Teacher-centered solutions: Using school-based learning as a means to strengthen and innovate on a responsive teaching approach

• In Event: Learning at all levels: Building schools’ capacity to generate and use relevant evidence to strengthen instruction practices

Proposal

Our organization’s goal is to improve foundational learning for children in primary grades (typically grades 3-6) by assessing their skills and responding with instruction appropriate for their levels. Many studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of our model for boosting learning outcomes in a variety of settings. Our model is now implemented in over 15 countries across sub-Saharan Africa. However, there is still much to learn about how to best implement our model in different African contexts; and how to better support teachers in addressing challenges they face in the classroom as they deliver our model to students.
This paper presents the applied research model we embed in our program implementation to promote school-level (as well as organization-level) evidence generation and use.
To illuminate our model, we will explore a variety of our innovations and learning activities taking place in schools across Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, and Nigeria. These include experimentation with teacher training models, refining a dual-language approach for improving children’s reading skills, trialing community engagement models, and incubating pedagogical approaches for children in early grades (grades 1-2) and older grades (grades 6 and above).
We will feature a recent pilot in Nigeria, conducted in partnership with one of our peer organizations in the School Action Learning Exchange (SALEX), a meta-network of education organizations. This pilot, called “Supporting teachers and school administration to act on children’s learning outcome data,” highlights the need for--and practical realities of--a school-centered approach to learning and innovation. The learning pilot also demonstrates a) the importance of school-level evidence as a means to generate critical information about persistent challenges that teachers face in classrooms where our model is implemented and b) the role schools can play in designing and testing teacher-centered solutions and innovations. Schools are key actors in our organization’s ‘innovation pathway’ for learning: we adapt elements of our model and, in some cases, design new solutions through ‘Learning Labs’ and deep-dive adaptive pilots with schools. We study the most promising solutions with schools through a lens of potential for impact, scalability, and cost-effectiveness.
As the source of assessment data and classroom observations, schools are also the starting point to rapidly identify when and where challenges arise. As our organization responds to these challenges, we employ both “nimble learning” to quickly gain school-based perspectives on root challenges and, in some cases, larger research efforts using behavioral science approaches to identify barriers and enablers teachers face. This presentation will touch on the approaches and findings of both of these school-based learning methods.

Author

• Daniele J Ressler, Teaching at the Right Level Africa