Using teaching and learning materials in Uzbekistan: Lessons from observations and interviews

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

The purpose of this panel is to present the results of a series of studies to understand how teachers in Uzbekistan are piloting newly developed teaching and learning materials in the classroom. Equity was an underlying focus in developing these materials by ensuring that all students have equal access to the content regardless of income-level and ability level and providing support for teachers to provide extra support to students that need it. The Government of Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Public Education (MoPE) is committed to systematic and comprehensive reforms to enable all students’ development of 21st century skills such as critical thinking and problem solving which will enable them to succeed in later life. To support the Ministry in achieving its reform agenda, the United States Agency of International Development (USAID) initiated the 4-year Uzbekistan Education for Excellence Program (UEEP) in 2019 to help: (1) Improve Uzbek language arts and mathematics outcomes in grades 1–4; (2) Enhance information and communication technology (ICT) instruction for grades 1–11; and (3) Improve English as a foreign language (EFL) instruction. In close collaboration with the Ministry, UEEP has to date developed the foundational teaching and learning materials and accompanying teacher professional development package to support standards-based education reforms and has conducted or is in the process of conducting pilots of these materials and packages.
In Uzbekistan, textbooks are used in schools in all subjects, but guides for teachers are used only in support of foreign language teaching (e.g., English, German). In other subjects, methodological manuals exist and are either not relevant to the student textbooks or refer to only part of the content. Textbooks are updated every five years by MoPE and revised as needed. Methodological manuals are published in very small quantities and do not cover all schools.
The Program has piloted materials for ICT and EFL and is currently piloting materials for ULA and Math. As part of the pilot, the Program has conducted or will conduct a multi-phased Teacher Guide Uptake Study (TGUS) for ICT, EFL, ULA, and Mathematics to understand to what degree and how materials are being used by teachers in the classroom. These studies aim to provide actionable information on next steps for revision of the materials as well as teacher professional development. RTI’s essential guidance and best practices for developing teacher guides serves as the guiding conceptual framework to evaluate the quality of the teachers guides and teachers’ use thereof (Piper et.al., 2019). To evaluate ICT and EFL teachers’ application of student-centered strategies the study applies selected evidence-based High Impact Teaching Strategies (HITS) that reliably increase student learning based on their effect size (Victoria State Government, 2017).
Presentation 1 will highlight results from studies done with ICT teachers in Grades 9-11 and EFL teachers in Grades 1-11. In this presentation we will report findings from the pilot on the use of teachers’ guides in the classroom as well as teachers’ application of student-centered teaching strategies such as setting goals, collaborative learning, questioning, and checking for understanding.
Presentation 2 will present results from studies being conducted with ULA and Math teachers in Grades 1-4 who are piloting new materials. We will apply a framework used in prior work which attempts to understand how teachers and students are using teacher guides and textbooks (Author, 2019; Author, in press). We will present detailed information on the types of revisions that teachers are making, and teacher reports on why they made these changes.
Presentation 3 will discuss perspectives from the Ministry of Public Education on the newly developed materials and their use by teachers. In this presentation Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Education will present how pilot implementation data and findings from Teacher Guide Uptake studies have supported the Ministry to embrace approaches and methodologies that enable it to better reach its education reform goals of ensuring that all students’ develop 21st century skills.

Sub Unit

• Eurasia SIG

Chair

• Yasmin Sitabkhan, RTI International

Individual Presentations

• Information and communication technology and English as a foreign language: Teachers’ slow but steady journey - Sonia Arias, RTI International; Ozodjon Haydarov, RTI International

• Uzbek Language Arts and Mathematics: Results of the teacher guide uptake study - Zukhra Salieva, RTI International; Yasmin Sitabkhan, RTI International; Chelsea Peters

• Ministry perspectives on teacher guide uptake studies - Javlonbek Meliboev, Republican Education Center

Discussant

• Luann Gronhovd, USAID