Dr. Herman Van de Velde, coordinator of ABACOenRED and Niria Adelayda Brown Salgado, a teacher at the José Martí Normal School in Matagalpa, were the guests of this fourth edition of the KIX Conversations, interviewed by Christian Silva, SUMMA's communications director.
On this occasion, Van de Velde presented the educational tools proposed by the VIdA Project (Intersubjective Assessment of Learning), which is a participatory research exercise that aims to collectively assess, from different perspectives and through the application of simple, practical and reliable instruments, the learning processes of Nicaraguan children in basic reading, arithmetic and social interaction skills. This study was conducted with children between 5 and 16 years of age and adults from 1,200 households in 60 communities in rural Matagalpa.
For her part, Niria Brown Salgado shared her experience as a teacher involved in the project, which was very motivating for the 30 teachers and 120 students who visited these communities, saying that thanks to this experience they were able to ground the methodologies a little more and improve the learning process to contribute to the quality of education in the country.
Finally, regarding the future of the ViDA Project, Van de Velde assured that they hope to generate data that will allow the inter-subjective meaning of the basic learning that children from 5 to 13 years old have and also the factors that affect this learning, as well as to provide inputs to the citizens and the Ministry of Education to dialogue about the educational reality in order to develop support projects.
He also commented that the project still has to overcome some challenges such as the incorporation of technical tools for monitoring and data entry, as well as the intention to implement it in several municipalities nationwide, as they consider that one of the greatest results of this stage was the extra contribution to quality in teacher training, where the experience gained is a resource in itself for professional growth.
The event was broadcasted live on YouTube and Facebook.
