A Comprehensive Framework, Step 6: Teacher Attendance, Community Monitoring, and Direct Information Flows

Teacher Attendance, Community Monitoring, and Direct Information Flows

     Why do workers in London rush to their offices, a blur of activity at 845am, and manic push for punctuality? What, in the broader society, dictates this norm, and pushes those not obeying into the "outlier" categorization? What are the personal and professional motivations and incentives of these workers, how are they aligned with institutional incentives and motivations, and how can we account for the deviations that occur in public administration and public sector service delivery in the developing world?     

     The basic premise of all educational systems: schools are only as good as the teachers enlisted to educate. Without teachers in the classroom, education is a non-starter. And thus, we come to one of the most pressing issues facing the developing world's educational systems today: teacher attendance.

Teacher attendance has been highlighted in a rush of new randomized control trials, which have attempted to sort out the motivating factors in getting teachers to, well, teach. However, I will argue, the applicability of these trials, which I will highlight, is as strictly limited as local cultures and customs will allow; without accounting for the "unquantifiable" factors, such as social esteem and prestige attached to the profession, as well as the critical factor of relative wage earnings, we cannot hope to find duplicity in any of these efforts. This, perhaps more than any other "measurable" in educational development, is individualistic in nature; individualistic in the sense, that, individual values and motivations, shaped and created by individual power organizations both in familial structure and in broader community integration, are critical underlying factors, micro-scale immeasurables surely misplaced for macro-scale control trials. Thus, the arguments highlighted below must be framed in a cultural, anthropological approach to understanding individual incentives and motivations, and addressing these critical factors to attendance.

      Chaudhary, et all, in 2006, showed that at any  given time, 25% of all public school teachers are absent from school in India, and of those present, only half were actually teaching when checks were made. This is a startling glimpse into the realities of educational systems in much of the world. When almost 3/4 of students are simply not receiving any instruction, any focus on other "input" mechanisms is simply a waste of time. Thus, in its purest sense, there is nothing more important than teacher attendance (although the effectiveness of the teachers in the classroom is obviously vital, as well).

    Innovation must invite scrutiny, especially innovation that is imposed by outside actors in localized, often rural communities. Thus, the recent randomized control trials conducted by Duflo, Hannah, and Ryan (2007), in which cameras were given to teachers to take photos of themselves, timestamped, in class, to prove attendance, with pay based on attendance in these photos. Thus, an innovative approach, which was shown to increase teacher attendance,  (thus underpinning the case for teacher attendance and educational outcomes); however, scrutiny must be given to the actual manner of this intervention, and the critical external innovation which was "injected" into these localized communities. Additionally, "no significant impact" was seen in additional years of education per $100 spent, which obviously raises questions on the cost-sustainability of this type of intervention.

     Thus, what can be done in a more localized, more participatory, and more organic local fashion to support teacher attendance? Linkages with communities have been cited as crucial for both interventions and quality of engagement. Teacher empowerment, a commonly misunderstood mechanism, must be understood as the sum of individual decisions to be empowered or not to be empowered (yes, I will suggest that some people, especially many teachers, do not want to be empowered, especially if they are accustomed to hierarchical leadership and non-initiative taking in their respective societies). Linking test scores with teacher pay, as is commonly done in the West with bonus and performance pay packages, can lead to teachers simply "teaching to the test" (Kenya: Glewwe, Ilias, Kremer, 2003; India: Muralidharan and Sundararaman,2010); though, if assessments are holistic and well-designed, this would not appear to be a huge problem, the likelihood that assessments are pedagogically sound and locally relevant is minimal in resource-starved environments. Contract teachers, often seen as a solution, have been shown to actually increase the absentee rate of civil service teachers in many cases, reducing their burden ("Contract Teachers in Extra Teacher Program in Kenya" Duflo, Dupas 2007).

     Community mobilization, commonly seen as the panacea to this conundrum, has been imposed and analyzed in numerous cases both in East Africa and South Asia. "Interventions in Rural Communities in India" (Benerjee, et al, 2008) concluded that community meetings were ineffective, and that most community members had no awareness of the process, or that they were even part of community groups, highlighting the danger of externally-imposed community groups and elite community capture. "School Communities Evaluate Teachers and Give Prizes to Teachers in Kenya" (de Laat, Kremer, et all, 2008) had little impact on teacher attendance as well.

    An emerging area of research that I will focus on is the power of direct information flows, ie: school report cards, and asymmetrical information flows, in empowering parental action through unbiased, unfiltered information. Studies conducted in Pakistan and Madagascar in recent years have shown that these school report cards have increased educational effectiveness, but these studies must be amplified to make and conclusive findings. Aligning with my initial theory on personnel motivation and individual empowerment at the worker level, this must be coordinated with individual motivation and individual empowerment at the parental and community level for a meaningful interaction, a meaningful level of engagement, and, ultimately, a meaningful level of community ownership to fundamentally shape and shift teacher attendance. External, one off, and technological innovation is not the ultimate cure for the ill of teacher attendance. Direct information flows could be.

Current Areas of Educational Research Interest

Current Areas of Research Interest: my current international educational development research interests and writing are primarily focused around one core question: how can rural, traditionally marginalized student populations actually benefit from increased enrollment rates in the developing world? What are the most effective policies which address both teacher training and motivation, materials development, curriculum development, and community monitoring/information flows in these rural areas? In addressing this broader topic, I have several specific research questions that I am working on at the moment:


-Feasibility of implementing private schooling in rural areas of LDC's: What is the "tipping point" for population density requirements before low cost private schooling can be introduced as a competitive mechanism in rural educational systems?

-Schooling Materials: What are the implications for the nationalization and standardization of schooling materials on historically marginalized student populations? How can localized development of schooling materials be nationally recognized and nationally implemented?

-Systemic Distortions in Nationalized School Curriculum:  What are the historical and social conditions that create the systematically distorting nationalized pushes for school curriculum? What is the "tipping point" in which localization of learning objectives, localization of language instruction, and localization of schooling materials to compliment curriculum redesign is both practical and implementable?

-Training and Motivation: What are the most effective delivery mechanisms for the training of teachers in progressive pedagogical theory and techniques, including ICT, critical thinking, and child-centered instruction? Are the best training techniques centralized, or decentralized, and traditional or technology/ICT based? What are the historical and social conditions which create value and prestige in the teaching field? How can these historical and social conditions be manipulated in enhancing the social position of teachers, in increasing teacher motivation and subsequent educational outputs?



"We have schools, but we lack education." -Unknown

A Comprehensive Framework, Step Five:

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."

Popular Education and Its Practical Applications: Thoughts and Openings

The work of Brazilian educationalist Paolo Freire has resounded for decades; his "popular education" approach seeks to liberate the oppressed, to open dialogue between the teacher (or facilitator) and students, to create a space for questioning and empowerment, and to eradicate formalized structures which seek to "bank" knowledge from the teacher to the students. Freire saw formalized education as further regimenting the oppressor-oppressed structures of society, as disparaging creativity and critical thinking. Freire talked of "education as the practice of freedom."

A "Simple Solution" to Refugee Education
Thus, there are many practical ramifications and implications for popular education, for educationalists in the formalized arena, as well as NGO's seeking community dialogue and a participative approach. One interesting area of application is in the immediate response to refugee crises (a topic that I have recently written about for coursework here at The LSE), as popular education can, in my theoretical argument, most effectively fill the gap between crisis and formalization of educational services in these complex emergency situations, playing a vital role in psychological protection and empowerment, simplification of teacher training, and in providing educational services that are not highly administratively and financially dependent.

However, practical deployment in mainstream pedagogy is neither widespread nor appreciated by many educators, especially in the developing world, in which formalized educational structures are one of the lasting colonial legacies. Popular education requires training and empowerment of teachers, which, in many cases, is beyond the writ of limited administrative structures.

A "Simple Solution" To Progressive Teacher Training:
Despite these limitations, I will argue that the popular education approach has been mimicked by progressive educationalists throughout the world (acknowledged or not),  and is a critical component of engaging critical thinking and progressive, project-based evaluations of students. And, the lessons and components are not administratively difficult nor difficult to train teachers to implement. Foremost, the approach aligns with individual teacher incentives. Limited additional training provides teachers with a tool that can take the burden off of their "chalk and talk" burden for class periods, provide autonomy and self-learning for students, and not be resource-dependent (the key failing of educational technology initiatives that mimic the popular education approach, though with technology as the medium/go between).

Thus, popular education approaches need to be integrated into school curriculum in LDC's, as a compliment to the formalized structure that has burdened these systems, overwhelmed teachers, and led to extremely limited educational outcomes for many primary and secondary school students. New strategies do not need to be complicated; complication breeds failure in resource starved environments where individual incentives of teachers and administrators are not aligned with educational outputs. Tools need to be simple, effective, non-threatening to authority, and ease the  burden on teachers.

A Comprehensive Framework Step 4: Teacher Training

Teacher Training: 

''Good teaching is the single biggest variable in educating pupils, bigger than class size, family background, or school funding." (Eric Hanushek)
     Teachers are, quite simply, the most important link in the educational chain. A strong, motivated, well-trained, and passionate educator can overcome most environmental hurdles and have a positive, educational impact on students' lives; a weak, unmotivated teacher, in the best of situations, will be, at best, non-harmful to students' development.
Thus, the pivotal question: what is the answer, what are the most effective answers, in approaching the riddle of educational provision?
     In the push to achieve the Millennium Development Goals,  there has been a mass push, supported by the elimination of primary school fees, in the developing world. This has resulted in a massive increase in enrollment rates in many nations, seemingly a positive result. However, this has met with disastrous consequences for already over-burdened educational systems and under-trained teachers. In nations such as Malawi, 150 students in single classes is a common sight; this can lead to declines in educational outputs, commonly measured in many nations. In most schools, little learning is taking place, thus resulting in a dangerous situation: educational systems which take children out of poor households, where they commonly help with subsistence agriculture or household chores, and put them into schools which teach them nothing. In my own mind and experience, this results in a worse situation that previous. Not only does this lead to additional disenfranchisement, as students only experiences with formal education provision is that of functional non-capacity, but it represents an enormous waste of financial and human resources for cash-starved states.
Thus, in looking at already overstretched systems, the focus and goal needs to be on teacher training and management, and most critically, aspects of teacher motivation and incentives, one of the most under-studied, yet most critical areas of pedagogy.
     Incentives start with basic teacher attendance; if teachers do not show up, no learning occurs; and this is more the rule than exception in many nations, such as India and Uganda (I have written about this issue quite extensively in the past, see: (http://www.theschoolsproject.org/2011/09/teacher-attendance-what-works-most.html). Banerjee and Duflo have shown that teachers tend to be more effective, with similarly limited supplies, in privatized school settings; thus, poor teaching is not intrinsic to these individuals; what needs to be addressed is their incentives for work.
     Thus, teacher pay is the obvious target, but there are other, less obvious dynamics at play: such critically overlooked issues such as simplified school curriculum. In many nations, centralized control and nationalized decisions have resulted in extremely complex curriculum which are simply out of the grasp of most teachers, and certainly most students. Talk about a disincentive! If one does not understand the subject matter or teaching objectives, there will be little educational efficiencies taking place in the classroom. Mastery of delivering basic skills to students who are in need of these, and not nationally-designed theory and international concept, is an enormously empowering tool for educators. As was detailed in a report to the Kenyan Government in 2011, "Programs that allow teachers to tailor their lessons to better suit the level of preparation of their students are effective at boosting students' academic performance (Glennerster and Kremer 2011). Simple, yes. Overlooked, often.
     Prestige and standing in the community is another, often overlooked target. In many nations (the obvious being those of East Asia) where teaching is held in high societal regard, teaching attracts high talent and effective pedagogy is the result. This is also the case in many developing world nations, but in others, is not; if a profession is not valued in the broader society, this will be a huge disadvantage for educational quality. However, this is an issue with a relatively straight-forward answer; make those in power, who are held in esteem (your "Big Men") publicly praise the profession; intrinsic rewards need to be matched with extrinsic rewards in this regard, but they need not be large; tokens of gratitude from community leaders, recognition from local or regional political leaders; media coverage of educational successes, and a national policy which places education and educators at the forefront of national progress are all critical ingredients.  Teacher pay is also another obvious target for reform; linking teacher pay to performance, as judged through standardized testing, has been a feature of Western educational systems for some time; however, there has been mixed results in implementing these programs in the developing world. In India, studies showed that linking pay to student performance was effective (Muralidharan and Sundararaman 2009), but similar studies performed in Kenya had mixed results, showing that teachers were teaching "to the test" and little actual learning was occurring, which is a problem the besets school systems in developed nations as well. There is also a chance that systems like this actually will penalize teachers who have less-prepared students, another problem mirrored in the West (Glennerster and Kremer 2011). This is certainly an area that warrants much more research!
     In addressing what is actually being delivered to students by teachers, we need to address the critical issue of content and delivery tools.The difference between a good lesson and bad can be as simple as knowledge of a "Do Now" and a solid graphic organizer which challenges critical thinking and creativity for students. Complilations of graphic organizers, open-sourcing of educational content and sample lesson plans, is critical. Computer-based software is already working in this area (see:SugarLabs), yet most teachers lack the technological connectivity required to take advantage of these resources. Thus, how do we motivate MOE's, strongly centralized and resilient to change, to freely disburse more effective lesson plans, and to focus on the basics? One approach, proven over the years, has been in implementing ICT for teacher training. ICT, with its multitude of drawbacks in classroom implementation, can still be an extremely powerful and coherent tool in the training and empowerment of teachers. ICT training needs to be delivered on site, if possible, and in a recurrent and sustainable manner; centralizing "Workshop/Training"sessions are, perhaps, the largest single waste of time, money, and effort in the developing world (as well as elsewhere). Where the West has seen progression in telecommuting and teleconferencing in saving costs in restricted environments, so we should learn for educational training. The keywords are: localized delivery, interactivity, teacher empowerment through technology, increased self-confidence through technology, and one-off-expense costs of initial connectivity being seen in a longer time horizon. Again, this is an issue that deserves much more research, but has huge potentials to meet the gaps in teacher quality and personnel deployment.
    Finally, how can we promote critical thinking integration into basic lesson planning in poor nations, beset by critical resource needs? Critical thinking promotion is a key element of success that has separated the output quality of Western centers of academic excellence; rote learning has obvious drawbacks. The ability to actually synthesize information, critique, and make determinations based on these critiques is invaluable for human expression, creativity, as well as productivity beyond the factory floor. Some great thinkers in this specific area include Sir Ken Robinson (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U) and, historically, Benjamin Bloom of Bloom's taxonomy pedagogical fame. The tool that Bloom proposed, of systematically categorizing learning domains and lower-to-higher order thinking, provides a powerful tool and model for teachers to implement. Keywords of progression up the "higher order cognition scale" include: recall>understand>apply>analyze>synthesize>evaluate.

A Comprehensive Framework

A Comprehensive Framework (working paper) 

For the purpose of this work, I will purport that literacy is a holistic measure of both the ability to read, write, and compute numeracy, and also engage and interact with one's environment in a mutually empowering fashion, the ability to maximize one's potential in an advancing environment. But we also need to include other dimensions of literacy, taking into account modern progress in technology, and also traditional cultures; thus, the definition must also include ICT literacy and also alternative literacy in visual/oral means in traditional cultures without written histories. Thus, basic skills, tasks, social practice, and critical reflection.
Literacy's importance lies in the fundamental empowerment of citizens; for economic growth; for health and broader human development indexes; for national cohesion; and for individual dignity and respect. A sound, functional, and output-focused primary school system is the bedrock of literacy promotion at the national-level, represents the largest national footprint, and will be the focus of this report.
No nation has ever witnessed a sustained economic advancement without an overwhelmingly literate population; no mother has gained the ability to decode public health information and follow standardized health guidelines to avoid becoming another statistic of maternal mortality; from the upper echelons of power to the lowest levels of societal engagement, literacy matters.
In approaching the topic of developing a comprehensive framework for those interested in promoting literacy and primary school quality through both formal and informal educational structures, my goal is to present what works, to compile what has been proven cost effective in both promoting literacy and sustaining learning. Simply attending school is simply not enough; in too many nations, students are functionally illiterate after many years of primary and secondary education; thus, the framework incorporates the essential ingredients of strengthening instruction and delivery, as well as more holistic frameworks for educational capacity.


A Comprehensive Framework for Primary School Quality


Health: School Feeding programs/micro-nutrient programs/iodized salt  “Probably no other technology,” the World Bank said of micronutrients, “offers as large an opportunity to improve lives ... at such low cost and in such a short time.” "Indeed, The Lancet, the British medical journal, reported last month that “Iodine deficiency is the most common cause of preventable mental impairment worldwide.”  (Kristof, 2008) Simple solutions to decrease the blockages prohibiting children to work up to their maximum potential. Micronutrient supplements, incorporated as part of a school-meal program, are an essential component of both educational capacity, enrollment, and retention for students. The Midday Meal Scheme in India, exemplified in success by NGO's, such as the Akshaya Patra Foundation, which now feeds over 1.3 million children, has played a critical role for India, and defines a model that can, and should, be duplicated in other developing world nations. The NGO uses both government subsidies as well as private and public donations to create meals in centralized and decentralized kitchens in both rural and urban areas of India, and represents a pioneering model in nutritional fortification for primary school learners in the developing world. The World Food Program pioneered a Food For Education program in over 32 nations, which has worked to feed over one million students; rates of enrollment increase and retention were startling, at around 30%, for both girls and boys. (Gelli and Meir, 2007). Certainly a worthwhile investment. 

Transparency: Harnessing information technology and information flows to increase transparency amongst the recipients of public sector educational provision and family/community members is a critical step in increasing both quality and educational outputs. Increasing the amount of money actually getting to teachers will undoubtedly increase teacher quality, as well; one of the biggest blockages in educational delivery is the fact that so much of the educational budgets intended for teacher salaries (in many nations this makes up 90% of the MOE budget) simply do not get to the beneficiaries.  Paul Collier states,  “...only around 20% of the money that the Ministry of Finance released for primary schools, other than for teacher's salaries, actually reached the schools. In some societies the government would have tried to suppress information like this, but in Uganda, far from suppressing it, Tumusiime-Mutebile used it as a springboard for action. Obviously, one way would have been to tighten the top-down system of audit and scrutiny, but they have already been trying that and it evidently wasn't working too well. So Tumusiime-Mutebile decided to try a completely different approach: scrutiny from the bottom up. Each time the Ministry of Finance released money it informed the local media, and it also sent a poster to each school setting out what it should be getting...Now, instead of only 20% getting through to the schools, 90% was getting through....the media had been decisive-in this case reports in the newspaper. So scrutiny turned 20 percent into 90 percent-more effective than doubling aid and doubling it again.”(The Bottom Billion. 

Local Language Literacy:
Literacy itself has had many different definitions over the years which have attempted to encapsulate the full meaning of the word; a final draft of UNESCO, and one that I personally prefer, states that literacy can be defined as "...the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society." (UNESCO 2003) More specifically, local language literacy, in the context of a multi-lingual world, and more specifically, world of multi-lingual nations with national lingua francas, demands attention to this critically underserved issue. Minority and traditionally marginalized populations do not, in many cases, have the benefit of speaking the national tongue of many developing world nations (this is also the case elsewhere, obviously). This leads to further marginalization in the education provision for these groups; attention needs to be paid to developing local language literacy before secondary language literacy can be effective. Thus, there have been very successful, holistic programs, such as Room to Read (Nepal) and Literacy For All (South Africa) that have started to build scalable, replicable models to show exactly how this is possible.
In the case of Literacy for All in South Africa, the model entails dealing with the complex multi-lingualism that exists in the nation in a creative and progressive manner; (I have detailed their efforts in an earlier piece, (http://www.theschoolsproject.org/2011/06/literacy-for-all-cape-town-south-africa.html). They work with specialized, tri-language readers, which have shown great results for students.
In another, more established case that I have worked with personally in Nepal, Room to Read has developed extensive capabilities for publishing quality children's books in local languages in many of the countries in which they operate. These materials are high quality and excellent, and are available in local and dual-languages, and often are donated to schools and school libraries on a needs basis. Again, supporting local language literacy, and building on these literacy skills in secondary language promotion, is a critical element of success that these organizations have implemented in their action plans.
In addition, innovative programs such as Save the Children's Literacy Boost campaign, which works to strengthen public sector educational delivery through teacher training, community involvement, and resource development (through innovative, participative approaches to creating local-language and locally produced readers and educational games) has shown remarkable results in randomized control trials conducted in many nations, such as Malawi, Mozambique, and Ethiopia. While there are questions of governmental ownership and financial sustainability, Literacy Boost has shown that adding more inputs in the equation, through quality teacher training, and additional community mobilization and educational cohesion, can have powerfully multiplying effects on the educational process. A focus on materials and reading outside of school is key to this equation. The lesson that comes through:build on what works. The program showed success in conditions typical in the developing world; classrooms with 100+ students and little learning going on. Conditions which, in normal situations, completely block the educational process for the vast majority of students. This program, and others which mirror its efforts, such as Pratham's Read India Program, have been proven to work.

Working Titles: Ongoing Research

Some of the working titles of research-papers-in-progress on my desk:


Literacy: A Comprehensive Framework (breaking down the critical components of a holistic literacy approach, analyzing the key qualities and drawbacks, in the hopes of creating a strong working model for organizations and individuals looking to promote "schools" in the developing world; ie: what are the core issues that need to be addressed to make investments in this area worthwhile and cost-effective?)

ICT and Ethiopia:  (an exploration into the cost effectiveness of ICT implementation in Ethiopian primary and secondary school contexts, seeking to answer the question: does this make sense in a severely constrained budgetary environment, and, if not, what are the better alternatives to integrating ICT into these environments)


 Popular Education in Refugee Camp Educational Systems:  (what are the lessons for empowerment that can be gained from the popular education movement of Latin America, and how are these lessons specifically applicable to refugee camp situations in Sub-Saharan African contexts, in the realm of local adaptation/participatory design/local empowerment? What are the obstacles and political stumbling points for implementation in these "zones of non-governance?" Are these approaches preferable to the "education kits" being deployed in these environments?)

Localized Content and Community Participation: (an analysis of the Kebale community schools in Ethiopia-Do these represent a more cost effective and learning-outcome effective means of delivering educational services in budgetary-constained environments?)