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 lack of information about children’s oral language skills limits our understanding of why some children do not respond to literacy instruction. Even though native language oral language skills are not strong predictors of native language decoding (Durgunoglu et al., 1993; Lesaux et al., 2006), oral language skills have been shown to have a small role in non-native word reading for non-native speakers (Geva, 2006; Quiroga et al., 2002). Yet, understanding that threshold of language skills is not understood. Cross-linguistic studies show that some literacy skills transfer between languages (Abu-Rabia & Siegel, 2002; Bialystok, McBride-Chang, & Luk, 2005; Cisero & Royer, 1995; Comeau, Cormier, Grandmaison, & Lacroix, 1999; Denton et al., 2000; Durgunoglu, 2002; Durgunoglu et al., 1993; Genesee & Geva, 2006; Gottardo, Yan, Siegel, & Wade-Woolley, 2001; Koda, 2007; Wang et al., 2006). This includes letter knowledge, print concepts, and language skills (phonological awareness and vocabulary). The transfer of these skills is considered a resource (Genesee, Geva, Dressler, & Kamil, 2006) that assists reading in the additional languages. Children learning to read in a non-native language bring their first language (i.e., mother tongue) to the instructional setting. Yet, its use will depend on the teacher’s use translanguaging between the language of instruction and children’s home language (s). The presence of two or more languages contributes to children having domains of knowledge in specific languages. For example, domains of knowledge children learn at school such as shapes, might only be known in the language of instruction. Relatedly, domains of knowledge they learn at home from family interactions, such as cooking, might only be known in the mother-tongue. And domains of knowledge that children learn on the playground, are likely to be learned in a lingua franca, or a common language to the area. Even though mixing languages is common, most language assessments do not capture this knowledge. Even in samples with multi-lingual students, for reasons of reliability and consistency, most language assessments assess children in just one language and describe results for that language. The results are used to help to explain results on reading assessments. But measuring language skills in just one language overlooks the concepts that a multilingual child may have in other languages and describe them from a deficit approach opposed to the asset of being multi-lingual. To address this problem, we developed a tool, the Multi-Language Assessment (MLA), to measure children’s expressive language across multiple languages to understand the skills they have to support their learning. The tool is intended to be reliable, valid, and child friendly. It is our hypothesis that children’s expressive language scores across multiple languages can help to explain their success or struggles in the early years of formal schooling. We conceptualized and developed the Multi-Language Assessment (MLA) to capture children’s language skills across multiple languages in a 7-minute interaction with a trained assessor. The MLA measures expressive language of 36 concepts shown in 36 images that children would be exposed to through family and community interactions, conversations, media, books, or school. The items included in the assessment yield variable distribution; they are not intended to be items that would yield ceiling effects. A child’s utterance is coded to one of nine categories of varying weights. Furthermore, the items are intended to have levels of a familiarity. For example, for an image of a coconut tree, some children might call it that, while other children describe it by its domain, a tree, not identifying the specific type. Both utterances would earn a child points but of varying weight. Research Problem 1. Many children in low- and middle-income contexts do not learn to read in lower primary efficiently. 2. Some people hypothesize that the reason for children’s poor performance is language related. 3. When children’s language skills are assessed it is usually in one language and describes their abilities as deficits as opposed to considering their assets of being multi-lingual. 4. Assessing language requires time and young children’s attention spans are short, reducing data quality if the assessment is too long. 5. The MLA was created to understand expressive language use across multiple languages and to be brief Study: The paper presents results from a recent longitudinal study that collected child level results at two time points in government school in rural Kenya. It includes the aforementioned multi-language assessment and measures of reading achievement (e.g., letter knowledge and spelling) at Time 1 when all children were in kindergarten and again at Time 2 when they had advanced to either a higher Kindergarten or to Grade 1. An existing measure of expressive language was used to explore concurrent validity of the MLA. The Time 1 sample (n=215) was large enough to examine the technical properties of the tool and the Time 2 sample (n=200) had only 7% attrition so there was sufficient power to describe individual changes. The features of the language assessment suggest that it is reliable and sensitive. The following analysis been conducted: 1) Sample demographics; 2) Distributions by subtasks; 3) Measures of association between subtasks; 4) Item analysis The following research questions are addressed: 1. How does expressive language use evolve for children who use three languages as they progress from kindergarten into first grade? For example, do they shift from using the home language for some items at Time 1 to a language of instruction at Time 2? 2. How does children’s overall expressive language knowledge (as measured in three languages) contribute to their reading achievement (letter sound knowledge and spelling) as measured in two languages over time?

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.

This manual guides teachers through the process of designing and using Individual Education Programs (IEPs) for learners with specific learning needs.

This brief presents findings on what worked to improve learning outcomes at scale under 8 successful early grade literacy programs, with a focus on findings from the Tusome program in Kenya.1 These findings were generated as part of the Learning at Scale study, conducted by RTI International with the Center for Global Development and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Most of the research that informs our understanding of children’s social-emotional learning (SEL) comes from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic (WEIRD) societies where behavior is guided by a view of the self as autonomous, acting on individual preferences. In the subsistence agricultural communities (home to more than a quarter of the world’s population), obligations and communal goals override personal preferences and individuals see themselves as part of a social hierarchy. These contrasting models of the self have profound implications for SEL. Many studies underestimate these implications because they use assessment tools developed in WEIRD settings to understand SEL in lower- and middle-income countries. The aim of our study was to build an SEL assessment from the ground up, based on community definitions of valued competencies in southern Tanzania. In Study 1, Qualitative data from parents and teachers indicated that dimensions of social responsibility, such as obedience and respect, were valued highly. Teachers valued curiosity and self-direction more than parents, as competencies required for success in school. Quantitative assessments in Study 2 found that individuals more exposed to sociodemographic variables associated with WEIRD settings (urban residence and higher parental education and SES) were more curious, less obedient and had poorer emotional regulation. Overall findings suggest that the conceptualization of social-emotional competencies may differ between and within societies; commonly held assumptions of universality are not supported. Based on the findings of this study we propose a systematic approach to cultural adaptation of assessments. The approach does not rely solely on local participants to vet and adapt items but is instead guided by a rigorous cultural analysis. Such an analysis, we argue, requires us to put aside assumptions about behavioral development and to consider culture as a system with an origin and function. Such an approach has the potential to identify domains of SEL that are absent from commonly used frameworks and to uncover other domains that are conceptualised differently across contexts. In so doing, we can create SEL assessments and SEL programs that are genuinely relevant to the needs of participants.

This case study examines a training targeting 18,000 head teachers and subject heads over seven days using IVR accompanied by electronic materials shared via WhatsApp conducted by the USAID-funded and RTI-implemented Malawi Early Grade Reading Improvement Activity (MERIT). While the training was conducted in June of 2020, this case study includes findings from a follow up study one conducted year later, to see what training content and skills participants retained, and the training elements that were most effective in their delivery. The case study applies a process-based and learning-oriented approach, drawing from the MEL-Tech Framework (Paper 1), to understand technology-supported remote teacher training introduced in response to COVID-19.

Efforts to promote playful pedagogies in low- and middle-income countries face many challenges. Among these challenges are the norms of teacher-child interaction that have a strong cultural basis. These norms include children’s reluctance to speak in front of adults, teachers’ desire to avoid embarrassing children and to promote a sense of fairness and togetherness in the classroom (Jukes et al, 2021a). In this paper I suggest an approach for adapting pedagogy to cultural context. The approach involves designing teaching activities to achieve two goals. Building on the work of others (O’Sullivan, 2004; Schweistfurth, 2013), the first is the cognitive learning goal of the activity. The second is the culturally appropriate social goal of the activity. This framing helps to design instructional approaches that promote learning and can be readily taken up by teachers. This approach is particularly effective when teaching activities are co-constructed with teachers (Randolph et al, 2020). In this paper I will discuss 3 studies of teacher perceptions and classroom behaviours in Tanzania that led to the development of this approach (Jukes et al, 2021b). I will also present one example of a teacher co-creation workshop in Tanzania based on the suggested approach to contextualising teaching activities. I will also illustrate the application to the contextualisation of playful pedagogies, based on qualitative research in Kenya and Ghana.

Prior Early Grade Reading Assessments (EGRA) have been used to set reading fluency benchmarks in Tanzania for USAID report and for the Government of Tanzania (GoT). Since the EGRA requires one-on-one administration with trained enumerators, tablets, it is currently too expensive to be sustainable within the government system. The Group Administered Literacy Assessment (GALA) is an inexpensive and sustainable way to collect information about students’ reading abilities; is it group administered, does not require intensive training to administer, and is collected on paper, which is then entered into a database. Unfortunately, the GALA does not contain a fluency measure, which is still used as the basis of USAID reporting. The Jifunze Uelewe team created a study in order to identify the reading fluency equivalent benchmarks for the GALA on a subsample of the total GALA respondents. The study is administering the both the EGRA’s reading passage and the GALA to a sample of grade 2 and grade 4 pupils attending public schools in Tanzania. Data collection occurred in October 2021. Data collection was happening during the submission of this abstract, so no results are available for the abstract. But we will report the results and will discuss how well the linking process worked.

The Research for Effective Education Programming – Africa (REEP–A) Task Order, awarded in September 2016, is a five-year project within the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Africa Bureau. The primary objective of REEP–A is to generate and effectively disseminate Africa regional and country-specific education data, analysis, and research to inform the prioritization of needs and education investment decisions. One research focus under REEP–A is to explore how teachers’ language proficiency and literacy in the language of instruction (LOI) influence students’ learning outcomes. It is hypothesized that the teachers’ level of language proficiency and literacy in the LOI can either facilitate student learning, if high; or impede learning, if low. However, limited data are available on how teacher language and literacy skill levels precisely relate to student outcomes. Exploring this relationship requires having a valid and reliable tool to measure teachers’ language and literacy skills. USAID therefore commissioned the development of the Teacher Language and Literacy Assessment (TLLA) to assess teachers’ language proficiency and literacy in the required LOI. The TLLA, adaptable to any language, consists of subtasks assessing speaking, listening, reading, and writing, as well as vocabulary and grammar, in the language(s) used for teaching and learning at the primary school level in a given context. It is envisioned that policymakers, researchers, and other education stakeholders can use the TLLA to collect data on teachers’ linguistic assets and gaps in the languages that their role requires them to use. These data could be useful for identifying factors contributing to student learning outcomes, informing teacher training and professional development needs, designing teacher deployment policies, and evaluating the impact of interventions aimed at improving teachers’ or students’ language and literacy skills. The aim of this report is to present the new tool and disseminate the initial findings around its technical adequacy. The international community has directed considerable effort to assessing and understanding the impact of language on students’ literacy and language skills, and the TLLA is a complementary tool that shows promise for understanding teachers’ language assets and needs.