Category: blog

Kam, leh wi it (come, let’s eat together) – one of the teachers tells me after we finish the interview. I’m at one of our pilot schools, for a research that explores the barriers and enablers of effective school-based, peer-supported, teacher professional development. The topic is a mouthful, but teaching and learning on an empty stomach is one of the main barriers that teachers and learners face. 

When we step into the head-teacher’s office in one of our project schools, Foday, the facilitator comes in and greets us. He asks us to be patient while they sort out lunch for the children and get the teachers together. We sit back and relax, and watch the hundreds of learners receive their rice and plasas under the supervision of their teachers. We are there to observe a TGM: a Teacher Group Meeting. Teacher Group Meetings are meetings where teachers come together to share challenges and advice. Their aim is to facilitate an environment wherein teachers share knowledge and skills, and improve their practice through peer-learning. The facilitators are teachers who were chosen by their school leader to run these meetings and attended a one-day workshop in preparation for that. During the workshop, they learned about facilitation: how to create a safe environment during the TGMs and to encourage interaction between teachers. Facilitators were also offered materials and a structure for facilitating a TGM, which they altered to fit their own unique school contexts and their colleagues’ needs.

The blogpost was written by   Andaleeb Alam, UNICEF, and Dr. Nathan M. Castillo , University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and published on the Education for All blog on June 20, 2022. The blogpost is available at https://www.globalpartnership.org/blog/can-digital-personalized-learning-end-worlds-education-crisis. It is published here without any modifications and with permission from the authors.

Learning at your own pace, catching up on missed classes, filling learning gaps… EdTech products can offer many solutions in lower-income countries. A new analysis by UNICEF shows good practices and areas for improvement to make these products more equitable and effective.

Learning is in crisis. Even before COVID-19, 53 percent of children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) were unable to read and understand a simple text by the age of 10. The pandemic is expected to push that figure up to 70 percent.

The past decade has generated major advances in technology and experimentation with digital learning solutions that enable a new kind of experience – by tailoring learning to the needs of the individual; what we are calling digital personalized learning.

Digital personalized learning has shown promise in LMICs in closing education gaps for lower-attaining students by allowing them to learn at their own pace and to their own proficiency, positioning it as a potential tool to address learning gaps as the worst of the pandemic recedes.

Colleagues over at Better Purpose are offering insights into the Science of Learning through their Science of Learning report.

They have this to say:

• Our Science of Learning report summarises how children learn (in general, when learning maths and how to read, in adolescence and remotely using technology).

• While access to education has significantly increased worldwide, hundreds of millions of children are still not achieving the level of learning that they should.  A major contributor to the lack of progress in learning is an implementation gap between what the theory tells us about how children learn most effectively and the practices deployed by teachers in classrooms; this gap is particularly acute in low-income contexts. 

• In recent years, advances in the sciences of the brain have built a compelling body of knowledge about how children learn.  This report presents a summary of key evidence about how children learn, drawing on research from neuroscience, behavioural sciences, and cognitive sciences.  It provides an overview of useful frameworks which translate the science of learning into implications for teaching.  It also highlights some leading organisations who are shaping this field and provides references for further learning.  

• In compiling this report we have drawn upon the work of leading researchers from all over the world, whose publications cover both high and low-income contexts. Our assumption is that while the core principles of how children learn apply universally, more research is needed to examine how the application of these principles differs across contexts.  We hope that this report provides a useful reference point for learning and practice.

For more information, visit the Science of Learning.

In a recent report, we explore the extent to which policymakers in Kenya have produced or used quality data to drive equitable and coordinated provisions of education for girls and women. We conducted 25 semi-structured interviews with a wide range of key stakeholders, both at the national and county levels. We also consulted non-state actors such as United Nations organisations, civil society organisations, research organisations, non-governmental organisations and religious authorities.