Evaluating literacy and numeracy teaching and learning materials: Tool development and pilot test cases

• In Event: Are your literacy and numeracy materials up to par? A tool for evaluating teaching and learning materials (TLMs)

Proposal

This panel presentation will discuss the specific gap that this set of tools (along with a user’s guide) is meant to fill, provide an overview of its intended uses, and will share outcomes and lessons learned from initial experiences using the tool.

First, the robust pair of tools–one which covers literacy and another which covers numeracy– was developed to allow education practitioners and government actors, particularly in low-income countries where there is often a dearth of high-quality TLMs, to evaluate the quality of early grade literacy and numeracy teacher’s guides (pre-k through grade 3). The tool is meant to assess the extent to which these materials are aligned with the evidence base for effective literacy and numeracy teaching, and, as such, provide education practitioners, literacy and numeracy experts, curriculum developers, and policy teams with a clear, objective framework for evaluating and improving teaching resources.

Second, the presentation will share how the TLM review tool has been applied in real-world settings. We will discuss the use of the tool within the context of the preparation of a World Bank financed project for results (P4R) operation in Nigeria, where the set of TLM review tools played a key role in the design of a foundational learning intervention. The intervention has a critical disbursement-linked indicator tied to the provision of evidence-based essential teaching and learning materials to schools across more than a dozen states in the country. Given many sets of materials are in circulation in the country, and the project is designed to incentivize the reproduction of quality materials, a tool was needed to evaluate the existing teaching and learning materials for quality: Ensuring they follow an appropriate scope and sequence and are evidence-aligned to support effective teaching of literacy and numeracy. The review in Nigeria was carried out with technical specialists in literacy and numeracy, working together with government counterparts. The presentation will discuss ways in which the findings from the TLM tool review influenced the project design and implementation, as well as the development of a user guide. Finally, the presentation will reference a second pilot of the tool that was conducted in Pakistan. Here, the tool was used to support a desk review of materials. The presentation will share lessons learned from both pilots, including how they informed design adjustments.

Author

• Alison Grimsland, The World Bank Group