Pupil Questionnaire administered to early grade students in light of the educational conditions in the CVOID-19 Pandemic in 2019.

Between June 2021, and May 2022, RAMP, in coordination with the Ministry of Education (MOE) and in collaboration with INTEGRATED, implemented the Let’s Live in Harmony (LLH) pilot program based on the LLH initiative funded by UNICEF in 2018-2019. This initiative aimed to establish a positive learning environment for students across 96 Double Shifting Schools (DSSs) in Jordan. The study addressed educational challenges faced by underprivileged students in Jordan, particularly those in double-shift public schools with a mix of Jordanian and Syrian students. At the beginning of the school semester in 2021, 1310 tablets were updated with the Ministry of Education (MoE)-approved LLH content material application. These tablets were strategically distributed among the 96 DSSs for students in Grades 1 to 3, with the allocation based on the number of students in each class to ensure equitable access to resources. The study employed tablets with multimedia content to facilitate interactive learning. Achievements encompassed teacher training, updated materials, curriculum alignment, and enhanced program delivery. These initiatives addressed challenges posed by refugees and the pandemic, leading to improvements in reading fluency, comprehension, and literacy. The study underscored the significance of adaptable educational solutions. The LLH activities were introduced to supervisors through a WhatsApp group to facilitate interactive communication. Integrated into the curriculum, the activities aimed to enhance Arabic literacy for grades 1-3. MOE supervisors ensured fidelity through observations and feedback. Additionally, the study focused on institutionalizing LLH within the MOE, involving various departments and the School and Directorate Development Program (SDDP). Lessons learned included role clarification, formal adoption, capacity building, and effective communication strategies for integration. Findings highlighted LLH's potential impact on reading skills and emphasized the need for ongoing support. Recommendations encompassed further capacity-building, recognition, incentives, and improved communication strategies between schools and the MOE.

While there is growing evidence of the impact of learning through play (LtP) on student outcomes in high-income countries, there is little research linking LtP to learning outcomes in low-and middle-income contexts in primary schools. This presentation focuses on the midline evaluation findings from an education improvement initiative that is seeking to expand playful pedagogies into primary schools in five low and middle-income countries (LMICs). In this presentation, we examine the different approaches taken by projects to support teachers to test, adapt, and adopt LtP in their classroom. We link these findings to classroom observation data on the frequency with which teachers employ more collaborative, interactive, creative, exploratory, and student-driven play-based approaches. We also discuss the impacts of these activities on student outcomes (EGRA, EGMA and SEL).

The Kingdom of Jordan’s Human Resource Development (HRD) Strategy mandates the universal provision of kindergarten (KG2) by 2025. The HRD Strategy emphasizes using partnerships between the Ministry of Education (MoE) and other governmental and nongovernmental actors to assure expanded provision of kindergarten services. The strategy further emphasizes the need to improve the quality of kindergarten services, while reaching every child. To fully understand how the MoE can increase access, improve quality, and assure equitable provision of KG1 services, more accurate information is needed, especially about other, as yet unrecognized service providers who may be offering KG or KG-similar services to five-year-old children. The MoE needs a more complete picture of the current provision of KG2 to determine the best strategy to achieve the HRD goal that every child in Jordan receives a high-quality kindergarten experience.

“Agent based modeling: A method for understanding individual, social, and environmental influences on learning and equality in the classroom.” Learning science in the past decade has provided considerable evidence that learning is at once emotional, social, and cognitive (MH Immordino-Yang, et al 2018). As we seek to improve social, emotional and learning outcomes in schools around the world, it is important to better understand how individuals adapt to and influence each other and their environments as they connect and interact daily in and outside the school and classroom. Furthermore, it is important to develop a better sense of how local interactions shape education. How do individual interactions shape the patterns of learning outcomes in a school or at a larger scale such as a district? How do they shape the nature of the learning environment and in turn, how do differential learning environments shape the patterns of interactions and relationships in a school? This information holds enormous potential to inform international education programming that may hold promise for improved uptake of innovations and education outcomes. How interactions locally shape education – in schools, administrative offices, or higher education institutions – is not well understood or studied extensively. Agent-based modeling (ABM) is a technique that can be applied to better understand the link between local dynamics of individuals in a school or community and certain aggregate characteristics of a school or emerging school changes. ABMs are based on the application of algorithms or simple rules representing the lower-level interactions of individuals (or system components) that give rise to higher level system structures or changes, providing a tool to understand bottom-up influences on education outcomes. (See M Macy & R Willer, 2002; M Jacobson, et al, 2017). In this presentation we present an agent-based model to show the potential impact of teacher feedback on student participation in the classroom and the relative impact of students who are more or less vulnerable (e.g., have lower/higher ability levels and are from more/less marginalized backgrounds). The model was informed by student data from primary schools in Uganda and Tanzania. The model demonstrates that over time, when met with repeated experiences of negative feedback, more and more students will quit participating entirely and some will dropout, especially children who are more vulnerable. On the other hand, when teachers are increasingly positive, more and more students participate more actively, even among the most vulnerable children. Thus, the nature of teachers’ responses to students when they answer questions in class can powerfully impact student participation and shape equality in participation. To extend, this would seem to impact student learning. The objectives of this presentation are: 1. To introduce the agent-based modeling method. 2. To present an application of ABM in international education 3. To demonstrate the utility of ABM in research, policy dialogue, and programming.

Play has the potential to transform the global learning crisis. In infancy and early childhood, play builds a strong foundation for later learning by improving brain development and growth (Goldstein, 2012). In education systems that lack capacity to support children effectively, play brings its own powerful engine to drive learning—the joyful, engaged intrinsic motivation of children themselves (Zosh et al., 2017). In this way, play contributes to the holistic development of children, helping to prepare them for the challenges of the current and future world. Accordingly, there is an urgent need to improve measurement of playful learning, to be able to add to the evidence base on what the benefits of play are, how playful learning takes place, and how it can be promoted at home and at school across the lifespan. This presentation focuses on a renewed conceptualization of playful learning and describes an innovative approach to measuring how settings contribute to playful learning for children ages 0 to 12, supported by the Lego Foundation. The settings we examine include homes, classrooms and ECD centers. Following Tseng and Seideman (2007), we view settings as consisting of social interactions (i.e. between teachers or caregivers and children) and the organization of resources (e.g. learning materials, games). First, we will present our conceptual framework which identifies six constructs to guide our measurement strategy. The constructs, such as ‘support for exploration’, represent the ways in which a setting supports playful learning. Next, we will present our contextualization framework which guides how we are adapting and modifying the measurement tools to different contexts. The tool consists of a protocol to observe adult-child interactions and survey measures conducted with teachers, caregivers and primary school pupils. As part of the development process for these measurement tools, observation and survey measures will go through a three-phase development process in Kenya, Ghana, Colombia, and Jordan. The Build phase involved collecting qualitative data from teachers, caregivers and students to understand their perception of playful learning and how it is supported at home and at school. Next, an Adapt phase took place where the initial versions of the measurement tools underwent cognitive interviewing, field adaptation, and a small pilot to adjust and extend the items in the tool. The third Test phase is a full pilot of the instruments, and the data will undergo rigorous psychometric analyses to review the validity and reliability of the tools in the four country contexts. We will use the results to adjust the instruments and to finalize the conceptual framework and contextualization strategies. The final toolkit will be publicly available towards the end of 2022 with supporting materials for contextualization, piloting, training and analysis. The toolkit will be available on a public platform designed to promote sharing of data collected using the tool and to collaborate to continually improve approaches to measuring support for playful learning.

Based on 2018 Operational Research on contextualizing SEL in the Tanzanian context, this study sought to: 1) improve student learning through a focus on the social and emotional climate of the classroom; and 2) encourage reflection on existing classroom management and pedagogical practices and on activities that foster positive classroom climate and SEL; 3) foster dialogue about the goal of these activities and practices and the potential barriers to implementing them in the classroom; and 4) co-construct activities that achieve the goals and help address the barriers. It's primary aim was to build on what teachers already do well and encourage them to reflect on certain classroom values that are important to them that may be potential barriers to implementing new activities. The Activity monitored both how teachers engaged with two different methods of facilitating reflection and co-creation as well as how their attitudes and behaviors changed throughout the process. The aim of this report was to monitor and document the experience of implementing this activity to guide future practice.