Strengthening the capacity of teachers and school leaders for differentiated learning numeracy
Developing strategies to address learning loss due to COVID 19 in Indonesia
Context
In Indonesia, schools were closed for most of its 62 million students for over 19 months due to COVID-19. The Indonesian Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology has created some programs to address the lost instructional time; however, it is unclear how successful schools will be at implementing the new programs.
One of the strategies is a differentiated learning intervention. Typically, these have targeted teachers as the key lever of change; however, our work in India shows that including school leaders in the intervention provides additional support to teachers, enabling them to better adapt and sustain the practice.
What is the program about?
We wanted to learn more about the following:
-
If teachers provided with a short training on conducting foundational numeracy assessment and differentiated learning can implement the approach
-
If student numeracy outcomes improve in classrooms that implement differentiated learning
-
If additional support from trained school principals can strengthen the results of an education intervention delivered through teachers and sustain the intervention over a longer period of time
This study is a randomized controlled trial implemented in partnership with Inspirasi, our country partner in Indonesia. The program is supported by the Asian Development Bank, UBS Optimus Foundation, Quantedge Advancement Initiative and Octava Foundation.
How it is implemented
Three hundred schools from two low-performing districts in Indonesia were selected to participate in the study. The schools were randomly assigned to one of three groups, two treatment groups and a control group. This project also includes a qualitative study where Grade 4 teachers, school principals, school supervisors, and government officials who are participating in the intervention will be interviewed.
Outcomes
The final results of the study will be available in June 2025.