In recent weeks we have been exploring innovations in education like employing a hands-on, minds-on approach to teaching and learning and unburdening teachers of non-teaching related tasks—that can accelerate progress and deliver the breadth of skills all young people need to be successful today and in the future. But one challenge can impede the success of those innovations—paper.

In particular, this problem takes the form of paper-based systems of recording and the inherent administrative inefficiencies they represent. Inefficient methods for collecting and reporting data and for communicating within and to communities outside schools waste precious human and financial resources that could be better used to accomplish improvements in learning. Replacing archaic paper-based systems with more efficient ones, while less disruptive than other innovations, will help streamline schools so they can achieve the transformation we aspire to in our education systems.

Consider, for example, a school located in a rural, remote area. The systematic recording and reporting of student attendance, teacher absences, examination scores, inventories, and so forth is essential for monitoring and evaluation. But documentation of this nature is often done with photocopied paper forms. An education officer must collect the forms and personally transport them to the ministry of education. The stack of reports is then entered into a database by an administrator so that the information can later be interpreted. In an era when Rwanda is using drones to deliver blood to its remote hospitals, the administrative systems of education are archaic and inherently inefficient. Even in the best of circumstances, these administrative processes present a huge gap between the time of reporting, analysis, and action. In such systems, education stakeholders are unable to understand and respond to local needs in real time.

Such administrative challenges are emblematic of a broader set of inefficiencies facing many education systems around the world. From our ongoing research into education innovations, we have encountered schools and education systems that are working to develop and pioneer new ways to transform and improve administrative efficiency.

For instance, paper makes real-time data collection and dissemination nearly impossible, but innovations on the ground are using mobile phones to overcome this challenge. EduTrac is a mobile phone based data collection system operated through the ministries of education in Uganda and Peru that crowdsources data from parents, teachers, and school leaders. EduTrac uses an open source software program to function as a real-time, easy-to-use information management system. For example, a head teacher may receive the question, “Did your first grade teacher attend school today?” or “Has your school received its grant allocation for this term.”  Text responses are pinged back to a web-based dashboard. By utilizing mobile phones, EduTrac is using a device that most education stakeholders likely own already, even in remote contexts.

Bridge International Academies, a for-profit chain of low-fee private schools with a “school-in-a-box” model, has introduced pioneering approaches to improving administrative efficiency and effectiveness. Bridge, along with other low-cost private school models, has been the subject of heated debates especially around the role of for-profit actors in delivering primary education as well as the place of scripted lessons for teachers. While these debates are important, it is Bridge’s back-office innovations that have caught our eye as perhaps the most overlooked yet the most promising part of their model, which has the potential to be adapted to other schools or contexts.

One of the core elements of Bridge is the use of technology. Data on attendance, assessment, lessons, school fee collection, and other administrative processes are recorded on teacher’s tablets and automatically uploaded to Bridge’s central office, allowing for real-time data collection and analysis. If a teacher is absent, a substitute teacher is immediately sent to the school to fill in. Bridge also uses text messages to communicate between students, parents, and teachers. Parents are notified when they owe fees or when their children are absent from school. Instead of using cash, all financial transactions are made using mobile money, which increases efficiency, allows for immediate tracking, and reduces the chance for corruption or misuse. They’ve also set up an automated 24-hour hotline for parents to call with questions and concerns. Such centralized administrative features are some of the reasons why Bridge only employs one administrator per school and has been able to keep its operating costs low.

Streamlining schools through improved administrative efficiency also enables us to consider how administrative services may be restructured. In some cases, educational supports may need to be centralized in order to be run better. In other cases, decentralization may be the best option for responding to local needs. What’s more, a cost-savings component is often a natural effect of improving administrative processes because it leads to better targeted financial and human resources that can improve teaching and learning environments. While these types of innovations aimed at streamlining schools may not always be visible or high profile, they may indeed be one of the most powerful ways in which education can capitalize on new technological advancements. For this reason, they should never be overlooked.

       

 

 

The importance of teachers cannot be overstated, and good teachers are often shown to be the most important factor in a child’s schooling—even more important than going to a good school. Ideally, teachers guide learning so that each student is active and engaged, they make learning relevant to students’ lives, and they foster the full breadth of skills young people need. But despite their important role of guiding students’ education, teachers are burdened with crowded classrooms, a range of administrative tasks, difficulty designing lessons, and finding content. They are expected to be experts in academic subjects, child development and pedagogy, adept at managing a classroom and discipline, along with collecting data and carrying out administrative duties. In many places, teachers have to wait months for their paychecks and are forced to hold multiple jobs to make ends meet.

What can be done to unburden teachers? Our ongoing research has revealed there are many innovations helping to support teachers, like developing technology to ease teachers’ burdens, leveraging community members to take tasks off teachers’ plates, or utilizing innovative teacher training models that foster collaboration and peer learning.

Crucially, many of these innovations can help give teachers the space, tools, and support to facilitate active hands-on, minds-on learning with their students. For example, technology is helping teachers to focus on personalized instruction and relieve them of administrative tasks.  Often teachers are limited by large classes and varying ability, making it challenging to provide individual practice for students to apply what they are learning. But recent advancements in technology are allowing higher levels of personalization, with activities and games on mobiles, tablets, and computers adapting to students’ individual levels and providing ample practice of what they are learning. These applications generate instant data on student progress, what they’re learning, and how long it takes them to progress through each learning module, relieving teachers of the need to spend hours and hours grading problem sets.

Pixatel is one such tool being applied in low-resource settings in India. It utilizes tablets to provide math activities that teachers can pair with their lessons to give students individualized and engaging practice while assessing their learning levels. While results are still waiting a rigorous evaluation, preliminary reports from teachers showed that students were more engaged and for longer amounts of time, and that girls and the weakest students have benefitted the most.

Another example is the African School for Excellence in South Africa, which has utilized technology to implement a rotational classroom model. There, classes are split into small groups and students rotate between teacher-facilitated lessons, small group, peer-learning activities, and individual work on computers. This model places a premium on self-directed learning among students, giving teachers the tools to act as facilitators rather than lecturers. This model, which costs just 60 percent per student of what traditional government secondary schools spend, uses technology to help teachers more effectively teach large classes.

In other situations schools are leveraging community members rather than technology to unburden teachers. For example, Pratham’s Read India program, one of our Millions Learning case studies, focuses on personalized remedial instruction in math and literacy for those students who are farthest behind. In many places the interactive and group-based “Teaching at the Right Level” modules have been facilitated by trained community volunteers who act as tutoring support helping teachers meet the particular needs of struggling students. This has been an effective way of personalizing learning without burdening teachers with additional lessons or after-hours sessions. Similar models of tapping community volunteers to help teachers on specific tasks have been employed to teach entrepreneurship and business skills in Uganda and Rwanda by Educate! and in Jordan by INJAZ, also Millions Learning case studies which have successfully scaled up.

Finally, our research has revealed a number of education innovations that elevate and support teachers through collaborations and peer-learning professional development. Often teacher training reinforces a teacher-centered model of lecturing rather than encouraging the social nature of teaching and a hands-on, minds-on learning environment. STIR Education is a new model in India and Uganda that identifies highly motivated teachers and offers them small grants to implement innovative ideas in their classrooms. They have found that the real value in their model, however, comes from connecting teachers to each other and forming collaborative networks where they can visit and learn from one another. Similarly Edmodo, a free online platform that functions as a social network for teachers, has seen much success by capitalizing on the social nature of teaching and connecting teachers around the world to one another.

These innovative models hold much promise for supporting overburdened teachers all over the world, and show a variety of contexts and approaches that aim to improve teaching.  Ultimately, whatever approach is used—and there certainly is a range—the goal should be to create an educational experience that cultivates the breadth of skills students need for life and work and where teachers feel supported and respected in their roles.   

       

 

 

Hard-headed evidence on why the returns from investing in girls are so high that no nation or family can afford not to educate their girls.

Gene Sperling, author of the seminal 2004 report published by the Council on Foreign Relations, and Rebecca Winthrop, director of the Center for Universal Education, have written this definitive book on the importance of girls’ education. As Malala Yousafzai expresses in her foreword, the idea that any child could be denied an education due to poverty, custom, the law, or terrorist threats is just wrong and unimaginable. More than 1,000 studies have provided evidence that high-quality girls’ education around the world leads to wide-ranging returns:

• Better outcomes in economic areas of growth and incomes
• Reduced rates of infant and maternal mortality
• Reduced rates of child marriage
• Reduced rates of the incidence of HIV/AIDS and malaria
• Increased agricultural productivity
• Increased resilience to natural disasters
• Women’s empowerment

What Works in Girls’ Education is a compelling work for both concerned global citizens, and any academic, expert, nongovernmental organization (NGO) staff member, policymaker, or journalist seeking to dive into the evidence and policies on girls’ education.

      

 

 

Enter Pokémon Go! This game takes kids ages 8 years and older—along with their playfully oriented parents—outside to capture, train, and battle creatures that appear in the bushes and crevices around the familiar landscapes of their own hometown.  This is a game that could not and does not exist as a board game. It captures the uniqueness of digital opportunity. It literally jumps from screen to the real world by taking us outside to play and by forcing us to move around in our everyday spaces. As a father in Madison, Wisconsin describes:

The game has already revolutionized how kids in the neighborhood are interacting. Two weeks ago, a casual pedestrian would have feared a band of young folks roaming the hood at 9:00 p.m. They might have even reported them to the police. But today? Pokémon GO morphed those kids from a potential gang, into a group of joyful contestants who are collaborating and strategically communicating to find the animated intruders. 

People are moving, talking, and reenergizing in areas that were otherwise desolate after dark.

To date, Pokémon Go is just the latest fad that demonstrates how we can take screen time into the streets while engaging in something truly interactive. But these games stop short of asking how the joy of gaming can be recruited to expand our learning. Perhaps, this new fad is teaching us something that goes well beyond the capture of anime. It might just bear the seeds of a potential learning revolution. 

Imagine taking field trips where instead of viewing cute creatures, a Pokémon spinoff offers up historical figures that give a set of clues in a geocache game. This would be but one step removed from living in the movie “National Treasure.” Might Ben Franklin appear in Philadelphia at his printing press? Could we experience Lincoln’s civil war address while standing on the real battlefield? Could we study the architectural designs of buildings or bridges while playing and gazing at the real structure in the background? How can we use these images and clues to create augmented reality games infused with learning opportunities?

In his book, “A New Culture of Learning,” Douglas Thomas and John Seeley Brown talk about the possibility of using gaming as a prime pedagogy for learning. This kind of learning does not just morph content from non-digital forms onto a digital platform. It asks how can we harness the full potential of digital delivery.

In our new book “Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells us about Raising Successful Children,” we challenge the reader to reimagine education for a 21st century global and digital world. Would success be best defined only by how well we read and do math or how well we do on bubble sheet tests?  Or might we want to add  breadth of skills like learning to learn (content), creativity, and critical thinking to the list?  We suggest that success in the new age is best described as learning that helps each of us become collaborative, critical thinkers, creative innovators, and responsible citizens. To achieve that success, we must embrace breadth of skills, complemented by breadth of contexts that includes learning in and out of school and breadth of ages taking into account that learning is lifelong. 

Pokémon GO opens a new vista for exploring learning. The technology is available and widely accessible. The second wave is upon us. Maybe we can link wave 2.1 to learning in a way that will not only augment reality but also the way we master information, think, and interact. Then we will be realizing the full potential of digital platforms as they support #BecomingBrilliant.

       

 

 

Providing children with the breadth of skills they need to become healthy and active members of society requires the kind of learning that cultivates empathy, fosters resilience, encourages creativity, and promotes cognitive processing. Research shows that learning happens best when it is done in a way that is practical, relevant, and engaging—rather than theoretical and decontextualized—and that learning happens everywhere, anytime.

With this in mind, the search is on for innovations that can help transform schooling and education around the globe. Examples of hands-on, minds-on approaches on the ground in a variety of contexts exist, and they are not a luxury to only be enjoyed by those with means. From our ongoing research at the Center for Universal Education and as part of our Skills for a Changing World project, we have identified many instances where innovation is occurring in the teaching and learning environment, even in limited resource settings. We also find the hands-on minds-on approach is happening in and outside schools, with technology and without.

Yet, by and large, education around the world focuses on delivering a narrow set of skills, inside the walls of a school, for a set number of hours and for a set number of years in a child’s life. Classrooms are organized so that teachers transmit knowledge to students, who passively absorb what they are taught.

Fostering breadth of skills requires a transformation of the traditional education model to one that puts research from the learning sciences into action—employing a hands-on, minds-on approach to education that capitalizes on children’s natural propensity to learn.

We like to use “hands-on, minds-on” learning as a catch-all term for educational activities that are dynamic, relevant, and applied. Others have used language to express similar ideas, such as experiential, student-centered, playful, or active learning.

Collectively, these ideas advance approaches that have an empirical basis in the learning sciences, but hands-on, minds-on also appeals to our common sense: Children learn best when they are engaged. Children could be asked the question, “Why does it rain?” But rather than memorize and recite a series of steps for how precipitation occurs, their teacher can ask them to work in groups to produce a report, one which requires them to go outside and observe the rain falling, use critical thinking skills, creativity, and teamwork to problem-solve.

Cultivating breadth of skills will not be achieved by adding additional content or subjects to the curriculum, or adding a new class with its own assessment, but rather requires a different way of teaching the academic subjects already prioritized in any given country’s curriculum. In this way, we can equip young people with mastery of subject-matter content and breadth of skills simultaneously. But changing the dynamic of learning inside a classroom to one where teachers are facilitating students’ knowledge development and applying what they learn to the real world requires rethinking how we train and support teachers, how we organize our education systems, and how we cultivate skills outside the formal system.

Escuela Nueva is one example of low-resource schools that have implemented hands-on, minds-on learning. Started in Colombia in the 1970s, Escuela Nueva transformed rural education for some of the most marginalized children, allowing a flexible and multi-grade model for under-resourced schools, and subsequently has been adapted in more than a dozen countries and in urban contexts. The model allows students to work in small groups on different subjects with learning guides and the teacher acts as facilitator rather than instructor. Students progress at their own pace, with a competency-based approach  to achieve the standards of each grade level.

In other instances, hands on, minds-on learning extends beyond the classroom to reach out-of-school children. Can’t Wait to Learn (formerly eLearning Sudan) powerfully illustrates this in a conflict-affected region. This innovative model digitized the national curriculum and delivers it to children in their villages using tablets loaded with custom-built curriculum and personalized games, allowing them to learn at their own pace. Can’t Wait to Learn shows how games can be used to improve learning by enabling children to creatively engage with subject matter in ways that compel them to innovate, imagine, and learn through play. It also illustrates the power of new forms of technology to deliver hands-on, minds-on learning when resources are scarce.

In a higher resource environment, a private school in Mumbai uses technology to infuse active learning throughout their school. R.N. Podar School considers itself to be a laboratory of experimentation and has pioneered a “flipped learning” approach to the classroom, meaning students watch prerecorded lessons at home, freeing up classroom time to engage with teachers in more meaningful ways through problem solving, discussion, and the application of knowledge to think through real-world challenges. They partner with many technology companies, aiming to use cutting-edge applications for teaching and learning, plus communicating with parents and the community. This approach has helped it become one of the highest achieving schools in the country.

Implementing a hands-on, minds-on approach at a large scale will take a number of transformations within schools. Teachers need to be supported and unburdened from many non-teaching tasks to focus on facilitating students’ learning. Education needs to be made a “team sport,” where communities and partners from other sectors engage more heavily in educating our youth. And finally, schools and programs will need to streamline their administrative functions so more human and financial resources can be focused on teaching and learning.

Over the coming weeks, we will explore these other types of innovations and take a look at what is happening on the ground.

       

 

 

These case studies focus on a range of topics—from teacher development to financial literacy to early grade reading to technological innovation—each unpacking the factors behind their expansion and increased scope of impact.

In each case study, you will find the following:

• An at a glance overview of the program or policy;
• Background on the intervention’s inception, organizational model, and scaling story;
• Evidence of the case study’s impact on improving learning outcomes;
• A timeline of the case study’s key scaling events;
• An analysis of the case study’s scaling experiences, including the key drivers that have contributed to, or in some instances impeded, the process; and
• A synthesis of the case study’s lessons learned.

Rich with detail, these case studies offer valuable insight to help current and future education interventions expand access and improve education quality for children and youth around the world.

To learn more about the Millions Learning case studies, please visit our interactive case studies and/or watch our case study videos.

       

 

 

These case studies focus on a range of topics—from teacher development to financial literacy to early grade reading to technological innovation—each unpacking the factors behind their expansion and increased scope of impact, with the ultimate goal of offering valuable insight to help current and future education interventions expand access and improve education quality for children and youth around the world.

Aflatoun »
Scaling social and financial education through a global franchise

Bridge International Academies »
Delivering quality education at a low cost in Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda

Educate! »
Riding the reform wave to scale up youth entrepreneurship in Uganda

INJAZ »
Engaging the private sector for greater youth employability in Jordan

Lesson Study »
Scaling up peer-to-peer learning forteachers in Zambia

Media Center »
Innovating with distance learningin Amazonas, Brazil

Pratham’s Read India Program »
Taking small steps toward learning at scale

Room to Read »
Scaling up literacy through localized solutions across Asia and Africa

Sesame Street »
Combining education and entertainment to bring early childhood education to children around the world

Sistema de Aprendizaje Tutorial »
Redefining rural secondary education in Latin America

Teach For All »
Building a pipeline of future education leaders around the world

Worldreader »
Creating a culture of e-reading around the globe

About Millions Learning

The Millions Learning project seeks to identify where and how education interventions are scaling quality learning for children and youth in low- and middle-income countries around the world.

• Join the Twitter conversation at #MillionsLearning
• Learn more about our April 18 and 19 launch event
• Read our Getting Millions to Learn blog series
• Watch our Millions Learning video with Jenny Perlman Robinson

      

 

 

Schools, teachers, parents, and students in rich and poor countries alike must transform the teaching and learning environment to catch up and keep pace with rapid advances in technology, major changes to the world of work, and to solve complex global challenges. This means mastering literacy, numeracy, and content in traditional academic subjects, but also requires young people who can think critically, solve problems and collaborate with diverse groups of people. Rather than a narrow set of competencies, education must deliver the breadth of skills urgently needed not only in the labor market but also for helping solve some of the most world’s most pressing social problems. 

Since the mid-20th century interpersonal and analytical skills have across the globe been increasingly in demand and will continue to as technology automates many occupations. But currently these skills are lacking in the labor market. In a global survey of employers in developing and developed countries alike, 17 percent reported difficulty hiring talent due to a lack of “workplace competencies” like communication, problem solving, creativity, and teamwork.    

Cultivating these skills requires new models of education and schooling; traditional classrooms that task teachers with transmitting content for students to learn will not suffice.

Today’s classrooms also need to do a better job of ensuring everyone is included.  From poor neighborhoods in the United States to rural villages in Nigeria—many of the world’s education systems are deeply inequitable. Globally there are 650 million children around the world who have not even reached basic developmental and learning milestones. There are an estimated 200 million children not developing to their potential in their first five years of life, including not meeting basic socio-emotional and cognitive growth. There are 250 million children who have not learned the very basics of reading or math, half of whom have spent four years in school and half of whom have either never entered a classroom or dropped out before fourth grade. There are also an estimated 200 million youth who do not have the basic literacy and numeracy skills needed for learning further skills for work. The vast majority of these children and youth are poor, living in the poorest countries in the world and in forgotten areas such as urban slums or remote villages.  Many also are members of ethnic or linguistic minorities, living in communities affected by extreme violence or armed conflict, or living with disabilities. 

All children, including those left behind, deserve learning opportunities that help them develop to their full potential and cultivate the breadth of skills needed for succeeding today and in the future.  

The good news is that there is renewed global consensus to do just this. The United Nations Sustainable Development goals, adopted by the 193 countries of the U.N. General Assembly in September 2015, calls for concerted actions to help children and youth develop the skills they need from early childhood through adolescence.  With this in mind, our center’s Skills for a Changing World project is conducting research on how to help children globally develop the breadth of skills. We are examining the changes needed in policy and practice both in and out of school to positively impact young children’s development through their educational career.

One question we are examining in depth is how to massively accelerate progress both in improving learning outcomes across the breadth of skills and improving education equity. It is clear that a new path for educational reform is needed to quickly help all children develop the skills they need. In fact, in our recent analysis we found that developing regions are approximately 100 years behind developed regions in many measures of education related to school completion and learning outcomes. Most shocking is that based on business as usual, it is projected that it will take another century to close those gaps.

Luckily, there is reason to hope. We have found that in and out of classrooms, in poor and wealthy communities alike, innovators around the globe are implementing new approaches and solutions that promote the “hands on, minds on” learning strategies that will help achieve breadth of skills for all. Many innovations are finding ways to unburden and support teachers so they can focus on facilitating learning and evidenced-based practices. Other innovations look to how we can involve communities and diverse partners to improve education, and others are streamlining administrative tasks so more resources can be channeled into teaching and learning.

We will explore these themes of innovation and look at interesting examples already in action over the coming weeks. In some cases these approaches are new and employ cutting-edge technology, while others have been around for decades. We have drawn from our recent study Millions Learning as well as a diverse array of existing and new research on education innovation to inform our research and highlight key principles of innovation in action.