Browsing by Author "von Blottnitz, Magali"

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    Exploring the implementation of the TIME Home Learning programme and learning trajectories of 5- to 7-year-olds The TIME programme in its ecosystem: How can provincial education departments support the implementation and success of TIME?
    (Wordworks, 2024) von Blottnitz, Magali
    This is the second in a series of learning briefs that explore the implementation of the TIME Home Learning programme and the learning trajectories of 5- to 7-year-olds. This brief is based on interviews held in 2022 with the Western Cape Education Department’s (WCED) Head Office and district officials. It focuses on the role of provincial education departments in supporting the TIME programme and examines: - How the WCED contributed to incubating the TIME programme during the COVID-19 pandemic; - Strategic alignment between TIME and the WCED; - The role of Foundation Phase subject advisors; - Constraints and Opportunities in the WCED's support of the TIME programme; - and Implications for other provinces.
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    Exploring the implementation of the TIME Home Learning programme and learning trajectories of 5- to 7-year-olds The TIME programme in its ecosystem: What does it take for a school to commit to TIME?
    (Wordworks, 2024) von Blottnitz, Magali
    This is the third in a series of learning briefs that explore the implementation of the TIME Home Learning programme and learning trajectories of 5- to 7-year-olds. This brief is based on interviews held in 2022 with stakeholders from Western Cape schools. It focuses on schools’ commitment to TIME, a programme that is offered on a sign-up and co-payment basis. The brief unpacks the factors influencing schools’ decision to either register for the programme, or turn it down, including strategic priorities, past experiences and financial constraints. As such, the brief offers interesting insights for NGOs about opportunities and pitfalls of co-payment models.
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    Exploring the implementation of the TIME Home Learning programme and learning trajectories of 5- to 7-year-olds. Implementing TIME at home: Insights from caregivers
    (Wordworks, 2024) von Blottnitz, Magali
    This is the fourth in a series of learning briefs that explore the implementation of the TIME Home Learning programme and learning trajectories of 5- to 7-year-olds. This brief is based on interviews, home visits and observations made between February 2022 and August 2023 with participating families of children who were in Grade R in 2022 and in Grade 1 in 2023. It focuses on the home circumstances of families and their lived experiences while engaging with the TIME programme. This brief seeks to address the following questions: • How does the diversity of families and homes challenge our mental representations of “family” and “home”? • What does it take to embed the practice of TIME in the routine of the home? • What can we learn from caregivers’ experiences with TIME at home, which could help improve the frequency and the quality of families’ engagement? Reviewing the stories of a few families under a dynamic lens, the brief discusses how home circumstances such as family configurations, poverty, working hours, multilingualism, influence the levels of caregiver engagement with the TIME programme, and draws a typology of caregiver engagement.
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    Exploring the implementation of the TIME Home Learning programme and learning trajectories of 5- to 7-year-olds: Introduction to the TIME study
    (2024-06) von Blottnitz, Magali
    This is the first in a series of learning briefs that explore the implementation of the TIME Home Learning programme and the learning trajectories of 5- to 7-year-olds. This brief focuses on key elements of the programme, and also on the design of a study to explore how it is embedded in the ecosystem and lived in practice.
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    Yizani Sifunde: An effective approach to closing the early literacy gap
    (Liberty Community Trust, Wordworks, Book Dash and Nal'ibali, 2024) von Blottnitz, Magali
    This is the third in a series of learning briefs that explore the design, implementation and impact of Yizani Sifunde, a collaborative multi-pronged intervention designed to boost early literacy outcomes in 4- and 5-year-olds. This brief summarises the quantitative evidence on how the Yizani Sifunde project effectively closed gaps in early learning, with a focus on early language and literacy. Specifically, the brief: * reviews available evidence about the South African early literacy gaps, particularly in rural provinces and among speakers of African languages, and describes the methodology followed by the evaluators * compares the ELOM assessment results achieved by project children at baseline and endline, against the provincial average * isolates the part of the children's learning gains corresponding to programme effect, after correcting for the expected maturation effect * summarises the findings from regression analyses on contributors, mediators and moderators of the learning gains. Key findings are that within 8 months of the intervention, the children have achieved remarkable improvement in their ELOM scores, including in domains that were not targeted by the intervention, such as numeracy. After correcting for maturation, the children on average gained 3 to 6 extra months of learning, and the most vulnerable children gained up to 13 months of learning in addition to the expected 8 months of maturation. Importantly, these positive results hold irrespective of context factors such as class size or presence of other interventions in the ECD centre. An improvement in the children's task orientation appears to have been a key contributor to the learning gains. The number of books received, and owned by the child, was a significant predictor of the endline achievement. These findings confirm the value of the intervention design, including the provision of books to be owned by the children.
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    Yizani Sifunde: How a multi-pronged intervention strengthened teaching and learning in ECD centres
    (Liberty Community Trust, Wordworks, Book Dash and Nal'ibali, 2024) von Blottnitz, Magali
    This is the fourth in a series of learning briefs that explore the design, implementation and impact of Yizani Sifunde, a collaborative multi-pronged intervention designed to boost early literacy outcomes in 4- and 5-year-olds. This brief focuses on: • the changes the project made possible in early childhood development (ECD) centres, related to resources, practitioner attitudes and teaching practices, centre management, and overall ECD quality; • how durable these shifts were; and • how these shifts contributed to young children’s development. It finds that, for the participating ECD centres, the Yizani Sifunde intervention led to radically improved access to learning materials, better equipped book corners, improved confidence of practitioners with story-based literacy activities. The brief also reveals improvements in the ECD practitioners' experience of parental engagement. Areas where there was still room for improvement include emerging writing and the children's independent use of book corners remain. The brief further provides multiple sources of data revealing that the practices of the intervention have been largely sustained after project exit.
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    Yizani Sifunde: Impact beyond the classroom: shifts in homes and communities
    (Liberty Community Trust, Wordworks, Book Dash and Nal'ibali, 2024) von Blottnitz, Magali
    This is the fifth in a series of learning briefs that explore the design, implementation and impact of Yizani Sifunde, a collaborative multi-pronged intervention designed to boost early literacy outcomes in 4- and 5-year-olds. This brief focuses on: • the elements of the project that targeted the homes of the children, as well as some community stakeholders, namely distribution of abundant children's books for the children to own at home; caregiver workshops; reading clubs and community activations. • the shifts that resulted for these groups, using the Home Learning Environment (HLE) tool from the DataDrive2030 suite; and • how these legs of the intervention consolidated or extended the project’s impact on young children. The HLE data reveals that the project resulted not only in a considerable increase in the number of books available in the homes, but also in increased caregiver reading behaviour. At endline, almost all caregivers claimed to read to their children at least once weekly. Qualitative data revealed that three effects ("nudge effect", "joy and pride effect" and "skill and confidence effect") enabled the shift of the caregivers' reading behaviour. Caregivers also became more involved in the life of the ECDs. In addition, caregivers who attended parent workshops became more involved in a number of other activities with their children, such as storytelling or drawing. These experiences at home helped the children strengthen and consolidate the benefits from improved classroom practices. The brief also reviews and discusses the project's experience with running reading clubs, and find that reading clubs led by the project's staff or by partner institutions were more successful and operated in a more consistent manner than reading clubs run by community volunteers. These additional project activities helped to extend the project's reach to a wider number of children, in particular children in primary schools or young children who were not attending ECD centres.
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    Yizani Sifunde: Lessons from a successful multi-NGO collaboration
    (Liberty Community Trust, Wordworks, Book Dash and Nal'ibali, 2024) von Blottnitz, Magali
    This is the second in a series of learning briefs that explore the design, implementation and impact of Yizani Sifunde, a collaborative multi-pronged intervention designed to boost early literacy outcomes in 4- and 5-year-olds. The intervention was co-delivered by three leading South African NGOs, with two regional NGOs implementing part of the project locally. This brief focuses on: • the experience of the collaboration; and • the factors and practices that made it successful. In particular, it highlights the role played by the funder, Liberty Community Trust, the importance of clearly defined roles and collaboration modalities between project partners, and the learning mindset that helped improve the project design and adjust to unforeseen realities especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.
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    Yizani Sifunde: The design of a multi-pronged intervention for early literacy
    (Liberty Community Trust, Wordworks, Book Dash and Nal'ibali, 2024-11) von Blottnitz, Magali
    This is the first in a series of learning briefs that explore the design, implementation and impact of Yizani Sifunde, a collaborative multi-pronged intervention designed to boost early literacy outcomes in 4- and 5-year-olds. This brief describes: • how the intervention was designed; • how close monitoring of implementation enabled improvements to the design over time.