Improving learning outcomes in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the midst of COVID-19 through Community based system dynamics and project-based learning

Sustainable Development Goals have created impetus to focus on education equity and quality. The education level of millions of children in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) out of school for months following pandemic-related lockdowns has dropped. This is particularly troubling considering that, even before the current pandemic, learning outcomes in many of these countries have been poor.

Furthermore, crises in LMICs result in multiple negative consequences for disadvantaged children, including a high risk of school dropout, early marriage or pregnancy, displacement, child labour and poor health.

Grounded within theories of learning sciences, social justice, human development and capabilities approach, we propose to shift paradigms from a right to education, towards a right to effective inclusion -i.e. equity and quality in learning for all children. This has particular relevance in crisis-affected settings and the context of a pandemic. Adopting an interdisciplinary perspective and using innovative mixed methods, our proposed research builds on a previous intervention, offering a post-COVID-19 lockdowns intervention to make structural and sustainable improvements in education particularly for children from minorities, poor or displaced children, or those with disabilities in rural schools of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Our theory of change offers a pathway towards inclusion, mitigating the negative effects of the COVID-19, climate crisis and political unrest driven school lockdowns through three specific aims:

First, we will examine the effects of lockdowns on children's learning outcomes. To measure this impact on child cognitive (e.g. literacy, numeracy, mathematics, logic) and non-cognitive (e.g. critical thinking, communication, self-esteem, coping mechanisms) skills, we will interview, for a new round, children who have participated in an existing randomised control trial to test a similar intervention in 2018, 2020 and 2021.

We will also interview teachers and parents to examine: teachers' evaluation of children's skills and knowledge, assessment of their own self-efficacy (including when teaching children with disabilities), perspectives on parental involvement; and parents' socioeconomic backgrounds and satisfaction with education. To understand barriers to learning processes, we will conduct qualitative interviews, focus group discussions, video cues and classroom observations.

Second, to remediate for time lost due to the lockdowns, we will further train teachers for two weeks in intervention schools -while engaging with students and parents- in child-centred education practices (Project-Based Learning). We focus on addressing stressors and loss of knowledge due to the lockdowns. We have conducted two rounds of participatory group model building (GMB) workshops under the existing intervention -methods used in Community Based System Dynamics.

We will conduct a third round of GMB workshops to engage school stakeholders in highlighting the factors that influence learning in the current situation. Through these workshops, they identify and jointly choose actions to improve the system subsequently put in place with the financial and technical support of our implementing partners -Norwegian Afghanistan Committee, Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, and the National Rural Support Program, Pakistan.

Third, we will engage with multiple stakeholders through training, policy engagement and long-term follow-up. Investigators, together with our three partners, are part of the dialogue on education reform in Afghanistan and Pakistan and will further contribute to policy papers based on research findings. They will train development partners (e.g. donors, multilaterals, NGOs) engaged in primary education in both countries.

Further, they will collaborate with UNICEF and UNESCO, partner universities and NGOs to disseminate the PBL teacher training module and GMB methods through an e-learning platform.