Learning Loss to Learning Recovery: An Experience from Bagalkote

By Gladson M E

Schools were closed nearly for 18 months due to the pandemic. Technology that enabled learning was seen booming through this period.  In most cases, such a boom did not help in achieving learning among students living in remote places and among the impoverished sections of society. The issue may be the availability, accessibility, and affordability of digital gadgets. According to a research study conducted by the Azim Premji Foundation across states, on average 92 percent of children had lost at least one specific language ability – describing a picture, reading familiar words, reading with comprehension, and writing simple sentences. Similar was the case with mathematics, on average 82 percent of children had lost at least one specific maths ability – identifying single- and two-digit numbers, performing arithmetic operations, describing 2D and 3D shapes, reading and drawing inferences from data.

There are various kinds of restorative interventions that were taken around the globe to mitigate learning loss. Hiring more teachers, extending school hours, cutting down vacations, repeating an entire academic year, reducing, and restructuring curriculum, carrying out assessments to check student learning levels and teaching to bridge the gaps, are a few attempts that are being tried out.

To address the issue of learning loss three components are very important – time, dedicated attention and specific content.

The Kalika Chetarike programme is a notable effort initiated by the Government of Karnataka towards the learning recovery of government school students. A full academic year has been kept aside for this recovery. Specific and dedicated efforts have been invested in preparing materials and for teachers to carry out the learning recovery processes in classrooms. The content has been carefully selected from foundational literacy and numeracy skills, important learning outcomes from two previous grades and essential learning outcomes of the current grade.

The entire process of learning recovery should start with understanding the current levels of learning. This article is about the experiences in Bagalkote in conducting assessments, analysing students’ responses, and preparing teaching plans to address the learning loss by the team at Azim Premji Foundation, District Institute, Bagalkote.

Process and objectives

The team reached out to interested teachers to carry out the assessment process. We discussed the purpose and process of assessment. Once a teacher showed interest, a day was fixed for the assessment to be conducted in the classroom. This assessment was carried out with 54 teachers across Bagalkote, Ilkal, Hungund and Jamkhandi blocks of the Bagalkote district.

The objectives of this exercise were as follows:

• Understand the learning levels of students
• Plan teaching to address the learning gaps
• Document the process of assessment, analysis, and teaching plan to share with all teachers in the group
• Motivate teachers to carry out assessments in their classroom to have a baseline understanding of their classroom and plan for teaching

Assessment tool

A core team from across the Northeast Karnataka (NEK) districts of the Foundation came together to create assessment tools on language and maths. The tool was tested and standardised to be followed in all the districts. A concept-based assessment tool was used for the assessments. The language tool had questions to assess oral language skills, decoding short paragraphs, identifying letters and words, reading with comprehension and independent writing. The maths tool assessed students’ spatial understanding, pre-number skills, and understanding of numbers, counting, basic operations, measurements, and data handling.

Figure 1. A sample question from the Kannada and Math tools. Maths tool assesses counting in groups; Kannada tool assesses the skill to connect sound and picture.

Process of assessment

The broad stages of assessments involved the following steps:

• Reaching out to teachers willing to carry out a diagnostic assessment in their classrooms
• Helping teachers understand the tool and the process of assessment
• Conducting the assessment in the classroom
• Analysing student responses – both quantitative and qualitative
• Preparing teaching plans with the teacher
• Supporting classroom teaching and tracking learning

The number of students who were part of the assessment:

Conducting the test

We made appropriate sitting arrangements in the classroom to carry out the assessment. For class III students, the questions were mostly read out.

Analysing students’ responses

Once the assessment was done in the classroom, the response sheets were taken back to the Teacher Learning Centre (TLC) for analysis. Analysing students’ responses and understanding the levels of learners in the classroom was a critical part of the process. There are two kinds of analysis possible – one is to look at the responses and put marks for the correct and incorrect answers and the other is to look at each response qualitatively.

Scoring was a straightforward process; we looked at the responses and gave scores based on correct and incorrect responses. However, scores alone cannot give enough understanding of what children know and where they struggle. For wrong answers, it is important to dig a little deeper into the student’s understanding. Hence, we decided to also carry out a qualitative analysis of the responses.

Table 1: Analysis of a maths concept and the number of students able to do it

Table 2: Analysis of a maths concept and the number of students able to do it

Qualitative analysis: We felt a qualitative analysis of students is also needed for more clarity on the issues seen among the learners. We considered using the three questions given below to analyse students’ responses.

1. What do children know?
2. What are common errors made by students?
3. What are the conceptual challenges faced by the learners

Table 3. A sample qualitative analysis of only selected spatial understanding, addition and subtraction for representation purpose

Grouping of students

Based on the scoring, the names of students who gave incorrect response was listed under each concept. Similar concepts were clubbed together under a theme to work on the most challenging conceptual issue of the classroom. For example, questions on counting pictures, number names and symbols, ascending and descending order, and place value were placed under the theme of ‘Numbers and Counting’. The scores and qualitative analysis are considered to combine conceptual issues and prepare teaching plans. The name list of students is meant to help teachers in tracking specific learners in the classroom. For a broader understanding, the number of students is sufficient to decide on a conceptual gap in learning and prepare teaching plans.

Preparing teaching plans

Classroom teaching plans cannot be rigid. However, to arrive at a teaching plan, an analysis of the students’ responses from the assessment is required. We had to look at the learning levels of students in each concept and arrive at the most important aspects of teaching to start with. Once the concept was decided, we then looked at the teaching practices and later, teaching materials that could be used in the classroom. This process was useful to understand the classroom levels and teaching plans.

Table 4. A part of the teaching plan – representation of 5 days

• With the identified gaps in the learners and the teaching plan, a specific teaching exercise will have to be done.
• A teaching hour could be planned in such a manner where there is a demonstration from the teachers, students working in groups followed by students working individually. A short informal assessment needs to be carried out at end of each short concept to check progress in learning.
• A separate assessment could be planned at the end of three months to check the overall progress in learning and plan the teaching accordingly.

This process of assessment and creating teaching plans gives a good base on what to start with, in the classroom. The first round of assessments happened in the month of July. The team was able to carry out another assessment in the month of September to see differences in learning among the students. After the assessment in July, we worked on each classroom analysis and teaching plan. The team worked with these teachers in their classrooms; prepared appropriate teaching materials; carried out demonstrations and co-teaching. This experience was shared in the cluster meetings and other teacher forums. In the assessments in September, we were able to see changes in the learning to some extent, we would like to keep tracking these classrooms to see the trend of learning recovery.

Learning recovery requires systematic interventions in the classrooms. Unlike a normal academic year, planning and keeping track of learning is particularly important. A teacher will require continuous support and handholding to be able to carry out these processes. Planning is important; however, actual teaching is what will show results in the classroom.

AUTHOR
Gladson M E is a member of Azim Premji Foundation, District Institute Bagalkote, Karnataka. His interest is in language and maths learning in the early stages.