How Learning Continued during the COVID-19 Pandemic

34. Peru: Teach for Peru

Franco Mosso
Enseña Peru

Fernando Reimers
Harvard Graduate School of Education

Abstract

Type of intervention: non-governmental

Website: www.ensenaperu.org

General description

Enseña Perú is a non-profit organisation founded in 2009 with the mission to organise a movement of collective leadership that catalyses educational transformations across Peru that aim to close gaps in educational opportunity. To pursue its mission, Enseña Perú runs experiential leadership programmes for teachers, school principals, regional and local leaders in education, student leaders, and professionals from various backgrounds. Every participant of the programmes applies their learning to impact the lives of students in their communities, either through teaching or through projects that impact student learning. Enseña Perú is part of Teach for All, a global network of 53 independent partner organisations that collaborate in accelerating the network progress as partners, teachers and alumni exchange innovations across borders. A core programme of all partner organisations includes recruiting diverse and highly qualified college graduates and placing them as teachers in high poverty schools for two years, with the expectation that this will both support the education of the children they serve during those two years, as well as develop leadership capacities among participants that will translate into a long-term commitment to addressing equity gaps in education.

Enseña Perú seeks to catalyse the transformation of education in Peru so that students and participants can achieve results way beyond what would normally be expected, thanks to the collective leadership of a growing network of diverse education leaders encompassing multiple roles and levels. Currently, close to 300 participants are in the leadership programmes. Of these, 130 are professionals from various backgrounds committed to a two-year programme where they teach children and learn about leadership; 120 of them are existing teachers and principals from the public sector who enrol in a one-year programme called “Qué Maestro” (What a Teacher) to strengthen their leadership and pedagogical skills. Moreover, ten local district leaders supervise and provide teachers with professional development opportunities in “Qué Maestro”. Finally, approximately 40 student leaders from 10th to 12th grade go through a three-month student leadership programme. In total, the organisation directly impacts over 10 000 students across 10 regions in the coast, highlands and jungle of Peru. Enseña Perú also hosts a biannual conference called Ayni, which convenes 1 300 leaders from across the country to rethink education and learn together as a way to support collective leadership on behalf of transforming education.

With the advent of the COVID-19 crisis, schools in Peru closed on 12 March and the Ministry of Education led a nationwide strategy called “Aprendo en Casa” (see previous note) in collaboration with several private and non-profit organisations. Enseña Perú was one of those partner organisations. It developed and implemented a four-prong strategy to contribute to educational continuity for marginalised students. These included migrating all the leadership programmes to a virtual learning ecosystem where participants from every programme could continue to grow and support each other in a community of practice, enabling teacher creativity through virtual hackathons of educational projects and agile research-based protocols that teachers can use to help their students develop 21st century competencies using phone calls, text messages and WhatsApp interactions. In addition, Enseña Perú sought to augment its impact beyond the 10 000 students it served directly, partnering with the Ministry of Education to implement four system-wide impact initiatives:

1. The joint creation and production of TV and radio sessions for close to 2.5 million students from Grades 5-12 nationwide.

2. The creation of a virtual programme for 30% of all district leaders across the country on how to develop 21st century competencies from the local policy standpoint. It was offered from 23 April to 10 June.

3. Mobilising 1 000 volunteers to gather data from 15 000 families on emotional well-being, connectivity and quality of learning, and preparing a study to amplify the Peruvian students’ voices about how they are living this crisis so that this information could inform policy decisions.

4. Convening a national “Informed Dialogue” in partnership with Harvard’s Global Education Innovation Initiative to discuss the implications of the GEII-OECD “framework to support a strategy for educational continuity during the COVID-19 pandemic”.

Throughout this strategy, Enseña Perú seeks to design effective education programmes that support educational continuity, grounded on a solid combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches which continue to enable creativity and collective leadership across the country, which remains essential for sustaining quality learning during the pandemic.

The following timeline details some of the most important dates during this case study:

• During the week of 9 March, the ministry announced that students would not be going to school.

• On 11 March, the ministry announced that classes would be suspended in all schools starting on 12 March. Enseña Perú starts planning its internal strategy, stopping national in-person retreats and initiating transportation of staff and participants to safety.

• On 12 March, Enseña Perú initiates co-ordination with the ministry on possible joint efforts.

• On 15 March, authorities announce the national quarantine and that teachers and school principals would also stop going to school.

• On 6 April, classes began for students across the country through the national distance education campaign “Aprendo en Casa” on TV, the radio and the Internet, an initiative of the Ministry of Education.

• On 21 April, the “Informed Dialogue” took place with nearly 300 education leaders in Peru. At the same time, during the following weeks, the task force of volunteers started gathering data from families.

• On 23 April, the virtual programme for district leaders was launched. Attendance of the first sessions was close to 700 district leaders.

• On 4 May, the ministry aired the second season of “Aprendo en Casa”. The task force of Enseña Peru alumni and the Ministry of Education jointly created the TV and radio education programmes of this second season. The programmes were offered to all Peruvian students from 5th to 12th grade.

The process of strategy development was collaborative. The different initiatives were discussed by representatives of both organisations and once key concepts were developed, Enseña Perú involved alumni from its programmes, teachers on the ground, staff members and allies to develop the specific details of implementation.

For Enseña Peru, this strategy was possible partly through redirecting the resources of its own team to these initiatives, mainly those in charge of relationships with the government both nationally and locally. The course of district leaders was ran by staff using courses developed internally for the participants of the leadership programmes.

Main problems addressed

This strategy aimed to address several problems:

• Reaching students in rural and urban areas without an Internet connection. Out of the more than 7.5 million students in Peru, more than 1.3 million live in rural areas, where less than 5% have access to the Internet. There are also many students without access to the Internet in urban areas. The potential risk of the crisis was that these students would be left behind with few learning opportunities. This is why the initiative includes developing high-quality educational materials to be broadcast on national TV and radio.

• Making families and students provide information and feedback and contribute to the country’s management of the crisis. In this rapidly evolving crisis, students’ family members became even more important as contributors to the educational process and students’ learning outcomes. Moreover, students were rarely asked to contribute their input to be part of the solutions of the COVID-19 strategy. Gathering information from these local actors was a way to inform the Ministry of Education’s strategy, and to include these key stakeholders’ voice as part of the collective solution.

• Supporting teachers in their adaptive challenge. Over 500 000 primary and secondary teachers faced this once in a lifetime challenge to teach without being in the presence of their students. In the midst of adapting to an already ongoing curriculum reform (in 2016 Peru launched a 21st century competency-based national curriculum), they now also had to adapt this competency-based teaching and learning through distance education.

• Supporting local education district leaders. Like teachers, local leaders were also grappling with how to lead their districts to continue to improve their students’ competencies during the crisis. They were at the crossroads of the curriculum reform, the ministry’s COVID-19 strategy guidelines and teachers’ demands. While comprised of valuable master teachers, district leaders have historically not received consistent training to help drive change in their regions.

• Developing institutional resources to ensure education continuity. As was the case around the world, the ministry needed to expand its capacity through alliances to achieve three goals: 1) sustain the production of TV and radio materials for 7.5 million students; 2) manage the change with teachers, school principals and local leaders in education; and 3) keep receiving bottom-up feedback to steer the COVID-19 strategy.

The main feature of this strategy is its aim to activate collective leadership at all levels of the system. All actors are viewed as potential leaders who can contribute to finding educational solutions, and are key to generate processes and initiatives that effectively combine each stakeholder’s value added. Also, the organisation’s strategy was completely integrated with the ministry’s strategy. Enseña Perú has strong connections at all levels of the system and that is why the organisation contributed with national priorities in this multi-stakeholder strategy. Furthermore, the crisis also presents opportunities to move forward in changing traditional education paradigms. Enseña Perú’s approach to change management allows every initiative to become an opportunity to collectively change education in deep ways (such as how to teach, how to learn, how to collaborate, how to lead local policy).

Mobilising and developing resources

Across all initiatives, three main factors enabled the strategy: 1) the mindset of collective leadership (cultural); 2) the networks created at all levels around the alumni of the leadership programmes (networks); and 3) previously created content modules of education and leadership and a team already trained to develop more content (knowledge and practice). In each of the initiatives, some resources were already developed and just needed to be enhanced or redirected, but new resources were also developed.

• The “Aprendo en Casa” strategy of TV and radio lessons for students. The Ministry of Education established a TV and radio production team to turn lessons into TV and radio programmes. They selected a number of theatre and TV drama actors and educators to record the sessions in TV and radio format. For the sessions that started on 4 May, Enseña Perú mobilised a taskforce of 25 education specialists, most of whom were experienced alumni from its leadership programmes: they represented nearly 30% of the overall staff that developed the TV lessons for the entire country (including the TV production team). This Enseña Perú task force creates 30 lessons per week from 5th to 12th grade, so approximately 250 sessions in a 2-month period and nearly 60% of the total lessons produced by the ministry. At this point, the alliance will reassess its course of action with the Aprendo en Casa campaign. The ministry also developed a YouTube channel and a web portal where all the lessons are uploaded for students who have access to the Internet, and where other organisations also upload educational content (such as Khan Academy, Check, ANIA, Fundación Telefónica, among others).

• The development of protocols and guidelines to learn and teach during COVID-19. Enseña Perú developed research-based policy documents and trainings designed specifically to help teachers lead competency-based education during the quarantine. For example, it developed a four-stage process for teachers to interact with students who have only a phone connection as well as new tools for teachers to constantly monitor the development of students’ competencies and agency. A protocol was developed specifically for leading and evaluating 21st century competencies in contexts of large groups that included training teachers in four principles: 1) how to automatise feedback without an Internet connection; 2) how to lead peer-based feedback; 3) how to code qualitative data for large groups; and 4) how to target students who need one-on-one support (Box 34.1). Teachers in the field reviewed the protocols to ensure they responded to their more pressing needs.

• The transformation of all leadership programmes to a virtual ecosystem. All of the already existing sessions of the leadership programmes were transformed into virtual formats designed to be ran with Zoom in a highly dynamic and collaborative way. They combined teachers and principals from different regions. The education team at Enseña Perú developed new online sessions and modules of leadership and education, relying on the contributions of alumni from the programme and other specialists. Enseña Perú invested in expanding its capacity to hold online collaborative learning sessions of 100-300 participants.

• The competency-based virtual module for local district leaders. Enseña Perú co-ordinated with the Ministry of Education to invite all district leaders to take its training module on how to lead 21st century competency-based education. It is comprised of ten sessions, including personalised feedback on demand, simulations, professional learning communities, focalised lectures and selected readings. Close to 1 000 of the country’s 3 000 district leaders responded to the call and signed themselves up, with 22 of the 24 regions represented. To sustain this effort, Enseña Perú invited alumni from the leadership programmes to become teaching assistants of the virtual module, and started to train them virtually before the launch of the course with the local leaders.

• The student voice study. A group of student leaders, alumni and participants from the leadership programmes and staff members of Enseña Perú are co-ordinating a study that will survey students across the country to understand how they are coping with distance education and to bring their voices to the national discussion.

Box 34.1. The four-stage process to develop 21st century competencies during COVID-19

1. Connecting with the student and aligning expectations about competency development: this is typically a telephone conversation where the teacher and the student get to know each other and discuss the competencies they will develop. For small children, the conversation may be with the guardian.

2. Agreeing on a project or challenge that mobilises the competencies: both student and teacher clarify expectations and procedures, taking into consideration the Aprendo en Casa content and contextualising to their context.

3. Gathering and analysing competency-based evidence: students, exercising agency in their learning, provide teachers with evidence of their growth, whether by video, pictures, audio or personal interviews. The teacher analyses the evidence and crafts transformational feedback.

4. Joint feedback and reprioritising: teachers deliver feedback to their student to value their progress and further challenge them. The student provides feedback to the teacher about their experience, then they both align again to continue the process (back to Step 1.)

Fostering effective use and learning

Enseña Perú’s strategy includes all levels of leadership. Enseña Perú seeks to help stakeholders feel that they are a part of the creation, implementation or the reshaping of the strategy.

• Seeing students, teachers and local districts as shapers of the initiative. Examples of this are the co-creation of protocols with teachers in the field, the creation of sessions ran by participants of the leadership programme, the participation of students in the student voice study.

• Providing mechanisms for bottom-up feedback to the initiatives. Examples of this are the survey to local district leaders to reshape the virtual module they are taking, peer action groups where district leaders are starting to gather to reshape teacher education using the competency‑based principles, the communication channel between teachers and designers of the TV and radio lessons.

• Highlighting examples from the field. Managing change implies a technical aspect and an emotional aspect. Therefore, to continue to inspire adoption and reshaping of new ways of teaching and learning, Enseña Perú regularly highlights examples of best practice from the field through WhatsApp groups and communications. It also fosters the culture for those examples to be shared spontaneously by members of the movement.

• Collaboration and collective creativity with purpose. Implementation is enhanced if participants see the initiative as an inspiring and practical way to solve their most pressing problems, whether it is the use of a protocol or a course or a collective action strategy. An example of this is part of the module of 21st century competency-based education, which involves hackathons between teachers from different disciplines creating educational projects to implement with their students during the quarantine.

Implementation challenges

Learning from the experience, Enseña Perú faced the following challenges:

• As the strategy is network-based, changes in peoples’ lives lead to turnover. When Enseña Perú organised the taskforces to design and deliver the course of district leaders and the production of instructional lessons of Aprendo en Casa, some staff from Enseña Perú and members of the taskforce (alumni from the leadership programmes) who were in charge of designing lessons, recording sessions or providing personalised feedback had to leave the initiative because of changes in their professional or personal lives (e.g. they lost their job, relatives became in need). Replacements came in fast, but without a strong pipeline of leadership at all levels, this would make the solution difficult to implement.

• Prioritising within the healthy flow of divergence and convergence in ideas. A strategy that combines top-down and bottom-up collaboration naturally spurs a number of creative ideas. While it is important for leaders to allow for creativity, choosing two to four strategic priorities or programmes infused by the collective creativity was essential to remain effective on the ground.

• Cost of connectivity. Before the launch of Aprendo en Casa, Enseña Perú’s leadership programmes included approximately 10-12 sessions per week for teachers, principals and local education leaders. It became clear that this was too costly in data use for people connecting through their personal devices. Some participants of the virtual module for district leaders also had problems engaging due to connectivity problems. The government solved part of the problem by making the virtual platform of Aprendo en Casa free to users in terms of Internet data.

Monitoring success

The strategy’s success is measured through its reach, its use and users’ competency growth. For this, Enseña Perú is using data from the ministry and its own data and evaluation and monitoring systems.

• Reach: It is estimated that 1.5 million out of the 2.5 million students followed the TV or radio sessions and 70% of students are being reached to develop their 21st century competencies.

• Quality and satisfaction: Students’ competency growth is monitored through the use of portfolios of student work. Each teacher enrolled in the leadership programme accumulates evidence in the form of videos, WhatsApp audios and pictures of student work and monitors progress through the four-phase protocol described above. Regarding the quality and use, the training in the leadership programmes and in the virtual module offered to district leaders, Enseña Perú uses a satisfaction survey, teacher portfolios and the performance of district leaders in a simulation.

Adaptability to new contexts

Some of the ideas of this collective leadership strategy are transferable to countries or states where a significant percentage of students are in rural schools lacking Internet connectivity. However, the ideas of being network-based, becoming learning coalitions of organisations, and combining top-down and bottom‑up actions are applicable to all countries.

If programmes, communications and collaboration are designed for a context of distance education, it is highly scalable as long as teachers, principals and local education leaders have an Internet connection.

Enseña Perú will continue to implement the core of the solutions after the COVID-19 crisis is over: virtual trainings; in-person school education combined with WhatsApp materials created from many parts of the country; professional virtual learning communities of district leaders; data and research from the field to inform policy-making decisions.

Box 34.2. Key points to keep in mind for a successful adaptation

1. Transform programmes to digital experiences, while keeping in touch with connectivity issues of and costs for participants.

2. Mobilise existing networks to catalyse system change projects and provide clear explanations on how they can serve the country.

3. Understand the priorities of the Ministry of Education and regional authorities and create alliances that build on each other’s strengths while actively managing the health of the collaboration.

4. Include a solid combination of top-down and bottom-up dynamics in the programmes: provide guidelines, have a feedback mechanism, promote collective creativity and make the programme visible.

5. Sustain relationships at all levels of the system, from the ministry to the student. Collect information to influence design and redesign.

6. Create the conditions for learning across organisations, with shared data input to take decisions.

7. Work with leaders who can manage the programme content, the change management and communication.

8. Understand the variety of school dynamics from the perspective of users and iterate programmes, sessions and protocols quickly.

9. Devote time to thinking about how the strategy will continue in the future.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to all the students, teachers, parents, principals, local leaders, ministry leaders, participants and alumni from Enseña Perú and staff from Enseña Perú who are joining or rooting for the strategy to be successful.