Learning Environments, Innovation and Results (Education News and Research 152)

Learning environment as third teacher? Evidence on the impact of school infrastructureRAINHA DONA LEONOR Secondary School, Lisbon

From a very early age, modern children spend more and more time in nurseries, kindergartens, or schools. According to international statistics, the coverage of educational services is increasing worldwide. In 2015, 49% of children were in pre-school institutions, more than 89% of children attended primary schools, and 65% had access to general education. According to the OECD, students are spending 7,538 hours in the school premises on average by the age of 15[1]. Thus, school build environment becomes the second place where students spend the majority of their time, after home. It also becomes a third teacher if it is arranged to support learning. The term third teacher was first used by Italian pedagogue Loris Malaguzzi. He claimed that the learning environment can become a third teacher after the family and the pedagogue, representing not only a tool for educators but also independently providing a source for discoveries and experiences…

GPRBA’s First Impact Bond Project to Improve Children’s Education in Uzbekistan  World Bank’s first education – and GPRBA’s first – impact bond will increase access to quality early childhood education services by incentivizing private sector service provision in urban areas of Uzbekistan…

Mercy Tembon: “A key highlight of my tenure is the increased focus on education and the quality of human capital”

 Skills for Jobs Moldova | Chisinau on May 14-15 | Communication campaign impact report: …The event sought to discuss skills-related constraints to productive employment and how those may be addressed to expand job opportunities in Moldova. Furthermore, the conference sought to re-invigorate skills development policy debate and support it by various research and analytical outputs commissioned by the World Bank and other development partners…The conference gathered over 120 participants from the public sector, businesses, academia, development partners, think-tanks and representatives of civil society. It covered a broad range of issues, including drivers of Moldova`s productivity growth, transformation of jobs landscape brought by the technological changes, labor mobility and country`s connectivity to various markets, transition of the youth from education to productive employment, types of skills missing at Moldova`s labor market, and policies to foster development of relevant skills. We warmed up the public’s interest ahead of the conference with a couple of blogs on Moldova’s HCI and skills mismatch, published in 3 languages, which were a great success, both locally and internationally, collecting an impressive number of reactions. The American University in Moldova invited us to speak about the issue with their students. The event itself was partially live-streamed, shared hundreds of times and drew media attention. During the event we filmed a lot of thematic interviews in 3 languages, which are being converted in video messages on different topics for follow up communication for weeks and months ahead. This process in ongoing and will result in about a dozen short videos, a video with testimonials of young Moldovans talking about relevancy of the education in the country and a longer mini-documentary about the topic. Here are some examples:

More information about the event, including the agenda, publications, reports, etc. can be accessed on the Event Page…

Montenegro – Higher Education and Research for Innovation and Competitiveness Project (HERIC) showcase videos This is a link to a video showing part of the atmosphere from the showcase event. There are also three short videos shown during the event – the first one with the overall results of HERIC activities, the second one with key results achieved by the Ministry of Education and the third one presenting the collaborative research projects funded by the Ministry of Science through HERIC…