The pedagogy of Teach to Reach

What is the pedagogy of Teach to Reach?

Global health, Learning strategy, Theory

In a rural health center in Kenya, a community health worker develops an innovative approach to reaching families who have been hesitant about vaccination. Meanwhile, in a Brazilian city, a nurse has gotten everyone involved – including families and communities – onboard to integrate information about HPV vaccination into cervical cancer screening. These valuable insights might once have remained isolated, their potential impact limited to their immediate contexts. But through Teach to Reach – a peer learning platform, network, and community hosted by The Geneva Learning Foundation – these experiences become part of a larger tapestry of knowledge that transforms how health workers learn and adapt their practices worldwide. Since January 2021, the event series has grown to connect over 21,000 health professionals from more than 70 countries, reaching its tenth edition with 21,398 participants in June 2024. Scale matters, but this level of engagement begs the question: how and why does it …

Brevity’s burden The executive summary trap in global health

Brevity’s burden: The executive summary trap in global health

Global health, Learning strategy

It was James Gleick who noted in his book “Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything” the societal shift towards valuing speed over depth: “We have become a quick-reflexed, multitasking, channel-flipping, fast-forwarding species. We don’t completely understand it, and we’re not altogether happy about it.” In global health, there’s a growing tendency to demand ever-shorter summaries of complex information. “Can you condense this into four pages?” “Is there an executive summary?” These requests, while stemming from real time constraints, reveal fundamental misunderstandings about the nature of knowledge and learning. Worse, they contribute to perpetuating existing global health inequities. Here is why – and a few ideas of what we can do about it. We lose more than time in the race to brevity The push for shortened summaries is understandable on the surface. Some clinical researchers, for example, undeniably face increasing time pressures. Many are swamped due to underlying structural issues, …

Taking the pulse why and how we change everything in response to learner signals

Taking the pulse: why and how we change everything in response to learner signals

Learning design, Theory

The ability to analyze and respond to learner behavior as it happens is crucial for educators. In complex learning that takes place in digital spaces, task separation between the design of instruction and its delivery does not make sense. Here is the practical approach we use in The Geneva Learning Foundation’s learning-to-action model to implement responsive learning environments by listening to learner signals and adapting design, activities, and feedback accordingly. Listening for and interpreting learner signals Educators must pay close attention to various signals that learners emit throughout their learning journey. These signals appear in several key ways: Making sense of learner signals Once these signals are identified, a nuanced approach to analysis is necessary: Adapting learning design in situ What can we change in response to learner behavior, signals, and patterns? Responding to learner signals Feedback plays a crucial role in the learning process: Balancing act When combined, these …

Heini Utenen OpenWHO confusion about methods and learner preferences

Why asking learners what they want is a recipe for confusion

Global health, Theory

A survey of learners on a large, authoritative global health learning platform has me pondering once again the perils of relying too heavily on learner preferences when designing educational experiences. One survey question intended to ask learners for their preferred learning method. The list of options provided includes a range of items. (Some would make the point that the list conflates learning resources and learning methods, but let us leave that aside for now.) Respondents’ top choices (source) were videos, slides, and downloadable documents. At first glance, this seems perfectly reasonable. After all, should we not give learners what they want? As it happens, the main resources offered by this platform are videos, slides, and other downloadable documents. (If we asked learners who participate in our peer learning programmes for their preference, they would likely say that they prefer… peer learning.) Beyond this availability bias, there is a more significant …

Learn health, but beware of the behaviorist trap

Global health, Theory

The global health community has long grappled with the challenge of providing effective, scalable training to health workers, particularly in resource-constrained settings. In recent years, digital learning platforms have emerged as a potential solution, promising to deliver accessible, engaging, and impactful training at scale. Imagine a digital platform intended to train health workers at scale. Their theory of change rests on a few key assumptions: On the surface, this seems sensible. Mobile optimization recognizes health workers’ technological realities. Multimedia content seems more engaging than pure text. Assessments appear to verify learning. Incentives promise to drive uptake. Scale feels synonymous with success. While well-intentioned, such a platform risks falling into the trap of a behaviorist learning agenda. This is an approach that, despite its prevalence, is a pedagogical dead-end with limited potential for driving meaningful, sustained improvements in health worker performance and health outcomes. It is a paradigm that views learners …

Self-Regulated Learning: Beliefs, Techniques, and Illusions

8 things we know about learning across the lifespan in a complex world

Theory

The work by Robert A. Bjork and his colleagues is very helpful to make sense of the limitations of learners’ perceptions. Here are 8 summary points from their paper about self-regulated learning. Source: Bjork, R.A., Dunlosky, J., Kornell, N., 2013. Self-Regulated Learning: Beliefs, Techniques, and Illusions. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 64, 417–444. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143823

Why lack of continuous learning is the Achilles heel of immunization

Why lack of continuous learning is the Achilles heel of immunization 

Global health, Theory

Continuous learning is lacking in immunization. This lack may be an underestimated barrier to the “Big Catch-Up” and reaching zero-dose children This was a key finding presented at Gavi’s Zero-Dose Learning Hub (ZDLH) webinar “Equity in Action: Local Strategies for Reaching Zero-Dose Children and Communities” on 24 January 2024. The finding is based on analysis large-scale measurements conducted by the Geneva Learning Foundation in 2020 and 2022, with more than 10,000 immunization staff from all levels of the health system, job categories, and contexts, responding from over 90 countries. Year n Continuous learning Dialogue & Inquiry Team learning Embedded Systems Empowered People System Connection Strategic Leadership 2020 3830 3.61 4.68 – 4.81 4.68 5.10 4.83 2022 6185 3.76 4.71 4.86 4.93 4.72 5.23 4.93 TGLF global measurements (2020 and 2022) of learning culture in immunization, using the Dimensions of Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ) What does this finding actually mean? In immunization, the …

What Have We Learned That Is Critical in Understanding Leadership Perceptions and Leader-Performance Relations?

What is the relationship between leadership and performance?

Global health, Leadership, Theory

In their article “What Have We Learned That Is Critical in Understanding Leadership Perceptions and Leader-Performance Relations?”, Robert G. Lord and Jessica E. Dinh review research on leadership perceptions and performance, and provide research-based principles that can provide new directions for future leadership theory and research. What is leadership?  Leadership is tricky to define. The authors state: “Leadership is an art that has significant impact on individuals, groups, organizations, and societies”. It is not just about one person telling everyone else what to do. Leadership happens in the connections between people – it is something that grows between a leader and followers, almost like a partnership. And it usually does not involve just one leader either. There can be leadership shared across a whole team or organization. The big question is: how does all this connecting and partnering actually get a team to perform well? That is what researchers are …

The limitations of expert-led fellowships for global health

How to overcome limitations of expert-led fellowships for global health

Global health, Theory

Coaching and mentoring programs sometimes called “fellowships” have been upheld as the gold standard for developing leaders in global health. For example, a fellowship in the field of immunization was recently advertised in the following manner. We will not dwell here on the ‘live engagements’, which are expert-led presentations of technical knowledge. We already know that such ‘webinars’ have very limited learning efficacy, and unlikely impact on outcomes. (This may seem like a harsh statement to global health practitioners who have grown comfortable with webinars, but it is substantiated by decades of evidence from learning science research.) On the surface, the rest of the model sounds highly effective, promising personalized attention and expert guidance. The use of a project-based learning approach is promising, but it is unclear what support is provided once the implementation plan has been crafted. It is when you consider the logistical aspects that the cracks begin …

How does peer learning compare to expert-led coaching fellowships

How does the scalability of peer learning compare to expert-led coaching ‘fellowships’?

Global health, Theory

By connecting practitioners to learn from each other, peer learning facilitates collaborative development. ow does it compare to expert-led coaching and mentoring “fellowships” that are seen as the ‘gold standard’ for professional development in global health? Scalability in global health matters. (See this article for a comparison of other aspects.) Simplified mathematical modeling can compare the scalability of expert coaching (“fellowships”) and peer learning Let N be the total number of learners and M be the number of experts available. Assuming that each expert can coach K learners effectively: For N>>M×KN>>M×K, it is evident that expert coaching is costly and difficult to scale. Expert coaching “fellowships” require the availability of experts, which is often optimistic in highly specialized fields. The number of learners (N) greatly exceeds the product of the number of experts (M) and the capacity per expert (K). Scalability of one-to-one peer learning By comparison, peer learning turns …