The Literacy Laboratory Project (LLP) under the Northern Uganda Literacy Program

识字是一个知情、有技能的公民的基础。但在东非，只有不到三分之一的学生具备基本的识字能力。乌干达儿童的表现最差，只有44.5%的儿童通过基本识字测试。三角研究所2009年在乌干达北方进行的一项调查的早期阅读评估数据表明，82%的P2学生不能用当地语言阅读一个单词，而中部地区的P2学生只有51%。与其他非洲国家一样，乌干达的教育系统也存在许多问题，包括教师培训不足，缺乏扫盲教材和优质教学方法，没有跟踪学生成绩的系统，家长、社区和地方官员缺乏支持和倡导子女教育的专门知识。尽管有强有力的母语教育政策，但由于拼写不发达和缺乏许多语言的材料，成功实施母语扫盲方案对包括乌干达在内的非洲国家构成了重大挑战。虽然许多教育干预措施和扫盲计划已经在非洲实施，但总体影响甚微;随着计划效果的进一步降低，扩大规模也被证明是有问题的。自2010年以来，芒果树，一家私营的地方所有的教育工具公司，一直在乌干达北方的一个语言社区试点一个成功的早期扫盲项目。芒果树计划的主要目标包括提高识字率，通过改进有效的教材和教师提高教育质量，并在具有成本效益和可扩展的框架内在学生、家长和社区中培养阅读文化。该干预措施的巨大效益和成本效益的令人信服的证据来自密歇根大学研究人员在2013年和2014年对该计划进行的试点随机评估。扫盲实验室项目将扩大和评估芒果树扫盲方案，该方案的模式提供更高质量的教师指导、获得相关扫盲材料的机会、对学习者评估的包容性方法、家长和社区参与学校活动以及加强扫盲基础设施，以便阅读和写作，特别是用当地语言阅读和写作，成为家庭和社区日常生活中有意义的一部分。这一扩大将测试一个试点和改进的模式，以评估其有效性并测试方案交付模式。根据LLP，密歇根大学的研究人员将在Lango次区域进行为期4年的严格随机对照试验，以衡量教学模式，教师培训和支持监督创新以及扫盲材料和方法对小一至小三学生识字成绩的有效性，并探索扩大规模的公私渠道。我们将研究128所学校，这些学校被随机分配到芒果树的现场官员实施的完整LLP，政府教师导师实施的部分计划，或对照组。这项研究还将随机选择教学材料，以评估它们对有效教学的贡献。这项研究将收集一套丰富的学生，家长，教师，课堂和学校一级的纵向数据。学习将主要通过埃格拉和早期写作评估分数的提高来衡量。我们的目标是：1）证明对学习的巨大影响是可能的（如2013年试点评估结果所示）; 2）表明通过培训、教学和学习材料的正确组合以及正确的支持，可以支持教师有效地进行扫盲教学-即使在农村，3）测试和评估大规模实施的经济方法，以确定对非洲学校学生学习和教师绩效的物有所值的影响。

Literacy is the foundation for an informed, skilled citizenry. But in East Africa, less than 1/3 of pupils possess basic literacy skills. Ugandan children perform the worst; only 44.5 percent pass basic literacy tests. Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) data from a Research Triangle Institute survey in northern Uganda in 2009 indicated that 82% of P2 pupils could not read a single word in the local language, compared to 51% of P2 pupils in the central region. Similar to other African countries there are many problems in Uganda's education system, including undertrained teachers, lack of materials and quality methods for teaching literacy, non-existent systems for tracking pupil performance, and parents, communities and local officials that lack the know-how to support and advocate for their children's education. Despite strong mother tongue education policies, due to underdeveloped orthographies and a lack of materials in many languages, implementing successful mother tongue literacy programs poses a significant challenge for African countries, including Uganda. While many educational interventions and literacy programs have been implemented in Africa, impacts have been minimal overall; moving to scale has also proven problematic as program effects reduce further.Since 2010 Mango Tree, a private, locally owned educational tools company, has been piloting a successful early literacy project in one language community in northern Uganda. The main goals of the Mango Tree program include increasing literacy rates, enhancing education quality through improved, effective materials and teachers, and fostering a culture of reading among pupils, parents and communities within a cost-effective and scalable framework. Compelling evidence for the large benefits and cost-effectiveness of the intervention comes from a pilot randomized evaluation of the program conducted by University of Michigan researchers in 2013 and 2014. The Literacy Laboratory Project (LLP) will scale up and evaluate the Mango Tree literacy program, whose model delivers better-quality teacher instruction, access to relevant literacy materials, inclusive approaches to learner assessment, parental and community engagement in schools and strengthening literacy infrastructure so that reading and writing, especially in local languages, becomes a meaningful part of daily life in households and communities. This scale-up will test a piloted and improved model to evaluate its effectiveness and test the mode of program delivery. Under the LLP, researchers from the University of Michigan will conduct a rigorous randomized control trial of the program in the Lango Sub-region over 4 years to measure the effectiveness of the instructional model, teacher training and support supervision innovations and literacy materials and methods on Primary 1- Primary 3 pupils' literacy achievement and explore public-private avenues for scale-up. We will study 128 schools, which are randomly assigned to either the full LLP implemented by Mango Tree's field officers, a partial-program implemented by Government Teacher Tutors, or a control group. The study will also randomize instructional materials to evaluate their contribution to effective teaching. The study will collect a rich set of pupil, parent, teacher, classroom, and school-level longitudinal data. Learning will be measured principally in terms of improvements in EGRA and Early Grade Writing Assessment scores.Our goals are to: 1) demonstrate that big effects on learning are possible (as the 2013 pilot evaluation results point toward); 2) show that with the right combination of training, teaching and learning materials and correct support, teachers can be supported to effectively teach literacy - even in rural, under-resourced, overcrowded classrooms; and 3) to test and evaluate economic approaches to implementation at scale to determine value-for-money impacts on pupil learning and teacher performance in African schools.