Ministry, Union, the Church and Teachers: Bolivia's Partners in Innovation. LearnTech Case Study Series, No. 6.
A process of developing and testing an instructional methodology called interactive radio instruction (IRI) was begun in 1986 in order to improve the quality of primary school mathematics in Bolivia. When the development phase was complete and implementation well under way, management of the resultant Radio Learning Project (RLP) passed from the non-governmental organization (NGO), Fe y Alegria, to the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC). Today, seven years after the initial pilot, approximately 600,000 primary-school children have enrolled in the RLP, renamed PARI; more than 8,000 teachers have been trained and certified in the IRI methodology, and in 1992, Radio Math achieved national recognition as the "official" mathematics program of Bolivia. This case study assesses how NGO management sustained RLP continuity, describes how broad-based teacher support laid the base for institutionalization, and looks at how IRI has revolutionized education in Bolivia. Rather than dwell on issues related to methodology or impact, the study assesses the sustainability of PANI from the sociological perspective, focusing on the issues of participation of people and systems key in driving national diffusion and sustainability. An appendix provides a chronology of events. (Contains nine references.) (Author/MAS) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ***********************************************************************
Evaluating large‐scale interactive radio programmes
This article focuses on the challenges involved in conducting evaluations of interactive radio programmes in South Africa with large numbers of schools, teachers, and learners. It focuses on the role such large‐scale evaluation has played during the South African radio learning programme’s development stage, as well as during its subsequent sustained implementation phase. The model evolved for evaluation of interactive radio instruction is based within the context of a shoestring/real‐world evaluation tradition, where funding for internal evaluation has been limited over the period of the programme’s development to scale, necessitating focused use of resources in a longitudinal evaluation design. The evaluation approach is participatory and multimethod, linking the requirements of external summative evaluation conducted for accountability, with data yielded by internal (formative and developmental) evaluation. This is done through internal and formative evaluative studies of limited scope, combined with developmental classroom‐based evaluation based on the logic of project team members working with teachers to promote the programme’s self‐evaluative capacity.
Radio mathematics in Nicaragua.
This the 3rd and final volume in a series documents the success of the Radio Mathematics Project in achieving its major objective of improving the quality of mathematics instruction in the primary schools of Nicaragua. It reports on the work of the Mathematics Project over a 5-year period. The books first 3 chapters provide a historical overview of aspects of the project. In the 1st chapter Jose Gonzalez gives a chronological description of the major events of the 4 1/2 years of the experimental phase of the project. Jamesine Friends follows with a description of the factors that influenced the design of the curriculum materials and how and why those curriculum materials changed shape over the years. In the next chapter Friend describes from a historical perspective the development of the feedback system of formative evaluation that is a vital part of the methodology developed by the project for the production of effective radio-based instruction. The remaining chapters report the results of research conducted during the course of the project. In chapter 4 Barbara Searle and Klaus Galda present a formal evaluation of the effect of the curriculum on childrens mathematical achievement. In the next chapter Edward I. George explores the effect of radio lessons on such outcomes of schooling as achievement attendance failure rates within-year dropout and reenrollment the following school year. Galda and Gonzalez report in chapter 6 the findings of an investigation into the factors Nicaraguan teachers consider when they decide which students to promote. i.e. Chapter 7 Dean Jamison expands and updates work previously reported on the determinants of student failure. In the final chapter Marvin Saballos Galda and Gonzalez discuss a home-audience survey undertaken in the last operational year of the project. Factors contributing to the projects success include: sufficient money and time; understanding and support the project received from its managers within the funding agency; the particular mix of practical and theoretical goals of the project and of the people involved; and the realism with which the design of the curriculum package was approached.