Justice Rising
Building impactful habits: How to increase uptake of teacher guides?
Overview
Location
DRC & Cameroon
FNL Focus
Literacy & Numeracy
Grades
P1 - P3
Chalkboard Guides (CBGs) help children in protracted conflict settings achieve foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) by 3rd grade. They are one-page, structured lesson guides containing everything teachers need to teach their lessons – from administrative details to where and what to put on the board, instructions for teaching the lesson and student application tasks. They improve learning by leveraging the ubiquity of the board as a teaching tool.
CBGs are different from existing structured pedagogy solutions as they incorporate behavioral science into their design by embedding teaching strategies from cognitive load theory into existing teacher practices to ensure effective instruction with minimal training. CBGs deliver effective support and relief for teachers in conflict settings: teachers report that they strengthen teaching and boost confidence while easing workload. They offer a simple, scalable, and sustainable solution that is strong enough to support teachers in conflict areas.
We are working with two governments to scale CBGs in conflict-affected regions.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, we have begun technical workshops with the provincial government to prepare CBGs for piloting in government schools.
In Cameroon, we have secured pilot approval at the national government level.
In both countries, governments can use CBGs as part of their national FLN efforts, improving reach and impact in conflict-affected regions.
Implementation research
During our small-scale pilots in DRC & Cameroon, we identified two key implementation challenges. With uBoraBora, we want to deeply understand these challenges and test solutions so we can scale CBGs more effectively and efficiently.
Challenges:
CBG production involves a process of co-design and co-production with local teachers and the Justice Rising team to ensure that CBGs feel familiar and adoptable to and by local teachers, whilst containing key instructional strategies to improve teaching. Quality assurance currently requires every lesson to be checked and improved, slowing down production timelines and increasing costs.
How can we streamline teacher guide production and reduce the need for quality assurance so we can produce high-quality guides more quickly and efficiently? (We have ideas for solutions, but would value the opportunity to thoroughly test these and work with Brink to develop solutions we haven’t considered.)
CBGs are well-received and adopted, but teachers request more training on them. We want to see teacher adoption of key instructional strategies increase and embed over time. CBGs do not include coaching, due to logistical challenges in reaching conflict-affected schools.
How can we rework our introductory training to make it more effective, and integrate school-based alternatives to coaching structures (learning circles and school leader-led refreshers) to aid adoption and habit formation over time? (We want to understand: which training elements work best; school-based alternatives to coaching to increase the dosage of training; and how alternatives to coaching can be adoptable and sustainable at scale.)
We are open to addressing one/both challenges and narrowing these down as necessary during the co-design phase of uBoraBora.
Promise Makala, Head of Academics
“Read Smart is an explicit phonics program to boost literacy outcomes for grade 1 and grade 2 students. We are expanding into additional schools with government teachers. Our main challenge is effectively implementing Read Smart in a new setting and ensuring a strong uptake.
We want to better understand the challenges for government teachers implementing this program so that we can be clear around pathways to scale this effectively. The goal for this project is to implement different training methodologies, monitoring frequencies and coaching strategies to see what drives uptake and buy in from government teachers.”
Chalk Board Guides
Related to Justice Rising
Resource
BORA cards: 56 cards designed to guide your implementation research
Blog
Going Beyond "What Works" in Implementation Research: Understanding the "How" & "Why
External link
Read more about Justice Rising on their website
Blog
uBoraBora Portfolio: Improved learning outcomes through targeted tweaks