TONGO Inspire Teaching

Who (first and last name) is the Team Lead for your application and LEAP Project?

Isabel Gomez Velez

Describe the role the Team Lead plays in your organization. [100-200 words recommended]

As the Learning Development Manager, I primarily oversee the implementation of comprehensive learning strategies that effectively integrate educational content with the latest instructional design principles. I specialize in developing curricula that are not only educationally robust but also engaging and accessible to a diverse student audience. My responsibilities include conceptualizing and structuring course materials tailored to meet teachers' and students' teaching and learning needs and ensuring they are aligned with educational standards and objectives.

In addition to content development, I play a crucial role in the sales strategy of our educational products in schools. This involves presenting our offerings to educational institutions, highlighting how our teaching solutions can address specific educational challenges and enhance student learning outcomes. I work closely with school administrators and decision-makers to understand their needs and demonstrate the tangible benefits our products can offer to both teachers and students.

My dual focus on both the pedagogical and commercial aspects of educational content allows me to ensure that our products are pedagogically sound and strategically positioned in the market to achieve maximum impact and adoption. 

Explain how your Team Lead and supporting team members are well-positioned to effectively support the LEAP Project, given other priorities within your organization. [300-500 words - recommended]

As part of our strategic focus on enhancing product efficiency and improving progress measurements, my background positions me exceptionally well to support and lead these initiatives. With seven years of experience in education research and dual master's degrees—one in Education with an emphasis on Education for Citizenship and another in Digital Humanities focusing on the role of digital tools in evaluating students' creative assignments—I bring a comprehensive skill set to the table.

My academic and professional background has equipped me with a deep understanding of the theoretical and practical aspects of educational effectiveness. The first master’s program sharpened my insights into the civic aspects of education, reinforcing the importance of developing responsible, informed citizens through our educational products. My second master’s degree in Digital Humanities has given me specialized knowledge in leveraging digital tools for academic assessments, particularly in creatively driven tasks. This is crucial for advancing our product's ability to measure and enhance student engagement and learning outcomes effectively.

I have extensive experience evaluating educational programs using qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods approaches. By integrating robust evaluation mechanisms and continuous feedback loops into our product development process, I can guide our team in making data-driven decisions that enhance product efficacy and user satisfaction.

My educational background and professional experience uniquely qualify me to lead our strategic initiatives and effectively support the LEAP project in improving product efficiency and implementing sophisticated progress measurements, aligning perfectly with our goals to optimize educational impact.

One-line solution summary: In 20 words or less, summarize your organization's product or program that is the focus of your LEAP Project.

A systematic creative process that empowers educators to connect socio-emotional skills with academic content, using metaphors to foster meaningful learning.

Define the problem that your solution seeks to solve. [300-500 words recommended]

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) identifies cognitive and metacognitive skills as crucial for 2030, encompassing creative thinking, social and emotional skills, and practical and physical skills, which include the use of digital and computing tools. For their development, the OECD emphasizes the need for trained educators, students who connect their learning experiences with the real world and pursue learning with a sense of purpose, the interconnection of various topics, and an adaptive curriculum.

Educating citizens represents a significant responsibility and a complex challenge that numerous national and international entities aim to address in collaboration with schools. But the question remains: how?

The International Survey on Social and Emotional Skills (SSES), conducted by the OECD in 2019*, revealed that schools primarily engage in the development of socio-emotional skills through their regular activities and norms.

However, the constraints of tight schedules and the reliance on teachers to spearhead this development pose a high risk of relegating the cultivation of socio-emotional competencies to a secondary outcome of academic education.

This raises a critical question: do teachers possess sufficient tools, time, and knowledge for this task?

A notable proportion of educators acknowledge a significant gap in training for the development of students' social and emotional skills. Specifically, less than 60% of those teaching 15-year-olds and fewer than 55% of those teaching 10-year-olds, as reported in the SSES*, have received comprehensive training in this pivotal field.

To address this, teachers need sophisticated training in a broad set of skills and knowledge, enabling them to offer thoughtful, ongoing, and systematic support for the social and emotional learning of children

*OECD (2023), "Schools as hubs for social and emotional learning: Are schools and teachers ready?", OECD Education Spotlights, No. 4, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi-org.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/10.1787/f6d12db7-en. The survey includes 75 schools, 3000 students aged 10 and 15 in nine cities from different regions of the world, including: Bogotá, Manizales (Colombia), Daegu (Korea), Helsinki (Finland), Houston (United States), Istanbul (Turkey), Ottawa (Canada), Sintra (Portugal), and Suzhou (China). The SSES studied creativity, curiosity, empathy, cooperation, and other social and emotional skills.

Describe your solution and how it works in simple terms. [300-500 words recommended]

TONGO’s instructional design method for teachers uses creative thinking as a foundation in an easy-to-use format backed by scientific rigour.  By providing a step-by-step guide, TONGO stimulates the development of the teachers' creativity and appropriation of socio-emotional learnings whilst facilitating the design of lesson plans that connect the mobilization of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values holistically. 

Furthermore, TONGO’s provides content regarding social and emotional competencies as per the OECD framework based on the Big Five personality traits to further develop their own learnings about these topics. 

TONGO’S method helps teachers to: 

1. use creativity as a vehicle to create lesson plans that connect the academic content and social and emotional competencies simultaneously during the lesson plan, strengthening meaningful and long-lasting learning; 

2. design sessions connected to reality and context that transcend the educational space, broaden understanding, promote exploration, inspire and motivate students; 

For TONGO, teachers are active subjects and subjects of action in the classroom, on whom rests the responsibility for what happens, why it happens and how it happens. That is why, TONGO  seeks to empower them so that, through practice and facilitating the ideation and planning of their classes, they make curricula more flexible by designing connected and meaningful learning experiences.

Select the key characteristics of your target population. Select all that apply.

• Primary school children (ages 5-12)

Upload your solution's Theory of Change or Logic Model.

Where would you place your solution on Nesta's Standards of Evidence?

To date, what research/studies has your organization conducted or commissioned that have helped demonstrate the effectiveness of your solution? [300-500 words recommended]

Foundational Research:

Educational practices often fail to systematically integrate socio-emotional skills (SES) with academic instruction, leading to significant gaps in student development.

- Schools attempt to develop these skills through regular activities, but support and implementation continous to be inconsistent.

- Tight schedules and heavy reliance on teachers without adequate tools or training relegate SES to a secondary role in academic learning.*

- Less than 60% of educators teaching 15-year-olds and less than 55% of those teaching 10-year-olds included in the survey* have received sufficient training in SES.

Yet, there is significant evidence that socio-emotional skill development has a significant impact on students' academic outcomes and well-being. 

Programs designed to promote the development of SES foster positive behaviours and relationships, reduce behavioural problems and emotional distress. Increasing student engagement in the learning process and significantly improves cognitive and academic performance, demonstrating how strengthening social and emotional learning drives academic performance.

Hundreds of studies involving 1 million students from preschool to high school provide consistent evidence of the positive impact of developing knowing how to be on academic performance. (Durlak, Mahoney, & Boyle, (2022). 

424 studies in 53 countries involving 575,361 students reflect that schools including universal design programs for knowing how to be, show significant improvements in academic achievements and in the development of skills, attitudes, behaviors, peer relationships, as well as school climate and safety. (Cipriano, Strambler, Naples, Ha, Kirk, Wood, & Durlak, (2023). 

82 interventions to strengthen knowing how to be in 97,406 students revealed that, in the long term (between 6 months and 18 years later), academic performance improved by an average of 13 percentage points compared to non-participants. Improvements in social-emotional skills, attitudes, and well-being were significant and consistent, regardless of race, socioeconomic status, or school location. (Taylor, Oberle, Durlak, & Weissberg, (2017)). 

Why emphasize training in SES for educators?

Several studies indicate that educators well-trained to nurture socio-emotional learning are more confident and effective, reflected in more dynamic education and improvements in the school environment. (Regression analysis of data conducted by the OECD (2019), TALIS , Oliveira, et al. (2021).

These efforts to train educators also serve as a shield against their exposure to work stress and professional burnout. Social and emotional learnings are essential for teaching effectiveness and job performance. (Schonert-Reichl, (2017).

Formative research: 

We have conducted 65 user interviews with educators who used TONGO to design a lesson plan. After implementation, we consistently see responses that support consistently changes in their teaching practice:

1. Educators become more open to the TONGO method, understanding its significance, and starting to embrace their creativity to construct more dynamic classes.    2. They recognize and express the importance of connecting socio-emotional learning with academic content, enhancing their connection with students.

3. Teachers increasingly consider students' feelings and contexts while designing lessons, striving to create a more relatable, creative and engaging learning environment.

4. Teachers have a noticeable commitment to continuously improve and refine their classes, growing more passionate about the design of their lesson process as they see it as a personal and professional achievement.

What has the data collected from the research/studies revealed about your solution and how did it inform your work moving forward? [300-500 words recommended]

The following teacher needs have emerged from these processes and our own experience as educators:

1. It continues to be very difficult to articulate academic content and develop soft skills simultaneously in the classroom while recognizing the teacher’s key role in doing so.

2. Educators lack the creative tools to design exciting sessions connected with reality that transcend the educational space.

3. Educators need instructional design tools to help them efficiently plan, design, and manage more active and creative classes.

4. They need training to develop socio-emotional skills without adding extra time to their already tight schedules. 

Tongo generates value by attending directly to these needs. For this, Tongo empowers teachers in the exploration and strengthening of their creativity for the design of lesson plans connected with reality and that transcend the educational space by facilitating the connection of the cognitive, rational content of the academic knowledge and the development of social and emotional learnings as the fundamental basis of any meaningful learning experience designed using the method. 

In addition, the method provides content on socio-emotional skills that help them broaden their perspectives and knowledge about how to develop it further. 

Describe your organization's need to strengthen the evidence base of your solution. [300-500 words recommended]

TONGO is at a critical stage where validating the efficacy of our educational methods on learning outcomes for children aged 2-12 in Latin America can amplify its impact. 

Currently, TONGO's approach to evaluating the impact of our programs is primarily qualitative. We collect qualitative data through in-depth interviews with teachers after they have implemented our method and created and delivered that lesson plan. These discussions help us understand our approach's practical benefits and challenges from the educators' perspectives.

Our current qualitative insights, while valuable, highlight the necessity for a more robust evidence base. The LEAP Challenge offers a crucial opportunity for TONGO to collaborate with expert researchers and social entrepreneurs. This partnership would allow us to develop sophisticated, data-driven metrics and introduce comprehensive evaluation tools. Enhanced study designs would enable us to quantify educational improvements more precisely and ensure that our programs are both impactful and adaptable to diverse educational settings.

The timing for engaging in a LEAP Project is particularly pertinent for several reasons:

- As TONGO moves from initial piloting to broader growth, establishing a strong evidence base is vital for scaling our initiatives effectively.
- Robust evidence is crucial to attract further investments and partnerships. Demonstrable, data-backed results appeal to funders and educational institutions, promoting wider adoption.
- Insights derived from collaborations with LEAP Fellows will guide the enhancement of our content and instructional methods, ensuring our offerings remain innovative and relevant.
- Engaging with a global network of experts will introduce us to international best practices and novel educational strategies, enriching our approach and methodologies.

What are 2-3 research questions that you would like your LEAP Project to help you answer? [100 words recommended]

How effective is the TONGO method in integrating socio-emotional learning with academic instruction in improving student engagement and academic performance?

What impact does the use of the TONGO method have on teacher instructional practices and their perceptions of student behaviour and engagement?

What type of research methods do you think will help answer your stated questions? Select all that apply.

• Formative research (e.g. usability studies; feasibility studies; case studies; user interviews; implementation studies; process evaluations; pre-post or multi-measure research; correlational studies)
• Summative research (e.g. impact evaluations; correlational studies; quasi-experimental studies; randomized control studies)

Please elaborate on your selection above by describing your desired outputs of the 12-week LEAP Project sprint. [300 - 500 words recommended]

During the 12-week LEAP Project sprint, TONGO seeks to collaborate with LEAP Fellows to produce comprehensive research recommendations that will help refine and validate our educational solution. 

Two significant outputs: 

1. Develop strategic frameworks to guide the ongoing data collection and evaluation of the TONGO method’s effectiveness.

2. Creation of robust monitoring and evaluation tools that TONGO can use continuously to assess the impact of the method on an ongoing basis.

In collaboration with the team, the following alternatives regarding the best approach that considers TONGO's purpose and potential for impact can be evaluated.

In terms of Formative Research Outputs:

- Create a template report assessing the usability of the TONGO platform from both educator and student perspectives. This includes ease of integration into existing curricula and the accessibility of training resources. We currently have a draft. 
- Develop a plan for Feasibility Studies that evaluate the practicality of implementing the TONGO method across diverse educational settings and subjects, including different school environments and student demographics in Latin America.
- How to better document in-depth case studies of implementation processes and early outcomes of the TONGO method in select schools, providing qualitative insights into the variables affecting success.
- Analysis of the operational aspects of deploying the TONGO method, including teacher training efficacy, resource allocation, and adaptation to local educational standards.

In terms of Summative Research Outputs:

- Develop an Impact Evaluation Framework for conducting rigorous impact evaluations that measure the longitudinal effects of the TONGO method on student learning outcomes, including both socio-emotional and academic achievements.
- Design a study to explore the relationships between the intensity of TONGO method use and improvements in educational outcomes, providing a basis for understanding causality.
- Recommendations for quasi-experimental designs that can be implemented in subsequent phases to compare outcomes between classrooms using the TONGO method and those that do not, controlling for external factors.

How will your organization put these outputs into action? [300-500 words recommended]

Our strategic plan for deploying these outputs encompasses several key actions:

1. The strategic frameworks developed to guide data collection and evaluation will be systematically integrated into our day-to-day operations. We will utilize these frameworks to establish a standardized approach to data gathering, ensuring consistency in collecting and analyzing information from different sources and settings. This will enable us to make informed decisions that continuously improve the quality and impact of our educational offerings.

2. The robust monitoring and evaluation tools designed during the LEAP Project will be deployed across all programs using the TONGO method. These tools will provide us with real-time insights into our method's effectiveness, allowing for agile adjustments to enhance teaching practices and student learning outcomes. By continuously assessing the method's impact, we can provide targeted support to educators, tailor our training resources to meet their needs, and refine our educational strategies to maximize efficacy and engagement.

3. The template report on the usability of the TONGO will guide immediate enhancements to improve integration into existing curricula and enhance the accessibility of our training resources.

 4. The feasibility study plan will be executed to assess the practicality of deploying the TONGO method in diverse educational environments. This will inform our expansion strategies and help tailor our approach to meet the specific needs of different demographics and school settings in Latin America.

5. We will continue systematically documenting and analyzing case studies of the TONGO method’s implementation to gather qualitative insights. These case studies will be used to create detailed reports highlighting successful strategies and improvement areas, providing a valuable resource for ongoing development.

6. The operational aspects of deploying the TONGO method, including the efficacy of teacher training and resource allocation, will be closely examined to streamline processes and enhance the scalability of our solution.

7. This framework will be employed to collaborate with a school partner and conduct a detailed longitudinal study that measures the lasting effects of the TONGO method on student outcomes. The insights gained will be crucial for demonstrating the value of our approach to stakeholders and funders.

Describe your desired long-term outcomes of the 12-week LEAP Project sprint for both your organization and solution. [300-500 words recommended]

The 12-week LEAP Project sprint can significantly enhance TONGO's capabilities, driving profound and long-lasting impacts on our organization and the educational solutions we provide. This initiative will refine our methods and expand our ability to monitor and elevate the educational experience systematically. Here’s how we foresee the long-term outcomes for TONGO and its beneficiaries:

Developing a robust framework for monitoring and evaluation during the LEAP Project will bolster our ability to measure and understand the impact of the TONGO method more precisely. This systematic data collection and analysis approach will validate our educational strategies through empirical evidence and enhance our capacity to improve and innovate our offerings continuously. By leveraging advanced research tools and methodologies, we can provide more nuanced insights into the effectiveness of our programs, strengthening our position as a leader in integrating socio-emotional learning with academic instruction.

Educators who embrace the TONGO method will further their capacity to design more dynamic and impactful lessons. With enhanced evaluation tools, they can better understand the significance of combining socio-emotional learning with academic content, leading to more enriched interactions with students.

Teachers will gain an increased ability to incorporate students' socio-emotional and contextual backgrounds into their lesson planning. This will make learning environments more engaging, relatable, and supportive, optimizing student well-being and academic outcomes.

The new frameworks support educators in continuously improving their teaching practices, viewing their efforts as personal achievement and professional responsibility. This ongoing development is key to maintaining their passion and effectiveness in the classroom.

Equipped with superior monitoring tools, TONGO can provide educators with insights into the general efficacy of our methods and actionable data specific to their classrooms. This empowers educators to make informed adjustments to their teaching strategies, enhancing educational outcomes and their teaching experience.

Systematically tracking these outcomes can provide stakeholders with concrete evidence of our program’s success. This accountability is crucial for attracting further support and expanding our impact. Ultimately, this will lead to widespread improvements in the educational experiences of more educators and students, equipping them with the essential tools to thrive in an increasingly complex world.

The LEAP Project sprint is expected to catalyze significant advancements in TONGO’s operational strategies and educational techniques, ensuring that our solution meets the current needs of educators and students and adapts to future challenges.