Liberia

The purpose of this paper is to present a methodology for understanding materials usage in primary classrooms in Sub-Saharan Africa that centers teachers’ actions and voices. The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 4 focuses on improved primary education around the world. To meet this goal, many large, donor-funded interventions aim to improve education through provision of teacher’s guides and student textbooks. However, what many of these interventions lack is a systematic way to understand how and why teachers are making pedagogical decisions while using materials. There is a large body of work that seeks to understand how teachers make decisions as they teach, and the ways these decisions are influenced by their knowledge and beliefs. Drawing from this work, we describe a methodology and set of tools that uses observations and interviews to identify key decisions that teachers make in the classroom and why teachers made those decisions. We piloted and iteratively refined this methodology over the course of three studies and use examples from these studies to illustrate the methodology. By closely observing and listening to teachers, we gain insights that allow us to continually refine and improve materials to ultimately improve the quality of classroom instruction.

It is essential that the Government of Liberia has the skills and resources to monitor and assess their schools, students, and teachers as part of an evidenced-based education system on the road to self-reliance. Read Liberia maintained a focus on assessment and data use—not only to improve classroom-based instruction and equip school leadership with the knowledge and tools they need to foster quality education, but also to build the capacity of county and district officers in USAID’s six priority counties.

Setting benchmarks or standards that clearly state expectations about how well students or teachers should be performing on various skills at each stage of education and then collecting data to monitor these skills enables governments to see how individuals and education systems overall are progressing toward the goal of improved learning. This information allows governments to identify where improvements are needed and to chart progress year-to-year and against global standards. So how did Read Liberia do it? Read this brief to find out more!

Read Liberia has had considerable positive impact on students’ reading performance. This success story outlines the key activities Read Liberia has undertaken with the MOE to sustain EGR results beyond the life of the Activity.

How to effectively promote SEL development among children and their parents during school closures was a challenge for Read Liberia and implementing partners across the world. Read this brief to learn about the innovative ways Read Liberia fostered social and emotional development during COVID through its Teach by Radio Program.

This brief described how the design of the Read Liberia Activity applied comprehensive supports to help teachers implement sound literacy instruction in the classroom. Insights from Read Liberia's model may have potential implications for the design of education programs targeting large-scale change.

Liberian public schools closed in March 2020, and the MOE Teach by Radio program ran from March 30 through June 30, 2020. Drawing upon its existing materials, Read Liberia developed and recorded a series of 30-minutes lessons covering key components of early grade literacy and language arts instruction, including phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and grammar. In response to an MOE initiative to support students’ psychosocial needs during this global pandemic, Read Liberia also wove into these radio lessons opportunities for students to reflect on their feelings and find productive ways to handle them. Read this brief to learn more!

This material discusses the various technological innovations the USAID/Read Liberia Activity employed for data collection, teacher training, assessment, coaching and even virtual support to teachers during COVID.

This material highlights the eleven tasks Read Liberia coaches performed to support teachers and schools.

Children with a strong foundation in oral language and emergent literacy skills have a much greater chance of becoming successful readers, and success in reading in early primary grades can predict success in later years of schooling. Read this brief to learn about how Read Liberia partnered with the MOE to improve KG students' emergent literacy skills!