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CIE
Merchandise
Click Here
| Current and Recent Funded Activities |
Updated
February 19, 2008
|
For more details about any of these projects please contact CIE
|
International Development Projects |
Internationalizing
U.S. |
Custom Training Programs |
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Senegal-Gambia Multi-grade (1/08) |
ATLAS - Adult Education (5/07) |
Afghan Masters Group (1/08) |
Other Activities: David Kinsey Dialogue Series
Learning Initiatives for Rural Education - LIRE
In January 2008, CIE began a new project in Senegal and The Gambia focusing on the role of multi-grade classrooms in addressing the challenge of providing primary education in rural areas. The project is supervised by Jacqi Mosselson and Gretchen Rossman as Principal Investigators. They are supported by a team of current 
CIE members, of three of whom visited West Africa in January 2008 to initiate the field work.
The project is known as the Learning Initiatives for Rural Education project (LIRE) and is initially funded for a10-month pilot period from a World Bank Trust Fund. CIE is partnering with the National Council for Negro Women where Mbarou Gassama Mbaye currently serves as a Managing Director in Senegal.
The LIRE Project is designed to increase access to primary schools in low-density population areas in Senegal and The Gambia. Schools in these rural contexts are often configured as either single-teacher schools or two- or three-teacher schools that must serve all levels oftentimes without sufficient teacher resources and teacher training to successfully facilitate student learning. Given these constraints and the pressures of increasing access through EFA policies, the LIRE project will work with multi-grade teachers, school communities, and appropriate education departments to identify 15 schools and provide teacher training in multi-grade pedagogy, curriculum adaptation, classroom management, and action research processes. By the end of this initiative, these 15 schools will incorporate the strategies mentioned above while serving as demonstration sites for future initiatives in multi-grade practices.
Adult Basic Education in New England - A Model for Other Contexts?
The Adult Transitions Longitudinal Study (ATLAS) is a $1 million, five-year social research project funded by the Nellie Mae Education Foundation and conducted by faculty and graduate students from the Center for International Education (CIE) and the Research and Evaluation Methods Program (REMP). The study will document the educational and economic outcomes of adult basic education students who participate in the New England ABE-to-College Transition Project in 2007 and 2008. The Transition Project serves adult basic education students such as those who have earned a GED or other high-school equivalency degree, and who wish to enter college or pursue other forms of post-secondary education. The Project seeks to bridge the
academic gaps between a GED and college-level work through direct instruction and counseling that addresses the social barriers experienced by non-traditional adult students.
The ATLAS study will follow a group of approximately 250 Transition Project students over five years in order to better understand the factors that contribute to or stand in the way of participant success in post-secondary education. The ultimate goal of the ATLAS study is to inform policymakers, program practitioners, students and potential funding organizations about
the educational trajectories of Transition Project participants, as well as the influence of the Transition Project on participants' postsecondary academic success, labor market gains, and family education planning.
The ATLAS research team is led by Dr. Cristine Smith from CIE and Dr. Steven Sireci from REMP, and includes faculty and graduate students from both programs.
Higher Education Project - Afghanistan
The Center for International Education was awarded a five-year, $7.4 million grant as a subcontractor 
on a project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development to develop institutions of secondary teacher training in Afghanistan. CIE is part of a consortium of U.S. partners led by the Academy for Educational Development, which also includes Indiana University. The consortium will work with 16 Afghan universities and four-year teacher training institutes to develop both their institutional capacity and the professional skills of the over 500 faculty members working in education in those institutions.
The project will have five main streams of activity:
a) Institutional Development - which will proceed through an institution-level development process that will lead to a vision and a development plan for each institution
b) Professional Development Centers - each institution will have a center which is both a location where computers, resources and materials are available and where meetings, training activities and local materials development will take place
c) National Leadership Development - Developing the capacity of the Ministry of Higher Education and the Ministry of Education to provide leadership for education
d) Study Abroad - faculty members will be sent overseas (more than 20 will likely come to UMass for masters degrees) for masters degrees, for non-degree skill training, and for focussed study toours.e) Curriculum for Teacher Training - the project will work with faculty to develop subject matter and English language curricula for teacher training as well as to develop faculty skills in modern pedagogy.
Project activities began with a launch workshop held at Kabul Education University (KEU) i
n late April, 2006 and attended by 75 people, including representative teams from each of the 16 partner institutions in Afghanistan. At the workshop the project was presented and working groups addressed a variety of issues including such things as composition of the advisory committee, criteria for making resources available to institutions, and criteria for selecting candidates for overseas degree training. Institutional directors were asked to nominate key individuals to create institutional development teams in their institutions and to begin work on data collection and an appreciated inquiry assessment of their current situation.
CIE will have a team of five full-time staff members concentrating on institutional development and the professional development centers. Other staff will be hired by AED and Indiana University. One of the exciting outcomes will be the development of the capacity of the Kabul Education University - the central institution of higher education in this project - to offer their own 
Master's degree. CIE assist in this effort by drawing upon its recent successful experience helping Chancellor College in Malawi develop two master's degrees in education.
CIE looks forward to further developing its relationship with KEU and with the education sector in Afghanistan. We are also excited by the prospect of having Afghan students in our Masters program at CIE.
Afghan Study Preparation Group - Fall 2007
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Back Row - Barikzai, Ali, Tariq, Yaqubi |
As part of the Higher Education Project in Afghanistan, seven Afghan students arrived at CIE for the Fall 2007 semester. Each of them is a member of the Faculty of Education in an Institution of Higher Education and all are engaged in the training of secondary school teachers in Afghanistan. During the Fall Semester they will be taking intensive English classes, working on developing study and computer skills, and preparing for further study. Those who successfully complete the program will be admitted into a Masters degree program at CIE.
Siddiqullah Barikzai
Kabul Education University - Computer ScienceDelawar Darmal
Baghlan Higher Education Institute - Geography
Mohammad Tariq Habibyar
Herat University - English LanguageChaman Ali Hikmat
Bamyan University - English
Ahmad Khalid Mowahed
Balkh University - MathematicsSayed Ahmad Javid Mussawy
Baghlan Higher Education Institute - English & Literature
Sayed Sarwar Yaqubi
Jowzjan Higher Education Institute - Mathematics
Global Horizons
Global Horizon's primary mission is to promote a greater awareness of the world community in Massachusetts' schools K-12 by providing global and multicultural education curriculum resources and training to educators throughout the Western Massachusetts region. The project has a resource center located at the Center for International Education at Hills South/University of Massachusetts. In addition, Global Horizons is now an Associated Schools Project under UNESCO vis ASPnet/USA.
The Global Horizons project is funded by the Massachusetts' Global Education Consortium under the Massachusetts' Department of Education. The project is currently directed by Professor Jacqi Mosselson and managed by Abraham Sineta.
Welcome to Global Horizons for Spring 2008 !
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* Earn 10 PDPs and a STIPEND * Network with other global educators * Lesson plans and teaching materials available * Meals and Refreshments provided |
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May 3, 2008
Refugees & Immigrants: Tools and strategies for inclusive Education
In this workshop we will provide an overview of refugee flows globally, and then look at what is involved and prioritized in refugee education in the post-conflict setting. We will show a short film on learning conditions at a refugee camp in Kenya. We will then use an interactive approach to facilitate a discussion on the experiences of refugees and immigrants in the K-12 setting, and of the impact of this global phenomenon on the local classrooms. The goals of these activities are to lead to understanding of what inclusive education is as a discourse and how it relates more generally to intercultural education.
The workshop will tackle the practical ways of how we can adapt lesson plans to ensure that we are responding effectively to both the needs of the local and refugee/immigrant students. Simultaneously, we will discuss strategies for tapping the rich source of experience that refugees/immigrant students offer to enrich the pedagogy of teaching history, social studies, geography, among other subject areas
In addition, the cultural diversity of teaching techniques will also be covered, for example, an exercise in which which we will involve practical peer to peer classroom interactions that engage non-immigrant and immigrant students alike in concrete exercises for the classroom.
The workshop will take place from 9am to approximately 3pm at 275 Hills South on the UMass campus (Unless otherwise noted). Parking is free in front of the University Research Center behind Hills South.
For more information or to register, please contact Abraham Sineta
at global@educ.umass.edu or 413-545-4178 call CIE at 413-545-0465
In May 2004, the Center for International Education at UMass was awarded a contract to develop basic literacy and health skills for 
women in Afghanistan. The project, called Learning for Life, is expected to reach more than 5,000 women, providing them with basic education equivalence with an emphasis on health. The program is funded by a $4.3 million contract from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). For this project, the CIE is a sub-contractor to Management Services for Health (MSH) under the Rural Expansion of Afghanistan Community-based Healthcare (REACH) project. CIE in turn has sub-contracted with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) to carry out the implementation of the project in 12 provinces in Afghanistan in collaboration with local NGOs.
The principle goal of Learning for Life is to improve the literacy and mathematical skills of women while increasing knowledge about health related concerns. Health services cannot be delivered effectively without trained women professionals. Because of the lack of access to education, there are few women who have the basic education needed to be eligible for training in the health professions. Women who successfully complete various levels will become eligible for training as community health workers or community midwives under programs offered by the REACH project.
For the Learning for Life project, CIE is designing an innovative instructional 
program that enables rural women to gain literacy and numeracy skills quickly. The program will use learning centers where women will attend classes for several hours each day. Using nonformal and gender-sensitive pedagogies, local facilitators will guide the women through a series of learning milestones adapted as equivalencies from the formal primary school curriculum. The milestones will focus on literacy (listening, speaking, reading and writing), mathematics, and health sciences.
Learning Centers were opened in two provinces in April 2005, and plans are now in place to open a total of almost 400 learning centers by July 2005 in 12 provinces of Afghanistan. The majority of the learners are enrolled in the first level, equivalent to grades 1-3. 
Smaller numbers are will be enrolled at the second level – Grades 4-6. An additional group will be in a bridging program in six provinces that prepares women to take the entrance exam for the Community Midwife Training program.
During the initial phases of the project many CIE folks have worked on the project or provided technical and logistical support. They include: Ash Hartwell and DRE, Bro Russell, the project director for the first year, Vachel Miller, Anita Anastacio, Frank McNerney, Monica Gomes, Mainus Sultan, and Barbara Gravin Wilbur. As of June 2005 Dr. Vickie Sigman began work as the new project director, bringing with her many years of management and teaching/learning experience. Lisa Deyo of MSH provides technical guidance and oversight for the project. [6-05]
Education Policy, Planning and Finance
Institute for Malawian Educators
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Grace Milner, Chikondi Maleta, Themba Chirwa, Tinkhani Msonda |
For the past three years, the Center for International Education has worked with the USAID funded University Partnerships for Institutional Capacity Building (UPIC) in Education program by leading the Advanced Degree Activity (ADA) project. One function of the ADA project is to assist and support the Ministry of Education. While CIE has previously conducted several short-term training programs in Malawi, this fall, CIE is offering an intensive, four-month Policy, Planning, and Finance Institute for officers of the Ministry of Education's Planning Division.
Visiting scholars Grace Milner, Chikondi Maleta, Themba Chirwa, and Tinkhani Msonda are taking courses that directly relate to their work with the Planning Division of the Ministry of Education including: Education Finance in Developing Countries, Policy Issues in International Education, and Mixed Methods in Monitoring and Evaluation. The scholars are also participating in a special seminar where they will focus on individual projects relevant to the Planning Division that can be implemented after they return to the Ministry of Education..
In addition to taking courses and participating in a weekly seminar, the scholars will meet with local school administrators to learn about Amherst's local school system and will travel to Boston to meet with state education officials to learn about the statewide school system of Massachusetts.
The four visiting scholars join a larger group of ten Malawians who are currently pursuing degrees at the Center. An addtional twelve other Malawians have already received degrees and returned to work in Malawi. Using theories, concepts, and tools learned at CIE, this group of twenty-six Malawians will work together to strengthen Malawi's education sector in areas of Policy, Planning, and Leadership as well as Testing and Measurement.
CIE and the Afghan University for Education
In April of 2003 CIE was awarded
a grant by the Association Liaison Office
of the U.S.State Department. The award supports a partnership between
CIE with the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts
Amherst and the Afghan University for Education (AUE) to build local
institutional capacity for rapid teacher training in basic education.
In a letter to the Center for International Education, Dr. Sharif
Fayez, the Minister of Higher Education, wrote, I would like to
see novel, innovative, creative, and cutting edge teacher education
in Afghanistan. . . . We must train a new breed of teachers in an
entirely new way for a new national and global reality.
Over the past two years, CIE has
held a series of five workshops at the university in Kabul to train
AUE faculty in active learning methods. Nearly 35 members of th
e
faculty--as well as ten local teachers and sevenmembers from the Ministry
of Education-have participated in these workshops. Toculminate
the training process, the AUE participants have organized their own
local workshops on active learning methods. These participants have
organized training sessions in six provinces, at locations including
regional teacher-training institutes and Ministry of Education regional
centers. Over 370 teachers have attended these sessions, many of whom
had never received a day of training beyond their initial pre-service
experience many years earlier.
The CIE-AUE partnership has achieved
its goal of building capacity at AUE for rapid teacher training using
active learning strategies. The number of participants and trainees
involved has far exceeded the objectives in the original grant proposal.
One of the significant outputs from the workshops is a new manual,
designed and produced by the AUE faculty participants, for training
trainers in active learning techniques. This manual will be published
in Dari in August 2004 and will be made available for general use
in several major teacher-training national efforts. This publication
also forms the basis for further publications at AUE.
CIE and AUE are establishing a Center
for Accelerated Learning at AUE to support continued project activities.
The Center will house project materials, provide logistical support
for workshops and other linkage activities, and provide translation
services. Some of these activities are already in place.
CIE will continue working with faculty at AUE to provide opportunities for them to become directly involved with several field projects in Afghanistan. Participants are now recognized as some of the most highly trained personnel in modern pedagogical methods in the entire country. Consequently, there is growing demand for their services in a variety of Minister supported projects including several new literacy programs and the national teacher education project. (7/04)
Sudan Basic Education Program
The Center for International Education
(CIE), as a member of the consortium headed by CARE, is 
part
of this $23 million USAID-funded project, which aims to increase access
to quality education in southern Sudan. The main theme of the Sudan
Basic Education Program (SBEP) that forms the foundation of all program
components is local capacity building. The project will work focus
on professional capacity development, institutional strengthening,
and participatory process for community ownership. The SBEP will span
the course of five years, from 2002-2007, in four regions of the southern
Sudan: Bahr el Ghazal, Eastern Equatoria, Western Equatoria, and Upper
Nile.
The implementation of this project is through a consortium of non-governmental
organizations, coordinated and led by CARE (visit
CARE's SBEP site). Other consortium members include American Institutes
for Research (AIR), and the New Sudan Council of Churches. The three
major project components are to improve teacher development programs,
increase the capacity of primary and secondary schools to deliver
quality education, especially for girls, and to improve non-formal
education for out-of-school youth and adult learners. Within the overall
aims of the project, CIE has primary responsibility for professional
capacity development through the institutional linkages component
and for increasing life-long learning opportunities, through the non-formal
education component.
Sudanese institutions participating in the linkages component include
the Institute for Development, Environment and Agricultural Sciences
(IDEAS), four regional teacher-training institutes (RTTIs), and 
theCurriculum
Steering Committee. These institutes partner with institutes from
the East Africa region, such as Makerere and Kyambogo Universities
in Uganda and the Kenya Institute of Education, in their efforts to
build a more unified and comprehensive teacher education curriculum,
and common process for teacher certification. These linkages also
build administrative, management, and financial capacity for the Sudanese
institutions, establish partnerships between specific RTTIs and comparable
Primary Teachers' Colleges (PTCs) in northern Uganda, utilize an interim,
external teacher examination and certification system while concurrently
developing a competency-based system to be implemented in Sudan, and
develop IDEAS into a recognized tertiary institution.
The non-formal education component of SBEP project focuses on increasing
life-long learning opportunities, with a focus on out-of-school youth
and girls. As one aspect of this component, CIE will strengthen existing
programs in accelerated learning that enable learners to gain the
equivalency
of several years of formal education in one year. CIE will also enhance
the development of village-based schools for girls and will offer
literacy courses to community members. It is anticipated that as a
result of such interventions greater numbers of women will enter the
teaching profession.
UMass’ involvement in SBEP enables the Center to enhance and
integrate community-based, non-formal education activities with the
emerging education support network at the macro-level, and enhances
the Center’s stature as a leader in the fields of accelerated
learning and post-conflict educational reconstruction.
(6/04)
Muskie Graduate Fellows at CIE
Each
year CIE welcomes a group of Muskie/Hays Fellows from the newly-independent
states of the former Soviet Union. They enter a two-year masters' program
which combines elements of higher education, educational administration
and international education. The fellows are supported by the Muskie/Freedom
Support Act Graduate Fellows program of the Bureau of Cultural and Educational
Affairs of the US Department of State. The program is administered through
The Open Society Institute of New York. On campus, the program is coordinated
by Professor Gretchen Rossman and administered by Barbara Gravin-Wilbur.
The Fellows are assigned peer advisors who facilitate their integration
into the CIE and UMass communities.
Since 1998, we have had a total of 17 Fellows.
Incoming students for fall 2003 are Firuza Gafurova from Uzbekistan, Volha
Narbutovich from Belarus, and Larissa Savitskaya from Kazakhstan. These
three young women will join the six continuing Muskies: Nino Chubinidze
from Georgia, Kunduz Maksutova 
and
Askar Mambetaliev from Kyrgystan, Olga Okhlopkova from Yakutsk (Russia),
Svetlana Pivovar from St Petersburg (Russia), and Tigran Tovmasyan from
Armenia.
May 2003 graduates include Irina Anjelova from Armenia and Saida Nabiyeva from Azerbaijan. The previous year (2002) witnessed the graduation of five Fellows: Elena Katzkevich (Russia), Natali Kovalyova (Russia), Natalia Oleshko (The Ukraine), Ara Rostomyan (Armenia), and Yuri Yerastov (Russia). In May 2001, four Muskies successfully completed their degrees: Baktygul Ismailova (Kyrgystan), Silva Kurtisa (Latvia), Azat Muradov (Turkmenistan), and Zinaida Rumleanscaia (Moldova).
CIE's first Muskies, arriving in fall of 1998,
were Tamar Mikadze from Georgia and Irina Sahakyan from Armenia. They
completed their degrees and returned to their home countries. Tamar is
currently studying 
again
in the US - at New York University.
We are delighted to have with us these dedicated educators from newly-independent states. They bring fresh, important perspectives to all their classes and brighten up Center meetings on Tuesday mornings. We look forward to continuing to host Fellows through the Muskie program in years to come.(7/03)
The
Global Horizons Program of the Center for International Education (CIE)
in the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
(UMass), in cooperation with the Outreach Program of Boston University's
(BU) African Studies Center, has been awarded a Fulbright-Hays Group Projects
Abroad grant to take 12 Massachusetts public school teachers on a curriculum
development study tour to Kenya and Tanzania, East Africa, in the summer
of 2004. This study tour will focus on the complex interactions of Islam
and Muslim societies in the context of East African society and history.
Program goals include the following:
1) To increase teachers' cognitive knowledge
about Islam and 
Muslim
societies outside of the Middle East, specifically focusing on Kenya
and Tanzania - their peoples, cultures, and history; 2) To develop effective
understanding and accurate perceptions of Kenya and Tanzania through
teachers' first-hand experience; and 3) To expand teachers' capabilities
for teaching about Islam and Muslim societies in Kenya and Tanzania
by developing grade-specific curricula for use by participants in the
school districts in which they teach and for dissemination more broadly
throughout Massachusetts and the United States. The
proposal was written by Kelly O'Brien, a current CIE Doctoral
candidate, and Professor Gretchen Rossman, who will serve as
Principal Investigator. Kelly will serve as one of the study tour leaders
during their five weeks in Africa. Prior to departure, the group has
been meeting at CIE on weekends for a series of orientation and training
sessions.[6/04]
In
the rural villages of Afghanistan over 80% of girls and young women, and
at least 60% of boys and young men, are illiterate. After more than 23
years of conflict, these are the "lost generation," wanting
to help rebuild their country but severely limited by their lack of even
a primary education. In a nation where virtually the entire education
system has been destroyed, literacy and basic education for these youth
will be painfully slow if traditional school models are the only option.
There is a severe shortage of teachers, especially women, since few have
been trained in the last twenty years-and without female teachers, most
girls over 13 encounter cultural barriers to attending school.
To
address this challenge, an innovative partnership of CIE with Catholic
Relief Services (CRS) and the youth-led and youth-managed Youth and Children
Development Program (YCDP) has found a way to assist-starting with rapid
training of local youth who do have some level of education. With CIE
training trainers and supervisors, and CRS/YCDP support, these young people
will become 'Education Facilitators' in their villages. Over half will
be older girls and young women who, just a few months ago, had little
hope of having a 'career' or becoming an integral part of rebuilding their
nation.
In September 2002 CIE trained a group of YCDP older youth and young women as trainers in participatory community mobilization and service leadership skills. Starting in October of 2002, these in turn trained some 120 mostly volunteer youth who began mobilizing local communities in two rural provinces. They will facilitate communities to meet and consult, to form Village Education Committees, identify their most pressing educational needs and to locate resources they already have to solve those needs: a building, mud and local building materials, innovative educational materials that can be made locally, and their hands. Then CRS assists with small funds, educational materials and equipment. The communities select older youth and young adults who have at least a 6th grade education, along with teachers from the area who have potential as education trainers.
From
January-March 2003, CIE trainers will train some 90 youth and 18 adults
as Education Facilitators and supportive Supervisor/Trainers. This will
serve as a pilot model to test an approach to rapid teacher training and
meeting the urgent needs for teachers in the country. The Education Facilitators
will then use the Accelerated Learning materials adapted from CARE Afghanistan
and other curricula that facilitate a rapid 'catch-up' for older village
youth. The young Education Facilitators will learn new interactive, learner-centered
teaching skills not commonly used in Afghanistan where the traditional
method is rote learning. Then with certificates of training in hand, they
will be ready to return to their villages, to open new windows of learning
for their peers.
CIE
carried out a second phase of training facilitators and trainers during
the summer of 2003 (A graduation ceremony for one group is pictured at
left. The trainer, Monica Gomes from CIE is second from the left
in the front row). They have all now gone out to train others and run
accelerated learning NFE classes in their villages. Over the months, the
local trainers will supervise and continue training to assist their young
protégé's to gain confidence and improve their skills. CRS
(http://www.catholicrelief.org/where_we_work/asia/afghanistan/education.cfm)
and YCDP Afghan staff will work closely with the communities and will
support the Trainers and Education Facilitators to create an effective
rapid learning model.
BRIDGE - Building Responsible Interests for Developing Girls Education
BRIDGE is a community-based educational initiative that builds a BRIDGE between newcomer Russian-speaking refugee and immigrant girls and higher education. The purpose of the partnership is to provide opportunities to American higher education for Russian-speaking high school girls, while strengthening the connection between higher education and newcomer communities. BRIDGE provides igh-school girls access to information and resources designed to enhance their access to higher education by developing their academic and economic potential for success. Specifically, the project provides mentoring, tutoring, academic counseling (all in Russian), exposure to area higher education opportunities, and arranges attendance at a college class. In addition to empowering newcomer high school girls, the project provides the opportunity for college women to develop their mentoring and leadership skills.
Malawi UPIC Advanced Degree Activity
In
the summer of 2001, the Center for International Education (CIE) began
a collaborative partnership
with the University of Malawi's Chancellor College, the Malawi National
Examinations Board (MANEB), and the Ministry of Education, Science and
Technology (MOEST). The USAID-funded Advanced Degree Activity (ADA)
is a five-year project designed to build human resource and institutional
capacity to promote the planning and leadership functions of the education
sector through three activities: 1) by developing Chancellor College’s
capacity to offer post-graduate degree programs in Policy, Planning
& Leadership and Testing & Measurement, 2) by offering advanced
degree training at UMass for 22 Malawian educators, and 3) by providing
technical assistance to Chancellor College, MANEB, and the MOEST.
In
late August 2001, CIE welcomed its first cohort of fourteen Malawian
Master's and doctoral candidates to the UMass. The group was comprised
of four doctoral and ten Master's candidates. A second cohort of eight
Master's candidates began their studies at UMass in August 2003, while
two members of the original Master's cohort were accepted into the doctoral
program. In total 24 graduate degrees will be awarded through this program
- 18 Master's and 6 doctorates - with 14 of them focused on Policy,
Planning & Leadership and 10 focused on Testing & Measurement.
The
curriculum for both degree programs is designed to specifically address
relevant educational issues in Malawi. In addition, students split their
time between UMass and Malawi - they take part in intensive courses
and field research in Malawi in collaboration with CIE and various Malawian
institutions before returning to UMass. These 22 exceptionally motivated
professionals bring to the CIE community an extensive amount of life
and work experiences that have won the respect of all those working
on the project and beyond.
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The 14 original
participants at CIE |
The second
cohort (with Dr. Gonzalez in Malawi) |
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The first
10 Master's Graduates with the Deputy Minister of Education and
the Vice Chancellor of the Univ. of Malawi |
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In
the summer of 2000, the Center for International Education conducted training
in participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) for project officers
in a community mobilization program in Azerbaijan. Funded by USAID through
Save the Children/Azerbaijan, this program is intended to facilitate the
empowerment of communities of people displaced from their homes within
Azerbaijan because of the war with Armenia. These internally-displaced
persons (IDPs) live in desperate conditions, aggravated by the waning
prospects of peace. Save the Children's initiative focuses on building
capacity and leadership within the communities to foster their health
and economic well-being. CIE was contracted to train staff (project managers
and officers) in participatory evaluation methods.
Implemented
over two and one half weeks, the training began with a needs assessment.
The master trainers interviewed all staff to ascertain their vision for
strong communities, their understanding of monitoring and evaluation processes,
and their current evaluation practices. From this group, we selected four
officers to become co-facilitators of the full training. By preparing
Azeri co-facilitators, we created a translation support base that was
important for introducing new or unfamiliar concepts to the full group.
This TOT training engaged participants in a short version of the full
training design and focused on specific training activities to encourage
participation.
The design of the full training was participatory. The master trainers had an overall design of processes and topics, but the specific issues came from the participants. The purpose was to have participants experience a participatory process that they could then use with communities. The major goal of the first three days was to create a monitoring and evaluation chart, envisioned as a living document that would be modified as the project unfolded. The elements of the chart included: objectives, indicators, data sources, baseline measures, and benchmarks of progress.
The
master trainers designed activities to elicit from project staff objectives
for the community mobilization project. Through small group work, project
staff identified six. Many of these were from the contract proposal: development
of community leadership; capacity to work with outside agencies for support;
ability to involve all community members. Others, however, were new and
creative. When these objectives were identified, the trainers facilitated
the group's identification of indicators for these objectives.
As we developed important objectives for the project, the master trainers underscored how these objectives needed to respond to Save the Children's organizational goals and strategic objectives of USAID. They also, however, needed to incorporate the communities' views for their own futures. On the second day, we took field trips in groups of three to IDP communities to learn about their desires, dreams, hopes, and concerns. These ideas were then incorporated as additional objectives–ones coming directly from the communities–into the monitoring and evaluation chart.
Going
directly to the communities to elicit their perspectives was crucial for
project staff to fully understand what "participatory" means. In the past,
staff had elicited substantial evaluation information from communities
but this was more instrumental, serving organizational purposes. Incorporating
community members' views directly into a formal instrument validated the
importance of the communities to the entire process and was, in many cases,
a profoundly moving experience for project staff. For example, communities
articulated the importance of education for their children; project staff
had not previously considered this an objective of healthy communities.
Many staff came away from the community visits with renewed respect for
the communities: their courage, resources, strengths, commitments, and
political savvy. Staff also learned the importance of involving beneficiaries
in evaluating their efforts. As one community member said, We are the
best ones to evaluate what we are doing; we know it better than anyone
else.
The
Support for Ugandan Primary Education Reform (SUPER) Project was a collaborative
project between the Center for International Education (CIE), the Academy
for Educational Development and Creative Associates from 1993-2000.. The
SUPER project provided short- and long-term technical assistance to the
Government of Uganda in three areas of policy reform for primary education:
1) professionalization of teachers, 2) enhancement of community participation
in education, and 3) allocation of resources for instructional materials.
Ultimately, the project's goals were to have more teachers who spent more
time at school teaching effective lessons, more instructional materials
in the classroom, and a better managed flow of resources to schools.
The major project activity was the development of an integrated teacher-support system called the Teacher Development and Management System (TDMS). TDMS was an innovative method to link Core Primary Teachers' Colleges (PTCs) to schools through a three-tiered network: 1) the PTC at the center; 2) "Coordinating Centers" in the catchment areas of the PTC, specially equipped to serve as mini teacher-resource centers; and 3) outreach schools linked to the Coordinating Centers. Each Coordinating Center is staffed by a Coordinating Center Tutor (CCT) who works with a cluster of about 18 outreach schools. The CCT resides at one of the schools and daily serves the teachers, head teachers, parents, school management committee and others at his/her school and other schools in the cluster. Originally designed for implementation in 10 districts, the TDMS system was gradually expanded to cover all districts and all government-aided schools (over 9000).
A
major task of the SUPER project was to reorient teacher training away
from residential, pre-service training and toward in-service, school-based
support. The new PTCs, which required a different internal structure and
revised staffing patterns, devoted at least half of their staff time and
other resources to working with teachers already in the classroom. Pre-service
trainees likewise spent more time in classrooms, observing or doing supervised
practice teaching.
Programs were established for: supporting girls education, out of school pupils, mobilizing parents to undertake activities that improved pupil learning, classroom instruction, revision of the primary curriculum, training outreach tutors, revision of the teacher training curriculum and for national and continuous assessment.
The
reform has been unusually successful and has become a model for other
countries. The project consolidated the reforms and integrated them into
the regular Ministry of Education structures. There are many exciting
innovations in TDMS which have helped to transform the way teachers are
recruited, trained and supported in Uganda's primary schools.
Renuka Pillay, a doctoral candidate
in CIE, was a full-time staff member of SUPER in Uganda for three years.
At the end of the project she was the project coordinator with responsibility
for completing the process of transferring all responsibility for SUPER
to the government of Uganda.
Funded
by USAID, Strengthening the Education of Girls in India was
a participatory development project involving teachers, government officials,
and parents and community members in the design of a training module
for teachers to improve the education of girls in villages in India.
The goal of the project was to increase girls' enrollment, attendance,
promotion, and completion of primary school through new pedagogical
practices in schools. The project was implemented in the state of Uttar
Pradesh in northern India, the largest and one of the most poor states
in the country.
Through
action research, a core group of teacher-researchers designed and pilot
tested a teacher training module that contains four major sections:
gender sensitization, pedagogy, transacting the curriculum, and community
mobilization. Pilot testing of the module was conducted with 150 teachers
in Maharajganj block of Rae Bareilly, resulting in substantial changes
in classroom structures and pedagogical practices that are more responsive
to the needs of girl children in the area.
Community involvement in the design and implementation of the project resulted in several jathas -- community events that raise awareness and build commitment for girls' education. Activities associated with the jathas include holding parades through villages, painting placards and signs depicting girls in a variety of roles, forming mothers' groups, and inviting village elders and leaders to commit to girls' education.
Where
implemented, the project had considerable impact on the attitudes and
practices of primary school teachers. This success was due, in large
part, to the commitment of Teachers' Union officials from the state,
district, and block; their endorsement and support of the project were
crucial. Because of her commitment to the education of Indian children
living in villages, through this project and several others, the Project
Director, Dr. Urvashi Sahni, has been awarded the prestigious International
Haas Award from the University of California at Berkeley.
COMAL
is a USAID-funded collaboration between Save the Children, USA, the
Center for International Education (CIE) and The Associacion de Desarrollo
Juvenil Comunitario (ADEJUC). The COMAL Project is a bilingual literacy
project that targets indigenous women and youth in five departments
of the ZonaPaz of Guatemala: Quiche, Quetzaltenango, Totonicapan, Suchitepequez
and Solola.
The COMAL Project is promoting bilingual literacy in the K'iche and Spanish languages through the methodology of Integrated Community Literacy (ICL). Integrated Community Literacy (ICL) refers to an approach of literacy learning programs that intentionally integrates community development topics and community issues into the literacy learning content, materials and activities. ICL seeks to build on the activities that community members are already engaged in or want to engage in by adding writing, reading and numeracy skills to their current activities.
During
the year 2000, COMAL is working with fifteen partner NGO's in the five
departments who have been implementing projects such as micro-credit,
women's communal banking, health education, small enterprise development
and women's leadership training. Partner organizations receive on-going
training in innovative literacy teaching methods, support and supervision
from the Technical Unit and participate in workshops that help them
create literacy learning materials appropriate for ICL.
CIE
has oversight of the entire technical component of the project. The
Technical Unit of COMAL includes Rosa Zapeta who is our Community Literacy
Specialist, and Tony Savdie who is our Materials Development Advisor.
Joanie Cohen-Mitchell, doctoral candidate in CIE (2nd from right in
photo) works as the Training and Research Coordinator and divides her
time between Guatemala and Amherst.
By the end of the project in 2003, the overarching goal for COMAL is
to have created, through its partner organizations, 250,000 new literates
who are using their literacy and numeracy skills in the daily activities
of their homes, families and their community.
CIRCLE
is an innovative statewide partnership between newcomer communities,
the University of Massachusetts and the Office of Refugees and Immigrants.
The center in Amherst offers a wide range of community development programs
as well as training and support services for leadership development.
The overall aim is to promote collective initiatives benefitting the
larger community while engendering an increased sense of responsibility,
pride and cultural identity. The approaches are based on participatory
action research and participatory evaluation outcomes from working with
Cambodian, Vietnamese, Tibetan and Russian communities for more than
five years. An integrated program has been evolved to include and link
established community leaders, newcomer youth and undergraduate/graduate
students at UMass. Azerbaijan Community Mobilization and Leadership Development Training
The
Center for International Education (CIE), in collaboration with the
Department of Continuing Education of Tuskegee University, Alabama conducted
a Community Mobilization and Leadership Development training program
in the Republic of Azerbaijan. Funded by USAID and administrated by
the Academy for Educational Development office in Baku, this project
seeks to prepare training personnel for strengthening community leaders
in their work within refugee and IDP (internally-displaced) communities,
as well as Meskhetian Turk and other minority communities in predominantly
rural areas. NGOs working in Azerbaijan seek to support these communities
by providing relief on the one hand, and by encouraging community-based
initiatives for socio-economic advancement on the other
The
project was implemented in three phases. In the first phase, staff from
CIE and Tuskegee University conducted a two-week needs assessment in Azerbaijzn
to determine the components of the curriculum of a three-week leadership
and community mobilization-training program to be held in the United States
(Phase II). In Phase III, selected participants conducted community leadership
training programs for Azerbaijan participants under the supervision of
CIE and Tuskegee training personnel.
At
the end of the Phase II, the participants produced training designs based
on the needs assessment that was carried out in Phase I. Phase III also
provided the opportunity to revise their training curriculum with the
help of the training consultants.The training conducted in Azeribaijan
in August, 2000 had three components: (1) a thorough needs assessment
about the leadership structures as well as economic and social issues
faced by refugee/IDP communities; (2) the leadership training and (3)
a practice session where the trainees were expected to prepare their own
training sessions to be delivered to the communities.
The
first part familiarized participants with different leadership philosophies
that have emerged in different cultural contexts (Freire, Ghandi, Nyere,
Booker T. Washington and Margaret Wheatley). In order to carry out a needs
assessment in different refugee and IDP communities, participants developed
research strategies based on the newly introduced concept of "triangulation".
They also engaged in an analysis of their own community mobilization experiences,
prior to determining learning needs to be addressed in upcoming training
events.
The second part consisted in a participatory workshop which provided the opportunity to participants to familiarize themselves with a variety of topics such as adult learning methodologies, participatory research, conflict resolution, strategic planning, proposal writing etc. In addition, they were asked to prepare action plans of how they would convey the learning acquired during Part II to community leaders in the field.
The
third part provided an opportunity for the trainees to facilitate training
sessions for a group of participants composed of newly invited professionals
and colleagues who also worked for NGOs in Azerbaijan. It was a test whether
trainees were capable of presenting relevant community mobilization topics
in an andragogically appropriate manner.
[Updated Oct 2000}
The
Literacy Support Initiative (LSI)
The Literacy Support Initiative (LSI)
at CIE was established in 1986 by a group of graduate students who wanted
to focus on issues related to adult literacy teaching and learning.
Through the years, LSI has developed expertise implementing projects
in the areas of nonformal adult literacy, family literacy, alternative
supervision, research, evaluation and staff development for adult educators.
For over a decade, LSI has been offering a "Summer Institute for Literacy
Professionals" in Massachusetts (1988-1993 and 2000) and with sponsoring
institutions in other countries (Thailand, 1994; Nepal, 1995; and 1998;
El Salvador, 1994; and Namibia, 1995).
Past projects include: the development of tutor training materials for
the Massachusetts Coalition for Literacy; staff development for adult
educators with SABES (The Massachusetts System for Adult Basic Education
Support); partnership in the Amherst public schools family literacy
program facilitating parent and children's literacy activities with
Cambodian families; a five-year USAID funded Literacy Linkage Project
with Tribhuvan University in Nepal to strengthen literacy staff development;
a participatory research project with a disabled women's leadership
and literacy program in El Salvador; staff development and training
in Mali and staff development, literacy materials development and research
in rural Guatemala.
Building on its experiences, LSI has published a series of manuals for
grassroots community development workers focusing on literacy teaching
and learning.
Currently, LSI along with Save the Children and ADEJUC are implementing
the COMAL project, a four-year bilingual literacy program in five departments
of Guatemala and is working locally in Amherst on a family literacy
program.
The
Literacy Support Initiative (LSI) has been working in collaboration
with the federally funded Amherst Even Start Family Literacy Program
since 1999. This family literacy program has four components that focus
on literacy and language learning skills: Adult education (GED and ESOL),
Early-Childhood education, Parenting education and Parent-and-Children
Together (PACT) time. LSI staffs the PACT component.
PACT time is the heart of the Amherst
family literacy program. PACT time creates opportunities for parents
and children to learn new skills and also learn from each other. We
create opportunities for our families and our staff to learn various
new and fun educational activities in a way that supports multiple literacies.
These activities incorporate reading, writing and other skills like
music and art that we can use in our daily lives. We encourage family
members to share knowledge, skills and experiences from their lives
in our activities so that we can learn from one other and we can validate
our participants’ varied experiences. During PACT times, all staff
members as well as the adults take part in and model simple parent-children
activities that can be adapted at home. This helps reinforce the notion
that parents can spend time engaging in fun, educational activities
with their children at home.
We
hold 15 minute in-class PACT times on every Thursday and a one-and-a
half hour PACT on Wednesday afternoons once a month in the Jones Library
in Amherst, usually featuring a community member teaching the Even Start
families a fun learning activity. The afternoon time allows families
with school-aged children to participate in fun, informal learning activities,
thus creating a true intergenerational learning program.
From an organizational point of view, PACT times helps to strengthen
Even Start families’ sense of community by building non-classroom
relationships within our families and with other resources in the community.
The
David Kinsey Dialogue Series was established in memory of our beloved
colleague, David Chapin Kinsey. David touched countless lives in the course
of his 40 years as a dedicated, brilliant and outstanding educator, helping
people everywhere to inquire, explore and discover the world and themselves.
Since 1975, David Kinsey served as a faculty member of the School of Education
in the Center for International Education at the University of Massachusetts
at Amherst. It is our hope that the Kinsey Dialogue Series will uphold
his legacy, keeping alive his passionate vision for a better world.
Click here to link to the Kinsey Dialogue Series page.