Building Back Better over SMS: Teacher Tools & TaRL
by Sara Cohen, Head of Learning at M-Shule
As much of East Africa enters the third wave of the pandemic, learn how M-Shule is innovating with its SMS knowledge-building platform to support teachers, students, and parents in combatting learning loss.
While the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted a wide range of sectors, education has been delivered a particularly hard blow. Estimates suggest that when schools closed in 184 countries worldwide, over 1.5 billion children were not learning. It is important to note that such interruptions to education can have long-term adverse effects, especially for vulnerable communities. Furthermore, “there is a real risk of regression for children whose basic, foundational learning (reading, math, languages, etc.) was not strong to begin with”[1].
M-Shule’s unique platform was designed to foster educational success for all learners in a variety of challenging contexts, and the COVID-19 education crisis is no different. Our response to this ongoing crisis is holistic: our aim is to empower teachers to effect powerful gains in their students’ learning, ensure students at all levels achieve functional literacy and numeracy (FLN) as well as other academic skills, and engage parents in their children’s education.
M-Shule’s Approach to Learning
Like all of M-Shule’s resources, our Teacher Tools, as a response to the COVID-19 education crisis, are grounded in approaches to learning and education system strengthening that have undergone rigorous research and testing and have proven to be highly effective.
Structured Pedagogy
Even before the start of the current pandemic, Sub-Saharan Africa was in the throes of a crisis of learning. The statistics are shocking: almost 90% of school-going children in the region will not have attained basic literacy by the age of 10. The ramifications of this are far-reaching: learning poverty undermines development, thwarts poverty reduction efforts, and contributes to deficits in human capital. There is a growing body of evidence on the social, cultural, and economic benefits of focusing on education, but these are only realised when actual learning occurs and when children are provided with real-life relevant skills.
Studies have shown that conventional education inputs are not leading to improved learning outcomes, and children in the region are leaving school unprepared for work, life, and active citizenship. This is where Structured Pedagogy comes into play. UNICEF defines Structured Pedagogy as “a systemic change in educational content and methods, delivered through comprehensive, coordinated programmes that focus on teaching and learning, with the objective of changing classroom practices to ensure that every child learns”. The overarching goals of this approach are: 1) to ensure that all children achieve functional literacy and numeracy; and 2) to provide children with social and emotional skills to support ongoing learning.
Since obstacles and barriers to learning are interlinked and numerous, the Structured Pedagogy approach outlines a set of practices consisting of four components which are designed to be implemented concurrently.
Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL)
The closure of schools in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has compounded the learning crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa. The resulting learning loss means that millions of children will need to catch up as schools reopen. However, conventional teaching and learning methods will not suffice here.
Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL), developed by Pratham Education Foundation, is “an effective and low-cost strategy that helps children to ‘catch up’ in a short period of time”[2]. The basic premise of this evidence-based pedagogical approach is that teaching is tailored to the level of the learner, regardless of their age or grade.
Like Structured Pedagogy, TaRL employs a 4-pronged approach.
Supporting Teachers
A large body of scientific research shows that teachers are one of the preeminent factors in student achievement. The best teachers, even when working in under-resourced and ineffective environments, can make huge contributions to student learning gains. But teachers cannot do this on their own, and many have been adversely affected by the pandemic. This is where M-Shule’s Teacher Tools come in.
The Teacher Tools are a suite of carefully designed resources modeled after the Structured Pedagogy approach, which has been scientifically proven to markedly increase teacher effectiveness. The Tools can be accessed using the simplest feature phone and does not require an internet connection, making it highly accessible to all teachers everywhere.
The main features of the Teacher Tools are:
● Learning Outcomes Frameworks
These frameworks map out the individual steps a child must take to acquire a particular skill. This type of mapping allows teachers to accurately pinpoint breakdowns in learning and focus their teaching accordingly.
● Teacher Guides & Structured Lesson Plans
The Teacher Guides contain lesson plans that are carefully crafted to help teachers conduct lessons that are both engaging and effective while achieving the relevant learning outcomes. These easy to follow, learner-centered lesson plans free up teachers’ time so they can focus on supporting their students.
● Teacher Training & Classroom Coaching
Specially designed micro-courses ensure that teachers are able to effectively use the Teacher Toolkit resources in their classrooms without spending large amounts of time in training sessions. Communities of Practice support pedagogical change by forging relationships between teachers that enable them to develop a shared repertoire of resources.
● Data Collection & Analysis
User-friendly tools allow for the collection and analysis of a wide range of qualitative and quantitative data from the field. Teachers and other stakeholders can easily input teacher observation notes, document the use of instructional resources, record student assessment results, and generate customised reports.
Supporting Students
The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically increased the number of children who have fallen behind academically. In order to ensure that all students make learning gains going forward, M-Shule has integrated the core principles of the Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) approach into its learning platform.
M-Shule’s learning platform makes the following student support tools and features available to teachers and students:
● Leveled Learning Frameworks, Teacher Guides & Structured Lesson Plans, and Teaching & Learning Materials
● Formative and summative progress assessments
● Customisable alerts and reports
● Micro-courses on TaRL methodology implementation
● Program aligned, adaptive instructional or revision content
Supporting Parents
The vast majority of children around the world have been out of school for almost a year. In this way, the pandemic has placed a unique burden on already stretched parents, who have had to take on the additional task of educating their children. In light of continued school closures and the resultant academic lag, M-Shule has utilized their unique approach to learning design to develop micro-courses for parents on a wide variety of topics.
Some of these courses include:
● The Value of Play
● Improving Reading Fluency
● Primary Mathematics Skills
● Positive Discipline
● Socio-Emotional Development
Want to learn more or bring these tools to your programs? Visit www.m-shule.com or contact us at partnerships@m-shule.com!
[1] COVID-19 AND EDUCATION IN EMERGENCIES — educationcannotwait
