En Guatemala más del 65 por ciento de niños de 10 años carecendelas destrezas básicas para leer y comprender textos simples, una situaciónque fue empeoradapor cierres prolongados de las escuelas.1 En este marco, la Actividad, Educación Básica de Calidad para la Transición (BEQT),financiada por USAID, diseñó una estrategia de atención a los alumnos en el área de intervención. El socio Funcafé realizó una adecuación metodológica de la Estrategia de Mejoramiento de los Aprendizajes(EMA), desarrollada y aprobada por el Ministerio de Educación. La estrategia incorporó nuevos elementos y enfoques para atender de forma lúdica y personalizada a niñas, niños y jóvenes mediante tutorías intensivas in situ para abordar el desarrollo de destrezas de lectura y necesidades emocionales, afectivas y sociales.El presente documento resume el objetivo, metodología y resultados.

The purpose of the article "Teacher Researchers in Guatemala: Lessons from an action research experience to address educational gaps in the classroom" is to describe the learnings of primary school teachers in rural Guatemala as a result of an action research experience. This experience took place in the context of the “Basic Education Quality and Transitions” activity, or BEQT, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by RTI International and its partners Funcafé, Funsepa, Wayfree, and the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala (UVG). UVG’s Centro de Investigaciones Educativas (CIE), as an RTI partner, developed and implements the “Teacher Researchers” program. The action research program engages teachers in identifying and bridging gaps in students’ learning of mathematics, reading, and/or writing with students in grades 1–3. During the portion of the program described in this paper, teachers reflected on the lessons learned and strengthened their research skills in an effort to identify gaps in content, as well as applying and reflecting on potential solutions that they then translated into adjustments in lesson planning and implementation of teaching strategies. A categorical analysis of the teachers’ reflections on these experiences showed how strengthened research skills helped teachers identify areas of opportunity in using teaching strategies to improve the quality of teaching, thus allowing them to reflect on their own teaching practices.

These Success Stories were prepared by the project team for the USAID Renforcement de la Lecture Initiale pour Tous program in Senegal in Calendar year 2022. SS001 : "Fifty resource persons from the MEN and the implementing partner put in place, together, the mechanisms for implementing RELIT." Describes the collaborative and locally-led co-launch of the program in 2022. SS002: "At Boly Diaw elementary school in Saint Louis, the RELIT program mobilizes a community of parents around reading and bilingual education." Describes a school that created a community-wide celebration for the launch of the RELIT program in 2022. SS003: "Innovations in the teaching of early grade reading: RELIT designs early learning materials for three new national languages" Describes the process and outputs of the first Grade 1 materials in 5 national languages that were developed in time for the new school year in Senegal. SS04: "A participatory approach to assessing the institutional capacity of Senegal’s education system" describes the approach to capacity assessment using the "Core Components" model of System Strengthening.

Remediation -- providing additional support to help students catch up to and/or master the content being taught in class -- is needed by many students but is often challenging to implement. Time and financial resources are two of the largest barriers to providing quality remediation for students in most schools, and these barriers can render remediation models impossible to sustain in resource-limited contexts. One particular model of remediation -- Supported Peer-Assisted Remediation (SPAR) -- reduces these barriers by engaging learners as facilitators in remediation and putting the teacher in a supportive, monitoring role. SPAR is one approach to remediation that can supplement or replace other models of remediation. It is not the only model a program might consider, but it does offer advantages that other models do not. This guide introduces considerations programs should take into account when evaluating the benefits or designing a SPAR model. It offers decision trees, poses questions, and walks a program through deciding how a SPAR could benefit a program. If a SPAR model can be useful for your program, the T&L team at RTI International can help you design one specifically for your program.

Community-based methodological support, more accessible information on teacher professional development, and an app that builds students’ reading skills are helping improve learning outcomes in Tajikistan. Over the last 10 years, USAID has supported the Government of Tajikistan to improve the teaching of reading and math in the early grades of primary school. USAID has helped reinforce key features of how the education system supports classroom instruction. Three initiatives described below are particularly notable as lasting contributions to Ministry of Education and Science (MoES) capacity to continue to improve how teachers teach and how students learn to read.

RAMP Field Directorates Indicators Guide Community Mobilization Tool.

Independent classroom observation- updated electronic system manual (2022).

The LQAS methodology has a number of objectives in the education sector, including: Holding schools greater accountability; Increasing implementation fidelity and credibility; Identifying schools or regions (field directorates) that needs extra support to assist them; Identifying areas for improvement to conduct reforms contributing to increase the effectiveness of the initiative; Providing an assessment methodology that enables the ministry to assess the students’ outcomes with high credibility and is used at all administrative levels in the ministry; and Providing relevant, reliable, and timely data.

A newsletter produced for the RELIT project in 2024

This invited presentation was delivered for the workshop on best practices in education and protection in early childhood (l'éducation et la protection de la petite enfance [EPPE]) organized by UNESCO and Senegal's Department of Preschool Education. It presents the support RELIT provides to development of teaching and learning materials under the new bilingual curriculum.