Africa

The Active Teaching & Learning Approaches in Schools (or ATLAS) Project is a partnership between Christian Children Fund-Zambia, Child Fund New Zealand and the International Reading Association. Download the Atlas Project Report

As part of Christian Children's Fund broader mandate to develop child friendly schools, ATLAS seeks to improve the quality of teaching and learning through:

• In-service teachers training in using child-centered, participatory, active methods of teaching
• Teachers exchange program with New Zealand teachers
• Professional development activities: development of a coaching program and creation of Teachers Quality Circles (TQC) to allow teacher to share and reflect on their practice and support each other's progress in applying new methodologies.

This is a pilot project, implemented in close collaboration with the local government and the district education officials; it targets Grade 1-9 teachers in the Mumbwa District (central province, West of Lusaka).

A project funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation which sponsored selected African educators to attend the Pan African Conference on Reading for All in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in August 2009 to participate in the conference and attend an intense 2-day pre-conference workshop to prepare them to compete for the small grant award. Out of a pool of 16 Hewlett-IRA sponsored participants, 4 participants were selected to receive a small grant to carry out an early reading activity in their home countries. Drawing upon IRA’s vast network of literacy specialists around the globe, the Project has provided technical guidance and oversight to the four grantees in Burkina Faso, Senegal, Uganda and Zanzibar to support them in successfully operating their respective early grade reading activities in their home countries.

IRA collaborated with the UNDP in Mauritius to build local capacity for effective instruction in primary schools in Zones d’Education Prioritaire (ZEP). The program developed the capacities of teacher educators, head teachers, and teachers to better support the learning of all pupils. The program utilized two approaches—the Diagnostic Teaching program developed by technical experts from IRA and UNESCO and the Program to Support for Underachieving Primary Schools. These successful approaches were combined to create a single intervention under the authority of the Mauritius Institute of Education (MIE) and in cooperation with the Ministry of Education to create a structure to sustain and support continuous education improvement in Mauritius.

IRA has been UNESCO-Tanzania's technical partner on the Capacity Building for Literacy Policy Development Project since early 2005, when the Diagnostic Teaching Approach, previously field-tested in Ghana and Kenya, was first piloted in Tanzania.

The Project aimed to strengthen key national educators' understanding of developmental literacy instruction and to build Tanzanian institutions capacity to integrate innovative literacy techniques into the national education policies and programs. In close collaboration with the Ministry of Education and UNESCO, IRA designed and implemented training and professional development activities based on the Diagnostic Teaching Approach. These activities introduced educators to reading and teaching techniques that are both innovative and adapted to the local context throughout the Project four components: Teacher Education, Curriculum Development, Assessment and Non Formal/Adult Education. Program beneficiaries include policymakers (Ministry of Education Staff), teacher educators, curriculum development specialists, assessors, inspectors, librarian and administrative staff. IRA experts work with them through a mix of training workshop, professional development activities(conference), literacy materials development, policy dialogue and policy advice.

(2006–2008: The Literacy Hub is a resource developed over a series of discussions between representatives of the G8 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and representatives of the countries making up the Broader Middle East and North Africa region (Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen).

The Literacy Hub was designed to provide policymakers and program developers in the BMENA region with an extensive database of exemplary practices and programs in literacy. The database is a diverse collection of effective programs for achieving basic literacy, academic literacy, or everyday literacy.

(September 2004–present: These UNESCO-sponsored professional development workshops provided techniques for everyday informal assessment to improve literacy instruction. Primary schools and nonformal alternative primary education programs from Kenya (Njoro area), Tanzania (multiple sites), Zanzibar (multiple sites), and Ghana (Winneba area) have participated.