Innovative Teachers Network of Peru-RED

Our educational system has limited mechanisms to identify and disseminate educational innovations developed by teachers, which contribute to the improvement of learning. This has repercussions in the stagnation of pedagogical practices by not having validated reference models that serve as support to other teachers.

Before it, FONDEP makes the RED available to teachers, as a virtual community that generates and shares pedagogical knowledge from the development of educational innovation projects, mediated through a web platform designed for teachers, which allows them self-register, disseminate and replicate your projects. By scaling globally, RED would make it possible to identify, make visible and make available to teachers from different countries, innovative solutions to specific educational problems. Likewise, it would make it possible to position and put in contact teachers from different contexts, contributing to the policies of recognition and revaluation of professional teachers.

According to the National Survey of Teachers (ENDO 2018) of the Ministry of Education, 97% of teachers are satisfied or very satisfied with their pedagogical practices, however, these are far from the development of competencies of the national curriculum. In two related studies, 90% of teachers spend a good part of their time in activities other than the development of competencies (Use of time, 2012), and 89.5% of them promote routine processes (Monitoring of school practice, 2018).

In this sense, the challenge of the educational system is to promote effective innovations focused on the development of skills in students. However, the problem is made more complex by having limited resources to identify, strengthen and put this type of practices in the community that serve as a reference to other teachers to overcome traditional practices.

Among the main causes of this problem are the limited national policies to encourage innovation; the limited development of teaching capacities and the scarce economic resources.

This is where RED becomes relevant, since it provides feedback to the system with educational experiences to improve learning, promoting access to quality learning environments.

RED, is a community hosted on a website created by FONDEP, which allows:

a. Register good practices and educational innovation projects by teachers themselves.

b. Identify projects with high innovative potential. For this they are evaluated and provided feedback by specialists to be improved and published.

c. Disseminate the projects through a digital bank and the Innovation Map hosted on the web and linked to social networks.

d. Bringing teachers together in order to share their projects and replicate those of others, generating spaces for reflection and collective feedback.

e. Share the pedagogical knowledge generated by the projects, through the development and implementation of MOOC courses created by teachers for other teachers.

F. Strengthen the capacities of teachers for the development of innovations, through forums and webinar on pedagogical topics and MOOC courses through the “Teachers online” strategy.

g. Articulate efforts with decentralized educational management bodies and other allies, for the identification, promotion, recognition and financing of innovations, especially in territories of special attention such as border areas, VRAEM, the Amazon and extreme poverty.

RED target population is the country's basic education teachers and directors who are increasingly interested in developing educational innovation projects. In the context generated by the pandemic, this demand is necessary and has increased.

Currently, of the 530,870 teachers and directors who have been working in schools in Peru, around 385,979 (73%) belong to the public sector. According to the results of the ENDO 2020 (National Survey of Teachers of Public Educational Institutions), 40.5% of them indicate having participated at some time in an innovation project or good pedagogical practice, which shows the latent interest of teachers in develop innovations. However, far from the figure, it was unknown in which schools they were developed, what they were about, the public served and the possible results, wasting a valuable opportunity for the educational system.

This in turn demands special attention, since it is necessary to manage educational policies, as well as strategies for the identification and dissemination of educational experiences of national scope, which allow them to learn from each other, as well as the development of capacities and mechanisms for teacher recognition. from the innovation projects developed in the classrooms.

To understand the needs of the target audience of the RED, we apply periodic surveys so that based on the results, the products and services to be offered are designed or readjusted. In the survey applied in 2020 to a group of 907 teachers belonging to the RED, it was found that more than 77% of them value technical assistance, specialized training and having interaction spaces to share experiences, as mechanisms to encourage, strengthen and radiate its educational innovation projects.

On the other hand, in order to connect these demands with those of the sector and academia, we hold spaces for dialogue and permanent consultation with a network of experts in education, pedagogies, research and innovation, which has allowed us to refine our intervention.

From the origin and during the implementation of RED, teachers and managers have been and are at the center, since this initiative stems from the idea of giving innovative teachers a voice and prominence.

With them we have been developing forums and webinars on topics of pedagogical interest, which are stimulated by leading teachers of the RED. 06 dialogue forums have been developed with teachers from all over the country, with a maximum reach of 101,278 participations. In these spaces, qualitative contributions were generated in the face of the crisis generated by the pandemic, citizenship, intercultural learning, rural education, use of technology and pedagogical practices in the context of distance education.

Likewise, to identify and promote pedagogical initiatives relevant to the context of the health emergency generated by Covid-19, the Registry of initiatives was organized with the active participation of the members of the RED, managing to identify 523 at the national level, of which 80 were selected for being more promising and relevant to distance education and positioned themselves through various webinars organized in coordination with Decentralized Educational Instances with the purpose of continuing to build pedagogical knowledge, mobilize pedagogical reflection and nurture national educational politics.

In addition, to promote the leadership of the teachers of the RED, we have been implementing the Mentoring of good practices and innovations, with the purpose of identifying and strengthening the capacities of teachers and recognized leaders in different areas, so that from the successful development of your innovation projects, radiate your proposals to other schools. To date, there are 17 mentor teachers who have designed and published their MOOC courses based on the innovation projects they have developed, so that other teachers can access them for free in order to know and replicate the experience. To date, 056 teachers have benefited from these courses.

In addition to this, we provide support to outstanding teachers of the RED so that their projects and their experience are nominated for different national and international competitions, in order to encourage them to continue developing innovations and recognize their leadership.

In addition, to encourage the development of innovations in schools, annually in coordination with the Ministry of Education and subnational governments, we develop the National Competition for Educational Innovation Projects, "Ideas that transform", in order to identify, recognize and strengthen innovation projects developed by teachers. Currently, two versions of this contest have been developed, so that in the FONDEP Innovation Map there are 2,183 identified projects.

This set of actions has allowed RED to have more than 35,947 teachers, principals and allies mobilized at the national level, for the decentralized visibility of educational innovation projects. Of which 60% are women, from 1,609 districts throughout the country: 12,498 from the andean districts, 1,822 from the borders, 7,048 from the afro-descendant districts of the coast and 7,476 from other districts.

RED has already been addressing the needs of teachers, so it will continue on a path of optimization, strengthening and consolidation.

In the short term, the challenge is to optimize the functioning of the RED through a mobile App so that it can be used from any technological means, which would allow it to reach all corners of the country offering opportunities to teachers to register and disseminate initiatives and projects of innovation, training and teacher training through MOOC courses linked to educational innovation.

In addition, this will allow RED to be consolidated as a teaching community, based on an open mobilization of the teaching community for the development of innovations that accompany or facilitate the education guidelines provided by MINEDU, such as the national strategy “I learn in Casa ”, by offering a bank of sessions, resources and learning projects so that teachers from all over the country can be inspired, adapt and replicate them in their own contexts, in the context of the situation caused by COVID-19.

Considering that within the challenge “Equitable classrooms”, technology-based solutions are sought, RED encourages teachers so that from the registration, identification and strengthening and dissemination of their educational innovation projects, they learn in community by sharing their experiences to be replicated in a flexible way, contributing directly to improving pedagogical practices and student learning, even more so in the current context.

 Además, la RED permite visibilizar buenas prácticas pedagógicas y experiencias de innovación educativa, de abajo hacia arriba, contribuyendo a la política educativa desde experiencias concretas.

RED, during the first two years of implementation, has gone through a design and validation stage under the web platform format. In its first year it had the registration and participation of about 5,000 teachers and in the second year the registration increased to 18,000; Likewise, it expanded its operation with the module for the Registration of Pedagogical Initiatives in the context of the pandemic and the training module to host the “Teachers Online” strategy. Currently it has entered its third year of operation and has more than 35 thousand teachers with the potential to continue growing.

At this stage of growth, given the continuous interest of the educational community and the same sector, RED needs to expand, which is why the need to take it to a mobile App has been generated, to reach more teachers.

What makes RED innovative is that by using a technological solution based on an open source framework, it allows connecting teachers from different territories of the country, overcoming isolation, and leading them to enter into a logic of co-construction of knowledge, participation , cooperation and dialogue of knowledge to solve problems from inter-learning. Because it is an agile, adaptable and easily accessible platform, it helps to close digital gaps in teachers in peasant, rural and border areas of Peru.

Also, by promoting the self-registration of projects by teachers, to enter into a logic of feedback, strengthening and dissemination; promotes the management of pedagogical knowledge by putting educational experiences in the community so that one teacher learns from another from their own practice.

In addition, what is innovative about RED is that it promotes processes of individual and collective pedagogical reflection, which are unleashed in school teams, when formulating, validating and sharing creative and relevant solutions for the improvement of learning, thus contributing to the recovery of teaching professionalism.

Also, because it generates incentives available to teachers through MOOC Courses that are automatically certified and the national competition for educational innovation projects, whose possibility of participation is free and open.

Currently, RED has more than 35 thousand teachers and directors of public and private schools in the country, registered.

In the following year we plan to benefit 60,000 and in the fifth year about 100,000 teachers from different contexts.

Currently, to measure the progress of RED's objectives, the following specific indicators are used:

- Number of teachers registered in RED in each territory and in highly vulnerable contexts.

- Number of projects registered in RED in each territory and in highly vulnerable contexts.

- Number of user interactions with the projects published on RED.

- Number of teachers who actively participate in RED activities: forums and webinar.

- Number of teachers who enroll in MOOC courses.

- Percentage of teachers who successfully complete MOOC courses.

For this, RED allows the generation of automatic reports periodically that allows us to monitor the progress of each of the objectives.

FONDEP is a public institution, attached to the Ministry of Education of Peru, born under Law No. 28332. We are the only Peruvian public fund that promotes and encourages the financing of innovation and educational development projects in schools, with a territorial focus. It is made up of an interdisciplinary team, most of which are women leaders.

Currently in the management of RED, 24 professionals with full-time contracts have been collaborating. Likewise, according to the availability of resources, temporary services are contracted in specific activities and products.

It has been possible to form and consolidate an interdisciplinary work team very committed to the principles and values of the institution and the objectives of RED, always thinking of providing the best public service to innovative teachers in the country.

All of them come from work experiences both in the public and private sectors, where they have led teams and have successfully implemented programs and strategies in favor of the educational and social improvement of the country.

His training and experience is a potential for RED, since it has expert specialists in public management, partner management, computer engineering and programming, pedagogical management, design and implementation of training programs and educational innovation.

To build a diverse, equitable and inclusive leadership team, at our institution we are guided by the following principles:

- Equality and good treatment: We promote and practice relationships based on respect, equality and horizontal treatment.

- Collaboration and trust: Collaborative work is a constant in the team, as well as the delegation of responsibilities, as an expression of the trust placed in the person's capacity.

- Shared leadership: It is an institutionalized practice for the development of activities, valuing individual skills and motivations against the task to be carried out.

- Freedom: Expressed in the freedom to create and propose other forms of solution to a challenge.

We applied RED to Solve, for two reasons:

- Access technical assistance and knowledge of the Solver teams, in order to strengthen RED and make it a benchmark for the education sector that encourages the development of innovations.

- Have the financial resources necessary to optimize the RED and reach more teachers in the country.

We need financial resources for the design and implementation of the RED mobile App, hiring of human resources to mobilize actors, the management of financing and technical assistance to teachers, and the financing of selected projects.

We would like to partner with institutions specialized in educational innovation management, including MIT and SOLVE, with whom we could sign inter-institutional agreements to help strengthen RED and FONDEP.

We can apply for this award because RED is linked to the Equitable Classrooms challenge and promotes the creation of intelligent and safe teacher communities, where knowledge is generated and shared to improve student learning.

We apply to this award because RED is a solution that is based on open source technology to generate impacts on the improvement of student learning from the registration and dissemination of educational innovation projects.

If this award is accepted, the resources will be used for the optimization and strengthening of RED in its growth stage.

We apply to this award because RED is a solution that is based on open source technology to generate impacts on the improvement of student learning from the registration and dissemination of educational innovation projects.

If this award is accepted, the resources will be used for the optimization and strengthening of RED in its growth stage.

We apply to this contest because RED is a virtual community that uses technology to generate and share pedagogical knowledge from the development of educational innovation projects, mediated through a web platform designed for teachers, which allows them to self-register, disseminate and replicate your projects.

By scaling globally, RED would make it possible to identify, make visible and make available to teachers from different countries, innovative solutions to specific educational problems. Likewise, it would make it possible to position and put in contact teachers from different contexts, contributing to the policies of recognition and revaluation of professional teachers.