The purpose of the article "Teacher Researchers in Guatemala: Lessons from an action research experience to address educational gaps in the classroom" is to describe the learnings of primary school teachers in rural Guatemala as a result of an action research experience. This experience took place in the context of the “Basic Education Quality and Transitions” activity, or BEQT, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by RTI International and its partners Funcafé, Funsepa, Wayfree, and the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala (UVG). UVG’s Centro de Investigaciones Educativas (CIE), as an RTI partner, developed and implements the “Teacher Researchers” program. The action research program engages teachers in identifying and bridging gaps in students’ learning of mathematics, reading, and/or writing with students in grades 1–3. During the portion of the program described in this paper, teachers reflected on the lessons learned and strengthened their research skills in an effort to identify gaps in content, as well as applying and reflecting on potential solutions that they then translated into adjustments in lesson planning and implementation of teaching strategies. A categorical analysis of the teachers’ reflections on these experiences showed how strengthened research skills helped teachers identify areas of opportunity in using teaching strategies to improve the quality of teaching, thus allowing them to reflect on their own teaching practices.

Ces Success Stories ont été préparées par l'équipe du projet de Renforcement de la Lecture Initiale pour Tous de l'USAID au Sénégal au cours de l'année civile 2022. SS001 : « 50 personnes-ressource du Ministère de l’Education Nationale et du partenaire d’exécution mettent en place, ensemble, les mécanismes de mise en oeuvre de RELIT». Décrit le co-lancement collaboratif et local du programme en 2022. SS002 : « A l’école élémentaire Boly Diaw de Saint Louis, le programme RELIT mobilise une communauté de parents d’élèves autour de la lecture et l’enseignement bilingue." Décrit une école qui a organisé une célébration à l'échelle de la communauté pour le lancement du programme RELIT en 2022.

These Success Stories were prepared by the project team for the USAID Renforcement de la Lecture Initiale pour Tous program in Senegal in Calendar year 2022. SS001 : "Fifty resource persons from the MEN and the implementing partner put in place, together, the mechanisms for implementing RELIT." Describes the collaborative and locally-led co-launch of the program in 2022. SS002: "At Boly Diaw elementary school in Saint Louis, the RELIT program mobilizes a community of parents around reading and bilingual education." Describes a school that created a community-wide celebration for the launch of the RELIT program in 2022. SS003: "Innovations in the teaching of early grade reading: RELIT designs early learning materials for three new national languages" Describes the process and outputs of the first Grade 1 materials in 5 national languages that were developed in time for the new school year in Senegal. SS04: "A participatory approach to assessing the institutional capacity of Senegal’s education system" describes the approach to capacity assessment using the "Core Components" model of System Strengthening.

The Improving Learning Outcomes for Asia (ILOA) regional project works closely with USAID’s Asia Bureau and Missions across the region to identify key questions and challenges Mission staff face in their day-to-day work. An advisory group of USAID Mission colleagues raised an important question: how best to wade through the array of education data available? What are the types, how are they used, when are different data useful, etc.? Indeed, the use of different data to effectively partner with governments to make evidence-based decisions is a top priority. As a result, ILOA produced a brief summarizing the different sources and uses of data for basic education, youth and workforce development, and higher education. The brief recognizes how data sources and uses have evolved over time, enabling ministries, their partners, and stakeholders to measure performance, inform policy and plan interventions, and manage limited resources. The brief is designed to succinctly assist USAID staff and their partners in navigating the world of education data.

Aligning donor investment with country priorities and effective approaches of engagement are essential for long-term impact. Over the last decade, USAID has been supporting the Government of Tajikistan (GOT) to improve literacy and numeracy skills of all primary education students. Numerous other development agencies also fund projects in the education sector, with an average total annual contribution to education of roughly (based on OECD data). The impact of these investments is less than it could be, in part because there needs to be greater alignment between the government’s priorities and development partner activities.

The USAID Leading Through Learning Global Platform (LTLGP) and USAID Improving Learning Outcomes for Asia (ILOA) presented a panel at the 2024 CIES Conference on what each project has been learning about establishing and implementing learning networks. Presentations from three USAID learning networks (HELN, GRN, ECCN) and one regional hub managed by LTLGP along with a presentation from ILOA discuss how each learning network utilizes collaboration, learning, and adapting (CLA) to assess how well their networks are reaching and meeting the needs of their members and how they have adapted and adjusted their networks based on CLA fedback.

Title: Philippine local governments using local solutions to tackle literacy and numeracy through the Education Sector Mechanism Presenter: Mayor Krisel Lagman of Tabaco City Launched under USAID funded Advancing Basic Education (ABC+) in the Philippines, the Education Sector Mechanism (ESM) brings stakeholders (private sector, government units, teachers, school leadership, parents and community) together at the local level to assess the education landscape using data and evidence. This process is led by local governments, but includes all stakeholders and aims to identify key issues and their underlying causes, agree on effective strategies to tackle these challenges, and translate the solutions into well-defined programs, projects, and activities. This process puts local leadership and ownership at the forefront of problem solving based on data, investment programming and results-based monitoring and evaluation. The local governments of Victorias City and Tabaco City in the Philippines lead the way in utilizing ESM, bringing private sector, local government units, and community together to look at education issues. This presentation will discuss the ESM process based on their experience and the results they are seeing, highlighting locally led and locally funded solutions and commitments.

The twin crises of high dropout rates and weak foundational skills risk a lost generation of youth in Guatemala and Honduras. To respond to these crises, RTI is working with the Ministry of Education to support students to complete their education by strengthening system capacity to use data to identify students at risk of dropping out, to provide psychosocial support, and to address barriers to accessing secondary school. Motivating this effort is the belief that improved education outcomes will lead to secure employment and steady incomes in the future, weakening the primary drivers of irregular migration. Building on past efforts in dropout prevention (World Bank 2021; Unesco 2022), we have developed and deployed an open-source mobile application to teachers’ devices that will both facilitate data collection and display easily understandable information on the three pillars of dropout prevention: Attendance, Behavior and Coursework (ABC). The application enables teachers to track daily attendance, behavior and track and import coursework performance including test results and class grades. The data are used by the teacher to inform the need for additional intervention. Anonymized and aggregated data are shared at the school, municipal and ministry level, which we expect will reduce teacher fears of punitive accountability. The application works offline and syncs to the cloud once a WiFi or data connection is made. Free community Wi-Fi and school-based internet connectivity will improve teacher’s ability to access the application and other education data, resources and tools while also improving digital inclusion for students to access online learning opportunities and resources. At CIES, we hope to respond to Sub-theme question 3.3: How can school systems be better prepared to adapt to and to combat disruptions such as natural disasters and the COVID pandemic? The ongoing experience of both Guatemala and Honduras in managing COVID has been characterized by extended school closures, limited access to online materials, and increased dropout and irregular migration. We hope to learn from current and past NGO and Ministry experiences in creating digital tools that support teachers but can also be used to identify and respond to system-level challenges and improve system resilience. How have these digital tools helped teachers and system leaders to understand gaps in student learning and risk of drop-out? What level of anonymity has proved sufficient to overcome teacher accountability fears but adequate to inform system-level needs? Can improved digital inclusion and access to online learning help systems to become more resilient to disruptions? We anticipate a lively discussion on the potential and limitations of data-driven dropout prevention systems, several of which have been piloted by Ministries of Education in Latin America with the support of the World Bank, USAID and other organizations. By the time of the CIES presentation in March we expect to have piloted the tool in schools in 12 municipalities and have initial feedback from teachers and school leaders as to the user experience, feasibility and desirability of the tool.

We are indeed dealing with a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment. The Philippines suffers natural and man-made vulnerabilities such as typhoons that occur throughout the year, earthquakes, and more recently, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. These challenges necessitated the establishment of the Education Futures Program. While the Philippines Basic Education Continuity Plan in response to the pandemic, DepEd recognized at that time the urgent need to “future proof” education. Nationwide education in futures thinking and foresight planning was needed to address the future learning needs of all children and building education resilience in times of crisis. This presentation provides an overview of the "Co-creating Learning Spaces for Improved Early Language Literacy and Numeracy in the Philippines" activity, under the USAID funded All Children Reading (ACR) - Philippines. Following a brief introduction to futures thinking and foresight planning, this presentation describes how school-level teams in the Philippines developed prototypes of learning spaces for the future that addressed anticipated needs of learners. We present the prototyping process centered on human centered design thinking, the way that school teams collected feedback on their innovations from teachers in the region, parents, and learners themselves, and a snapshot of the prototypes developed, and the benefit of the prototyping process to school teams and the relative success they had in realizing their future learning spaces innovations after two years.

Too often, teachers are subject to top-down policies, procedures, and pedagogies that either bear little resemblance to their day-to-day experience or are so numerous as to be overwhelming in the face of their other responsibilities. When this occurs, teachers often resist these top-down approaches, instead opting to figure things out on their own, or creating their own hybrid approaches that are acceptable according to local social norms. For example, King and his colleagues (2022) found that while teachers adopted effective reading program content, they often retained their previous, less effective pedagogies; teachers utilized a heuristic short-cut requiring lower mental effort to implement the program while upholding social norms in the school. When teachers fail to adopt new and effective instructional reforms, learners don’t access the benefits of the improved instruction and the impact on learning outcomes is minimized. This situation may explain findings from Nepal, Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya, where 80% of the impact from early grade reading (EGR) interventions is explained by just 13% to 34% of schools, depending on the country context (King et al., 2022). What can be done to increase the uptake of interventions in LMICs? Research on educational change and the diffusion of innovation suggest peer-to-peer learning can be a powerful way to enhance the diffusion of information and provide the support teachers need to adopt new methodologies – and can be more effective than top-down approaches for changing behavior (Fullan, 2015; Daly et al., 2010). Through peer-to-peer interactions, individuals develop social capital, the resources through which information and trust are exchanged and can be called upon to support the successful adoption of innovation and new methodologies. We will present findings from a study (October 2022-September 2023) conducted in collaboration with USAID/Tanzania Jifunze Uelewe Project that seeks to better understand the ways in which teacher peer-to-peer transmission of information, ideas, and support in Tanzania harness that power of social capital to more efficiently diffuse effective pedagogies and support their application in the classroom. Utilizing social network analysis (SNA) combined with key informant interviews, we studied how teacher-influencers and the density of teacher social networks and formal school structures for teacher communication and collaboration (e.g., communities of practice) promote or impede adoption. In this presentation we will seek to accomplish the following objectives: Present findings on the role that teacher social networks and formal school structures for communication and collaboration can play in supporting or impeding uptake of education interventions. Provide a framework for practitioners to enhance teacher peer interactions within and across schools to improve the effectiveness and sustainability of education change innovations. By better understanding the mechanisms of teacher peer interactions and learning in LMICs – such as teacher social networks and formal structures for teacher communication and collaboration - the international education community will be in a better position to leverage these assets to advance the diffusion and support of education innovations in LMICs.