In 2023, we began the new phase of the Learning: Inside and Outside School program. Between 2019 and 2022, we carried out the first phase of the project, implementing ongoing training for Early Childhood Education professionals in five municipalities in the Médio Mearim region, in the state of Maranhão. The successful results of this phase allowed the scalability of training actions through the Pact for Learning, a program led by the State Department of Education (Seduc/MA), expanding the scope of the project to Early Childhood Education networks in more than 200 municipalities in Maranhão.

As a result, we have reached out from around 5,600 people to over 330,000. A clear example of the positive effects of these efforts is the significant increase in access to children's literature books in early childhood education schools. In 2019, the year the project began, only 20% of schools that support this stage had materials or spaces dedicated to literature. By 2023, this was already a reality for 86%.

The second phase of the program also marked the consolidation of the project as a public policy for continuing education for teachers, based on its incorporation into the Pact for Learning. The collaborative regime – which structures the sharing of responsibilities, resources and efforts between the state and municipalities for the implementation of public policies – moves from the paper to the day-to-day planning and execution of activities, and allows for consistent long-term results, which have the potential to span different administrations.

In practice

The training sessions carried out by the Labedu team in 2023 focused on teachers of children aged 4 to 5 and managers of Early Childhood Education. The activities are based on the methodology developed internally by the Lab, which advocates the use of a diverse set of literary texts that promote the experience of the world of reading and writing with significant knowledge of children's daily lives, and according to their age group. The objective of the training sessions is to ensure that the school routine includes and values environments that are conducive to interaction with texts, such as displaying books in the classroom, murals to display texts familiar to children, such as songs, poems and nursery rhymes, and also their spontaneous writings and artistic productions.

The training is provided by our technical team to the Regional Pedagogical Articulators (APR), who will be responsible for the supervised training of the Municipal Pedagogical Articulators (APM), who, in turn, will take the set of tools and skills directly to the teaching teams of the schools, who will work on the methodology in the classroom. This process of disseminating knowledge trains a network of professionals committed to improving the quality of Education, and strengthens the structures of the departments, which improve the development of their capabilities. Children learn more, and the entire education network benefits.

Monitoring and evaluation

Systematic monitoring of the training activities carried out by the project within the Pact is an important aspect, ensuring that they are aligned with local needs at that time. To this end, we use observation scripts in the classroom, in the school space and in the training of educators, in addition to questionnaires on practices. In 2023, two more municipalities were included in the monitoring plan, totaling seven.

This creates conditions for long-term monitoring of actions, since all information is shared with Seduc. This allows monitoring and evaluation to form a virtuous cycle that feeds back into the system with inputs generated by observations, adjustments made during the process and the involvement of a broad range of stakeholders.

Results