The United States Agency for International Development, the Department for International Development and the government of Malawi, through the MoEST, are collaborating to implement a National Reading Programme (NRP). This reading programme aims to improve early grade learners' literacy skills. Central to achieving this goal is building teachers' capacity to teach foundational reading skills that are key for successful reading and comprehension abilities needed for learning content across the curriculum. The NRP introduces teachers to effective reading instruction through the five essential components of phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. The NRP also includes oral language development and writing as part of reading instruction. The NRP aims to provide teachers and head teachers with training in how to better teach children in the early primary grades to read and write in Chichewa and English. The NRP focuses on strengthening teachers' skills and knowledge of how to teach literacy by providing them with opportunities for training and ongoing professional development through coaching.

The government of Malawi, through the MoEST, with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Department for International Development (DFID) is implementing a National Reading Program (NRP). This reading program aims at improving early grade learners’ literacy skills. Central to achieving this goal is building teachers’ capacity to teach foundational reading skills that are key for successful reading and comprehension abilities needed for learning content across the curriculum. The NRP introduces teachers to effective reading instruction through the five essential components of Phonological Awareness, alphabetic principle, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. In addition, the NRP also includes oral language, development and writing as part of the reading instruction. This training manual contains: • A daily schedule, including training objectives, content of the day’s training, and reference materials. • Specific activities to go through with participants to help them understand the National Reading Programme strategies. • Opportunities to determine whether participants grasped the day’s learning through debriefing and exit slips. • A sample of an exit slip.

A collection of articles on Improvement Science, published in a special issue (Volume 25 Issue 1) of the journal "Quality Assurance in Education". Each article describes one of seven improvement methods, presents its history, and gives at least one example of it employed in the education sector. The seven improvement methods covered by these articles are: - Networked improvement communities - Design-based implementation research - Implementation science - Lean - Six Sigma - Positive Deviants - Deliverology

Presentation delivered at CIES2017 (Atlanta). A challenge of large-scale education research projects in international development is determining the most appropriate way to effectively report findings for a wide variety of audiences (e.g., researchers, ministry officials, donors, and other relevant stakeholders). It is important to consider technical rigor and accessibility, while ultimately providing results that can be used to inform policy and instruction. Using Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) data from Uganda in two languages, we are replicating an approach for categorizing students into learning profiles, which are directly tied to their particular instructional needs. We have conducted this analysis previously with data from Indonesia. We had conceptualized on the framework to be used across different context This study reports on the efficacy of using the same method with this sample with Luganda speakers. We divided students into five learning profiles based on their reading ability (Next Grade Ready, Fluent, Instructional, Beginner, and Nonreader) and then examined the relationship among these profiles and their reading skills on a variety of EGRA subtasks to determine the instructional need required to promote students from one profile to the next. Our learner profile method has been used with data in two countries and two languages. EGRA has been used in over 70 countries and in more than 100 languages. This study is an initial attempt to explore the value in this method.

This presentation describes the USAID/Indonesia PRIORTIAS program (2012-2017), including the development of leveled reading books for 13,000 schools.

Presentation delivered at CIES 2017 (Atlanta).

Presentation delivered at CIES 2017 (Atlanta). The Malawi Early Grade Reading Activity (EGRA), funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by RTI International, is designed to support the Malawi Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST) in improving the reading performance of Malawian learners in Standards 1–3. One of the primary goals of the Activity is improving the quality and availability of pedagogical materials for early grade reading; to do so, EGRA developed a teacher’s guide with scripted lessons plans (SLPs) for classroom teachers to follow when teaching lessons in both Chichewa and English. A goal of this study was to investigate teacher use of the SLPs in Standard 1 and 2 classrooms. EGRA included teacher training and in-class support for teachers as they used the SLPs. Teachers received several days of specific, targeted training each year regarding phonics-based reading instruction and the gradual release of responsibility model (I do, We do, You do). They also received theory- and practice-based training in the use of the SLPs to deliver high-quality instruction and practicum sessions during which they delivered lessons to groups of current Standard 1–3 learners. The purpose of this study was to shed light on how teachers were using the SLPs in their classrooms to better understand the ways in which the trainings and the materials themselves were supporting teachers, and the ways in which the trainings could be modified.

Presentation delivered at CIES2017 (Atlanta). Providing teachers guidance, mentorship and encouragement in between formal, face-to-face trainings or coaching sessions is challenging. While school directors and other peers may offer teachers support in some contexts, others may experience difficulties, isolation or discouragement in incorporating new practices into their classroom instruction. This paper presents new research from a controlled study in Malawi that sought to extend in-person professional development trainings with a targeted communication campaign over a familiar, low-cost and ubiquitous medium: SMS text messages.

Presentation delivered at CIES2017 (Atlanta). As part of the USAID-funded Nigeria Reading and Access Research Activity (RARA) (2014-2015), RTI International developed and evaluated, through a randomized control trial, an approach to improving early grade literacy instruction and reading outcomes in Hausa in Northern Nigeria. The intervention package included the provision of teaching and learning materials, teacher training, and periodic support to teachers by pedagogical coaches. This presentation will focus on the role of the coach support; 24 reading coaches were trained to support 72 teachers in 60 public primary schools in two states over a period of six months during the 2014-2015 school year. The coaches provided support in the form of recurring site visits, lesson observations, and a coach-teacher discussion after the lesson. The underpinning theoretical framework for this research assumes that ongoing engagement with a pedagogical mentor promotes positive changes in teachers’ instructional practices over time. The research activity collected data on the frequency, duration, content, and nature of the coach-teacher interactions during the intervention and tracked changes in the teachers’ instructional practices from baseline to endline. This presentation will share findings on the relationships between changes in teachers’ instructional practices and the degree and nature of support they received from their coaches. The objective of the presentation is to add to the body of knowledge about effective ways to use and improve pedagogical coaching to influence teacher instructional practices in similar low-resource contexts.

Presentation delivered at CIES 2017 (Atlanta). Instructional support is essential in the process of creating and supporting instructional change. Educational quality improvement is the elusive goal for many recent literacy improvement programs and strategies. Many programs focus on the inputs of improved textbook ratios, rapid and massive teacher professional development provision, and the provision of ICT support for this system. The Tusome Early Grade Reading Activity, implemented in Kenya from 2014 through 2019, is designed to fundamentally depend on the power and quality of the existing government personnel that were ostensibly assigned to provide instructional support to teachers. The Curriculum Support Officer function, in place in Kenya for decades, was structured to help teachers improve the quality of teaching by providing classroom based support, cluster based training, and ongoing instructional feedback. As is common in many countries in the region who suffer from limited human resources at the local level, these officers are often assigned administrative duties both at odds and distracting from their core instructional support function. Tusome’s work to support the Government of Kenya to revitalize this function and do so in a national manner was both ambitious and somewhat risky. This presentation share the results of Tusome’s efforts with the government to utilize the curriculum support officers as coaches within Tusome with a frank assessment of what process was most effective and which strategies were less effective. It also shares the experiences in Tusome of how a targeted ICT investment in tablets and a structured tool for the officers to use in classrooms created an environment where instructional support was both possible but also more exciting than it previously was. The Tusome National Tablet Program, utilized on a daily basis by these coaches, was designed over several years to integrate within government systems, to be easily implementable by coaches, but also to provide actionable real time data to the education system’s leadership on how teachers were implementing Tusome. The coaching system has provided each of Kenya’s more than 1200 coaches and curriculum support officers with tablets and training how to use them, to support classroom observation and feedback. The presentation shares the results of this over the 2015 and 2016 academic years. Not only have these officers supported up to 20,000 classrooms in a month, but they have also collected structured literacy assessment data from up to 60,000 students at a national level on a monthly basis. This data is collected on an interactive dashboard that Kenyan education leadership is able to use on a consistent basis to change behavior and support large scale instructional reform. The presentation focuses on the possibilities that this instructional support system has for Tusome, increased accountability within the system, and overall quality improvement at the national level for Kenya.