Learning Acceleration in Latin America. Do mobile tutoring sessions work?

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

The learning losses resulting from school closures associated with the COVID-19 pandemic represent one of the most significant education crises in a century. The interruption of face-to-face schooling deepened many of the region’s structural problems, resulting in significant learning losses, particularly for vulnerable students (Almeyda et al., 2021), adverse effects on their motivation and attitude toward learning (Asanov et al., 2021), and setbacks in significant educational achievements made in the last decades (IDB, 2020) accentuating unequal educational outcomes due in part to the underlying disparities in access to technology, resources, and infrastructure a (Berlanga et al., 2020; Hossain, 2021). In this context of school closures and hybrid schooling periods, two of the strategies that have proven to be most effective in recovering and accelerating learning are 1) remote tutoring and 2) the Teaching at the Right Level (Tarl) approach (Hevia et al., 2022).

Several international studies showcase the opportunity that tutoring represents to improve student learning and strengthen socio-emotional aspects related to executive functions, In this context, the Inter-American Development Bank promoted remote tutoring programs aimed at recovering and accelerating learning in students from 9 to 14 years old in Guanajuato and Tabasco (Mexico), Guatemala, El Salvador and in the City of Buenos Aires and Mendoza (Argentina) adapting international experiences, materials, and procedures to regional needs to make them relevant to the specific context of each educational system. For this, operational aspects were considered, related to the profile of the tutor and pedagogical proposal, aspects related to the profile of the students, and issues inherent to the link between tutors and students, constituting a central element in tutoring. This panel will present papers discussing some of the critical results from various regional experiences with remote tutoring programs to accelerate learning outcomes.
Almeyda will present the results of remote tutoring applying the TaRL principle to the Teaching of fundamental mathematics in various contexts in Mexico, Central America & Argentina, which were carried out in a partnership between the IDB and the ministries of education of the region and local implementing partners. The results show an improvement in the student’s learning achievements, reaching an improvement of over 60% in contents that were initially identified as having a high degree of difficulty (for example, in divisions and fractions). Participants also report high satisfaction levels and positive impacts on motivation to study, study habits, better time management, and interest in mathematics. Furthermore, implementing tutoring remotely facilitates its rapid adaptation in diverse contexts. It promotes educational equity since the technology required is access to the vast majority of the population living in poverty.
Related to this, Pineda contributes to the growing literature on tutoring, mainly by providing experimental evidence on online volunteer-based tutoring in a developing country and by documenting the relative effectiveness and costs of group and individual tutoring. The intervention provided free online tutoring in math and Spanish to vulnerable lower-secondary (7th-9th grade) students in the Dominican Republic between April and August of 2022. Tutoring was provided voluntarily by college students and graduates, who were encouraged to deliver 3 per week of tutoring over 12 weeks. Among a sample of 1,523 students selected by school principals from public lower-secondary schools, approximately 761 were randomly assigned to participate in the program. About 59.8% of students in the treatment group were assigned to receive one-on-one tutoring, while 40.2% were assigned to receive group tutoring (two students with one tutor). We use survey data to examine mechanisms by which each type of tutoring might affect students’ outcomes and to explore heterogeneity in treatment effects by students’ baseline characteristics. Endline data collection will occur between September and October 2022, with preliminary results available in December 2022.
Dorna & Gertner will present results from a randomized controlled trial mobile tutoring pilot in the City of Buenos Aires. The intervention uses a combination of WhatsApp messages and scheduled direct phone calls to connect children aged 10 to 13 years old with trained tutors to accelerate learning in maths after the pandemic. Tutors are enrolled in teacher’s college programs, voluntarily signing for paid internships as tutors in this program for eight weeks. One thousand two hundred eligible primary students were recruited from public schools to participate in this study. In addition, we collected baseline survey data from students and parents applying a standardized test in maths, offering to participate in tutoring sessions for 600 families chosen randomly. As we complete the online survey, we intend to estimate the pilot’s effects on learning outcomes, students’ engagement, aspirations, and socio-emotional skills, including enhanced analysis of heterogenous effects and robustness checks. Further, we expect to study enabling mechanisms for learning based on student exposure, regularity, and tutor quality using a rich source of monitoring data from the program.
Finally, Hevia & Vergara-Lope focuses on the remote tutoring intervention in El Salvador, where we wanted to know the effects of applying 1:1 tutoring by telephone in contexts with high learning poverty. Method: 1. It was decided to work with fundamental arithmetic operations: place value, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division; 2. 56 tutors, including teachers and university students, were recruited and trained for 10 hours; 3. A baseline was collected in person from nearly 1,700 students between 9 and 14 years of age in three regions of El Salvador (two assessment instruments were used and validated); 4 Sensitization and confirmation calls were made to this sample, of which 831 students wanted to participate; 5. Each of them received an average of 7 telephone tutorials of 20 minutes duration, focused on the level they showed in the diagnostic evaluation. Results: students improved in the resolution of all mathematical operations, with significant increases in place value (80%) and multiplication (87%) about how they started the tutorials. The participants (children, tutors, and caregivers) were delighted with the tutorials and requested to continue this program. These results suggest that combining tutoring and TaRL enhances the recovery of fundamental mathematics learning.

Sub Unit

• Latin America SIG

Chair

• Felipe Hevia, CIESAS

Individual Presentations

• Remote tutoring that teaches at the right level. First results in El Salvador - Felipe Hevia, CIESAS

• Remote Tutoring for Accelerating Learning in Latin America: Regional Overview - Gonzalo Almeyda

Discussant

• Noam Angrist, Youth Impact