A Comprehensive Framework, Step Six:
Locally Produced Educational Materials/Educational Games
The importance of locally produced and locally sensitive learning materials cannot be underestimated. In Western Kenya, an intervention was undertaken, in which government textbooks were distributed to over government schools. "There is a widespread belief that the provision of textbooks can substantially improve educational outcomes in developing countries... "(JPAL 2001). However, this belief, is largely a myth. As was reported by the impact assessment team of Glewwe, Kremer, and Moulin in an additional 2009 study on textbooks in Kenya, "Textbooks are written in English, most students' third language, and many students could not use them effectively. More generally, the curriculum in Kenya, and in many other developing countries, tends to be oriented toward academically strong students, leaving many students behind in societies that combine a centralized educational system; the heterogeneity in student preparation associated with rapid educational expansion; and disproportionate elite power." This, in itself, is a vital topic in educational development that has not been given nearly enough attention by practitioners and/or academics; simplification and localization of both materials and curriculum is a vital step forward in making education accessible for the majority of students in the developing world. The initial intervention in Kenya illustrates the shortcomings of blindly delivering centralized materials to localized schooling situations: no impact, and vast amounts spent in the process; a complete waste of precious resources. There was no increase in test scores or in retention rates. Could these precious resources have been spent in a more effective manner? What was the political and technical rationale behind the disbursement of text materials that were not appropriate for the grade levels or regional cultures of Western Kenya?
In the analysis of why non-justifiable materials are disbursed by weak-capacity Ministries of Education in the developing world, there are the obvious targets which appear: corruption, lack of technical expertise, political concerns over centralization of power; however, I will propose a less sinister viewpoint: availability. Simple design and procurement. Without localized ownership of the design process for educational materials, which are, in most cases, either printed internationally and imported, or printed in the national capital and disbursed to the regional education bureaucracy, there will be extreme limitations to the learning process. A participatory design process, though time intensive and fraught with obvious drawbacks in time scales, needs to be implemented for the input side of educational provision to increase the output side of learning. As Robert Chambers says, 'We do not know what poor people want." Very simply, we need to take into account the voice and concerns of those whose educational systems we are designing; without local ownership, local incentives to participate in creation and in the educational institution created will weaken, and disengagement is a distinct possibility, as has been witnessed time and time again around the world with educational initiative "White Elephant" projects littering the landscapes. We need to consider the question of , "Whose Reality Counts?" (Chambers) in our rhetoric an design; whose reality are we taking into consideration with programmatic design, and whose best interests do both international and national players have in mind in the creation and distribution of learning materials.
I have visited several organization who have set pioneering examples in this particular area of educational development: organizations such as Room to Read, Nepal and Literacy For All in South Africa, as well as Mango Tree Uganda and OLE Nepal. I will highlight the key defining linkages between these innovative organizations, and then explain the critical importance to further propagating their messages. While these organizations target different learning modalities, the core focus is the same: local design, local collaboration, and support, rather than substitution, for public education service provision. Room To Read Nepal works to design high quality local language materials, bilingual language materials, and, perhaps most critically, aims to support local culture and traditions through utilizing local stories in their materials creations. I have profiled Room to Read previously on this website (http://www.theschoolsproject.org/2010/12/room-to-read.html), and have had the pleasure of securing their reading materials for the Magic Yeti rural libraries in Nepal, where I was able to witness firsthand the student engagement with appropriately designed materials. Literacy For All, an organization based out of Cape Town, South Africa, has a similar direction with their educational initiatives: understanding that the multilingual fabric of South Africa can be a facilitator, rather than a hindrance, in the educational process, Literacy For All has been developing tri-lingual readers for primary students, locally designed, with great responses in literacy rates (I have profiled this organization here: http://www.theschoolsproject.org/2011/06/literacy-for-all-cape-town-south-africa.html). Mango Tree Uganda has been working for years to develop high quality, locally designed and implemented learning materials and games for primary and secondary schools in Uganda. This work touches upon yet another critical component of primary and secondary education: the power of learning games. Games (such as Gnu, Connect 4, Guess Who? Shape by Shape, which are well designed and incorporate critical literacy and learning aspects, are an absolutely critical component of reaching children, engaging them, and creating enthusiasm for learning.) It is much too easy to expect the student engagement to magically appear if proper instructional materials are introduced: we also must understand the psychology of the students we are trying to reach, their attention spans, their curiosity, their interpersonal connection, and the absolutely critical roles these factors play in the learning process. Mango Tree has been working to design these games and implement them in a locally sustainable fashion for years. Finally, OLE Nepal, another organization that I have previously profiled: (http://www.theschoolsproject.org/2011/04/open-sourced-technology-hubs.html) is working on the technology frontier in creating locally designed, crafted, and implemented learning materials, in collaboration with the government of Nepal, as well as local teachers and authors. Digitizing local content, working with the national curriculum to support and not supplement, and engaging teachers in dialogue have all been critical factors in this small program's successes.
A common thread runs through the disparate efforts of these organizations, as well as so many others: local design, local collaborations, participatory research, and innovation backed by realism. The power of high quality learning materials cannot be underestimated. This is a critical, and much too often overlooked step in the educational cycle; in a rush for standardization, for central control, for large-scale donor implementations, too many of the critical lessons of this chapter have been lost, and only the children pay the ultimate price for our ignorance. As the conclusion to JPAL's work in Kenya summarizes succinctly, "The evidence from this evaluation suggests that better suited materials might produce achievement gains in a wider section of the population."
