Looping towards Tomorrow

• In Event: Learning in groups, learning in loops using data for development: Evidence-based action and implementation-informed iteration

Proposal

Building Tomorrow (BT) delivers community-powered foundational learning to primary school-aged learners in Uganda, and has partnered with uBoraBora to pursue implementation-informed iteration to optimize impact.

BT’s signature foundational literacy and numeracy program is Roots to Rise (R2R), which builds on the Teaching at the Right Level methodology by contextualizing it to the Ugandan context. R2R is oriented to P1-P5 learners and is conducted in schools by BT-trained teachers and in community spaces outside of school hours by BT-trained Community Education Volunteers. R2R targets instruction to learners’ ability rather than age or grade and integrates Universal Design for Learning and social-emotional learning pedagogies to be inclusive and responsive. R2R has reached over 500,000 learners, and, in 2023, 93% of learners advanced at least one learning level, with over 60% reaching their appropriate grade-level minimum proficiency level within one 40-hour cycle (Building Tomorrow, 2024).

In our pursuit to become “better, better,” we have partnered with uBoraBora to use implementation research to help understand what tweaks can be made to our programming to best support learners in achieving minimum proficiency level in literacy and numeracy. This research has focused on P4-P5 learners, as these learners seek higher-level comprehension skills than their younger peers and thus typically have the largest gap in knowledge to reach their targets. Optimizing their learning is critical, as without the basic skills to read, write, and do basic math, these learners are less likely to advance to the next grade level and more likely to drop out of school, impeding academic success and limiting prospects for future employment.

Our research began with an in-depth analysis of existing data to help inform our knowledge of potential variables, as well as to determine what additional data needed to be collected to best understand how our interventions work in practice and to ensure we are applying lessons from our evidence most effectively. In this process, we considered factors that might be impacting learning such as contact hours, support for facilitators, implementation fidelity, and materials available.

This analysis is allowing us to delve into learning in loops, as iterative implementation and learning around these and related factors is being conducted, beginning in the last school term of 2024. We embrace that each new piece of knowledge gained from this research will help shed light on the next good question, and that this iteration will produce lessons learned about what works for specific learners in our context, as well as critical detail on the how and why. We are excited to be able to share how these learnings have benefited our implementation and to help others think through how they can use such an approach to better understand how their programming works, for instance in different contexts or at scale.

Author

• Whitney Warren, Building Tomorrow