wider systems and policy change.

Over half of our research partners are organisations based in the focus countries, and all have articulated plans for stakeholder involvement and how they will share and even co-create the evidence they generate with schools. Through this model of research partnership, Schools2030 seeks to counteract the trend in international development and global education research that sees focal countries as sites of data extraction, with analysis and research outputs flowing overwhelmingly from and between western-based institutions.

We are pleased to highlight that all of our research partners have a central focus on education equity and inclusion, including how to support teachers to address learning differences and learning diversity. The first paper investigates the relationship between academic learning outcomes and non-academic skills and contextualises locally-rooted non-academic learning trends within Pakistan and Kenya. Our second paper interrogates areas that converge amongst Design Thinking and Play-based teaching approaches, seeking to examine the effect of these on raising holistic learning outcomes at primary school level in Tanzania. The third paper discusses research embedding itself in understanding context-relevant definitions of quality education at the school level in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and how this is playing out in current practice. To conclude, the final paper discusses the role of ‘positive deviance methodology’ in identifying local behaviours and practices that enable schools to achieve better results, which may then be scaled to lower performing schools.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

• Ellen Smith, Aga Khan Foundation

Individual Presentations

• Catalysing locally-rooted education solutions to improve holistic learning outcomes in Pakistan and Kenya. - Saba Saeed, Idara-E-Taleem-O-Aagahi (Ita)

• Co-creating tools for improving holistic learning outcomes using evidence from design thinking and play-based teaching interventions in Tanzanian primary schools. - Elizabeth Germana, Right To Play; Andrea Diaz-Varela, Right To Play International; Nikhit D'Sa, University of Notre Dame

• Exploring school-based education stakeholders’ perspectives on quality of education in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in the context of the Schools2030 initiative. - Stephen A Bahry, OISE - University of Toronto

• Co-creating and Co-implementing Research to Uncover Local Solutions to Education Challenges: Lessons from the Data Must Speak Positive Deviance Research. - Renaud Comba, UNICEF