Elevating Teaching & Learning in Haiti through an Active-Learner Pedagogy

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Mitchel lives in rural Haiti. Like other fifth graders in Haiti, he has never experienced an uninterrupted year of school. Since 2018, schools across the country have faced prolonged periods of closure due to civil unrest, COVID-19, fuel shortages, and gang violence.

Even when Mitchel is able to attend school, the challenges to receiving the education he deserves are enormous. Despite Haiti’s historic abolition of colonial slavery two hundred years ago, its education system remains a powerful force that perpetuates the legacy of colonialism and reinforces inequality. Teachers rely on outmoded approaches that mimic the authoritarian structures of Haiti’s colonial past. Instruction is typically in the colonial language—French—rather than students’ native language, Haitian Creole. Most schools lack basic infrastructure, such as electricity. Publicly funded schools are rare.

Haiti's education system is underperforming. Although recent efforts have improved access to basic education, the persistence of poor-quality teaching and learning—coupled with weak governance at school and system levels—prevent students from completing their fundamental education in a timely manner with the knowledge and skills they need to thrive. The educational system is highly fragmented—characterized by a culture of competition that discourages collaboration and a lack of reliable data to guide educators, managers, policymakers, and funders. Efficient mechanisms to provide educators and administrators with sufficient training, support, and supervision are lacking. Curricular content and learning supports are not adapted to context. Children who struggle are left behind. Mechanisms to engage the broader community in support of student success and well-being are dysfunctional or absent. Many stakeholders do not feel valued, fueling deep discouragement and a culture of mediocrity.

As a result, educational outcomes for children are often poor:
- Only 42 percent of primary-age children are in school
- Only 54 percent of students complete primary school
- About 75 percent of children at the end of first grade and nearly half of students finishing second grade cannot read a single word
(Statistics from USAID and UNICEF)

There is an urgent need to enable cross-sector collaboration to identify data-driven solutions to critical quality and governance challenges in different Haitian contexts and to develop efficient mechanisms to disseminate and scale the resulting models. The Model School Network (MSN) was launched in 2016 to enable sustained, cross-sector collaboration among Haitian and international partners with complementary expertise and resources and a shared vision of change. A few of the member organizations include:
Summits Education, which operates 39 primary schools serving over 10,000 students in the Central Plateau region.
EFACAP-Mirebalais, which is a division of the Haitian Ministry of Education (MENFP) and operates 20 government-funded schools in the Central Plateau region.
BDE-Hinche (Diocesan Board of Education), which supports over 140 Catholic schools in the Central Plateau region.
Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child, a program of the University of Notre Dame (USA) that leverages evidence-based innovations to develop effective whole-child approaches to not only advance children’s academic achievement, but also create safe, supportive, and equitable family, school, and community environments.
Blue Butterfly, a nonprofit educational organization based in the US that catalyzes the local production of engaging, high-impact, culturally relevant educational resources.
By identifying strategic leverage points for improving student success in three different school networks in Haiti’s Central Plateau–where academic performance indicators are among the lowest and schools embody the challenges facing the broader educational system–the MSN intends to create model approaches for quality teaching, learning and governance that can be replicated anywhere in Haiti. One specific example, the Model School Network is addressing the root causes of poor educational attainment in Haiti by modeling an innovative, student centered pedagogy we call Apwoch Lèkol Vivan (the Vibrant School Approach).
This session will describe the theoretical framework for our pedagogical approach, and share results from our programs that are elevating teaching and learning in rural communities of Haiti.

Sub Unit

• Latin America SIG

Organizer

• Suzanne Cole, Blue Butterfly Collaborative

Chair

• Sara Wolf, Model School Network

Individual Presentations

• Model School Network’s Apwòch Lèkol Vivan (“Living School Approach”) - Cassandre Chipps Regnier, Summits Education

• Eksploratoryòm: An Immersive Approach to Teacher Professional Development - Josiane Hudicourt-Barnes, Blue Butterfly

• Providing Continuity of Learning during times of Crisis - Jovanie Pade, Lakou Kajou, Fondation MWEM

• Does it Work?: What Research Says about the Impact of Haiti’s Eksploratoryòm Audio Learning Program on Students’ and Teachers’ Learning - Charlotte Cole, Blue Butterfly Collaborative