Asia Region/ILOA and ACR-Asia

The purpose of this field guide is to introduce concepts, tools, and group activities that can be used to guide educators in co-creating locally defined prototypes of future learning spaces that will not only enhance social, emotional, and academic learning for all Filipino learners, but will ensure that learners flourish and develop a sense of agency, proactive citizenship, and work readiness for a successful future. The guide was created from selected content, exercises, and group processes that were introduced in the Leaders in Futures of Education (LIFE) course (June 20–July 19, 2022) and the Prototyping Future Learning Spaces Workshop (August 15–19 2022), which were attended by DepEd central office representatives, representatives from three regional offices (i.e., Region III: Central Luzan; Region VI: Central Visayas; and the Cordillera Administrative Region), and prototyping teams consisting of representatives from five SDOs—Tanauan City, Tuguegarao City, Pasig City, Caloocan City, and Quezon City—and at least one cooperating school in each SDO. This field guide provides a framework for DepEd partnerships across the country to begin their prototyping journey for co-designing future learning spaces for Filipino students.

In February 2022, ACR–Philippines initiated conversations with USAID and the Philippines Department of Education (DepEd) on developing a prototype technology to enable automated assessment and scoring of learners’ oral reading fluency, listening, and reading comprehension skills. The idea resonated with DepEd leadership for several reasons. During the school years of 2020-2022, the COVID-19 Pandemic made face-to-face assessments challenging, particularly in remote learning settings. Teachers were stretched in time and resources to assess learners one-on-one their reading skills against the most essential learning competencies. Further, other international assessments like PISA use a computerbased format, and this will be an opportunity to understand how well-prepared students are to take computer-based tests. In response, ACR-Philippines sought to produce a ‘proof of concept’ that explores the feasibility of a self-administered computer-based reading assessment (CoBRA) in English and Filipino for students in the Philippines. The technology would incorporate voicerecognition software to enable students to read directly into their device. The software would automate the score of the students’ reading scores through an artificial-intelligence (AI) algorithm designed to calculate words-per-minute (wpm) and reading accuracy rate. The platform will produce reports providing students, parents, and/or teachers immediate feedback on their performance. This is a report of that pilot experience.

In June 2020 the Philippines Department of Education (DepEd) adopted the Basic Education Learning Continuity Plan (BE-LCP), a framework to guide the 2020–2021 school year in light of school closures that started in March 2020, during the final weeks of the 2019–2020 school year. The plan introduced an adjusted and condensed curriculum, the Most Essential Learning Competencies, to support schools and teachers in delivering learning through alternative modalities in lieu of face to face classes. DepEd also modified the 2020–2021 school calendar to start October 5, 2020, and end in June 2021. The school year typically runs from June through March in the Philippines, but regions, divisions, and schools needed additional time to prepare and operationalize the BE-LCP. For example, regions were tasked with determining appropriate remote learning1 delivery modalities based on local context. Approaches were further adapted and defined at the individual school level as schools contextualized the learning continuity plan. Given DepEd’s decentralized approach to contextualizing and ensuring learning continuity for learners, it became clear that remote learning would look vastly different across regions, divisions, and within schools. Subsequently, this mixed-methods study was designed to take an in-depth look at schools and families across the country to understand their experiences with teaching and learning during school closures—and particularly to understand how early language and literacy learning can best be supported in the distance learning context.

DepEd ICTS requested support from the USAID/All Children Reading Philippines activity for evaluating the recently-launched DepEd Commons online resource portal to ensure that it could live up to its potential as a key strategy for giving all Filipino learners access to educational resources. In response to this request, RTI in collaboration with the DepEd ICTS EdTech Unit, designed a process for reviewing the DepEd Commons to identify evidence-based recommendations for a fully sustainable and impactful DepEd Commons. Although we use the term ‘evaluation’, this is a formative exercise, recognizing that the platform is in a nascent stage and would benefit most from forward-looking and actionable recommendations for living up to its potential, not a backward-looking judgment of implementation quality or completeness at a certain point in time. In line with the approach stated above—that the evaluation of the DepEd Commons would be a formative exercise designed to provide actionable recommendations for improvement, given the early stage of development of the platform—we chose a SWOT analysis methodology to frame the exercise. SWOT analyses are conducted to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The study team carried out key informant interviews with stakeholders from the implementing department in DepEd and in other departments with similar systems; a quantitative analysis of platform statistics containing usage data; and a self-administered survey focusing on usage and usability of the platform.

The All Children Reading–Asia (ACR–Asia) Return to Learning Cambodia Case Study was designed to research the Cambodia Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sport’s (MoEYS’s) response to the disruption in learning created by the COVID-19 pandemic during different phases of school closure and reopening in the 2019–2020 and 2021 school years. The study used qualitative interview methods to study the education system’s response, from the central ministry level down, to how school directors and teachers implemented expectations communicated to them. Forty-four participants were interviewed, including central MoEYS personnel, school directors, teachers, and caregivers. Participants were asked about the phases of MoEYS response to the pandemic and what procedures, implementations, and subsequent outcomes occurred The presenter will present findings that positive changes were implemented in the participating schools. Many stakeholders within the education system and its stakeholders act and react to an education crisis in ways that would not be typical of the system functions and individual behaviors experienced in a regular school year. Fundamentally, the education system and its actors showed that during COVID-19, they could carry out a set of core functions (RTI International, 2018). These core systems functions were to set and communicate expectations, monitor progress, provide targeted support to facilitate students’ access to continued education during school closures, and make stakeholders accountable for meeting the expectations.

This presentation was delivered as part of the 2022 Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) conference as part of a panel describing the Education Futures research activity undertaken by the Philippines Department of Education, with support from USAID/Philippines through the All Children Reading-Philippines program managed by RTI International. Under this activity, leaders in DepEd are engaging in a range of courses and workshops to learn and apply futures thinking methodologies for reimagining how education can be delivered differently to address recurring shortcomings. The authors are Maricel Fernandez (Research Officer, RTI International) and Mark Sy (Manager of EdTech Unit, Department of Education).

In the past two years, the COVID 19 pandemic and the ensuing and repeated school closures has caused an unprecedented upheaval to the education of children world-wide. With the onset of the pandemic, actors in education systems responded in myriads of ways to ensure children continued to learn while at home and when schools reopened. The purpose of this case study is to explore how educational stakeholders in the federal and provincial governments in Pakistan – Balochistan, Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), Kyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), and Sindh, responded to school closures and re-openings during the COVID 19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. As such, the research questions for the study are 1. How did actors in education respond to the COVID 19 pandemic in Pakistan? 2. What types of resilience capacities did actors in education exhibit? To answer these questions, the case study delves into how the education actors - communities, parents, teachers, federal and provincial government education officials, private schools, non-governmental organizations, and international development partners responded and collaborated to support children’s learning, psycho-social support and well-being. The case study draws on resilience, and social ecological frameworks to explore the response of Pakistani education system to the pandemic. A social ecological lens enables the examination of the interaction and relationships of the individual, the community, the learning environment and educational systems and policies (Bronfenbrenner, (1986). Resilience frameworks explore the practices of education actors which promote resilience during and after disasters. (Reyes, 2013; Shah, Paulson, Couch, 2020; Shah, 2019). A qualitative case study method was best suited for this research study as it allows for an in-depth, descriptive and analytical study of how these education stakeholders responded to the challenges of the pandemic (Merriam, 1998). Data collection comprised semi structured interviews with purposive sampling of 34 individuals and 11 focus groups with public and private school teachers and parents. Emerging themes include the digital divide, strength in community, parent engagement and a lack of focus on marginalized populations. The emerging themes give examples of resilience capacities of stakeholder responses and illustrate positive, and promising practices as well as areas which need considerable reflection, and change in and implementation of federal and provincial policies. References Bronfenbrenner, U. (1986) Ecology of the family as a context for human development. American Psychologist.32:513–531. Merriam, S. B. (1998). Qualitative Research and Case Study Applications in Education. Revised and Expanded from" Case Study Research in Education." Jossey-Bass Publishers, 350 Sansome St, San Francisco, CA 94104. Reyes, J. (2013). What matters the most for education resilience. A framework paper. World Bank Shah, R. (2019). Transforming systems in times of adversity. White Paper, USAID Education and Conflict Network.

This presentation describes findings from a study of the remote learning experience of school actors; school heads, teachers, parents and other HLPs, and learners during the first year of COVID-19 school closures in the Philippines. The focus of this presentation is only on one aspect of remote learning and that is how teacher well-being supported the success of schools in their pivot to remote learning. This presentation was delivered at the 2022 CIES Conference.

This report describes findings and lessons learned from an online teacher training course in the Philippines. "Becoming a Learning Detective" is a 5-day online course that focuses on the design and use of formative assessment to improve literacy and numeracy outcomes in Kindergarten to Grade 3 (K–3) classrooms. The emphasis is on classroom-based assessment strategies that are embedded within daily teaching and learning experiences, involving an active partnership between teacher and students. The course brings together asynchronous and synchronous elements, as well as whole group, small group, and individual learning experiences. The course was implemented for the first time among a small cohort of participants across 17 regions in the Philippines. Findings and recommendations of this initial training are being applied toward strengthening the course prior to offering it at a larger scale in the Philippines.

ACR–Philippines falls under All Children Reading–Asia, a broader program implemented by RTI International across multiple countries in the Asia Region. The activities directly contribute to USAID’s education goal to improve early grade reading (EGR) skills for 100 million children worldwide. There are two main areas of activity in support of the overall goals and objectives: EGR instruction and assessment in support of mother-tongue based multilingual education (MTB-MLE), and the use of educational technologies to support improved instruction in early grade reading, especially during school closures. Key achievements and activities through July 2021 are summarized in these briefs--one broad and one specific to the COVID-19 response.