Curiós

The 2.2 million educators in Brazil received little to no practical training in college, beginning their careers very unprepared. Studies show that over 20% of learning time is wasted due to classroom management issues. For teachers, the frustration builds up and leads to burnout. 

In São Paulo State, the most populous state in Brazil, a study showed that prior to the pandemic, 8 teachers resigned every day due to stressful work conditions. In the United States, according to the RAND Corporation, 55 percent of the surveyed public school teachers quit in the two school years leading up to the pandemic, while the others left after March 2020. Considering that Brazil had one of the longest periods in remote learning, with poor to none preparation provided to the educators, we believe this proportion is equivalent or even worse. A recent study made in 2021, by the renowned organization Nova Escola, found that 72% of teachers in Brazil had their mental health affected during the pandemic.

On top of the issues faced due to the pandemic, we understand that, in Brazil and worldwide, teachers are trained for theory, and not practice. The issue became so relevant that the government mandated that one third of a teacher’s (paid) time should be spent with planning and in professional development sessions within their schools. The problem is there are no guidelines on how to use that time, and the teacher trainer, who used to be a teacher and should lead these sessions, has the same theoretical training as everyone else. To reinforce this gap, according to the last Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Status, from 2018, Brazil is the lowest ranked of all the 35 listed countries.

Within this context, Curiós developed a methodology that leverages technology to increase the reach of techniques that help teachers create a more positive classroom environment, focused on learning, which include social-emotional development, classroom management, and sharing of best practices, in a scalable solution. With our user-friendly training tracks, we empower the trainer as a knowledge multiplier, improving the in-school professional development sessions, transforming them into learning communities and part of a network to solve problems, share ideas and spread innovation. 

Our customers are public school districts (80% of primary and secondary education in Brazil); our users are school-based educators. Our goal is to empower them to change the status quo of currently misused professional development sessions, leading to a ripple effect aiming at improving student learning through a transformation in classroom practices. Our training tracks give practical examples of what teachers need to DO to engage students, create a positive learning environment and leverage student achievement. By working with the public school system, we aim to reach underserved communities and focus on underperforming districts. Our solution is designed for elementary and middle school, but can also be applied to early childhood or high school, reaching students from ages 2-18. Since we are not focused on curriculum, but on actions and behaviors, we empower teachers with resources to become better educators and teach students how to learn and be excited about learning. If we transform one teacher, we will be transforming hundreds of students.

In 2018, we interviewed 400 plus teachers, discovering that teachers need support in actual classroom practices (“what should I DO” solutions). We also ran two pilots in small municipal schools in Brazil: impacting (i) 9 educators and 50 students, and (ii) 25 educators and 850 students to refine our content. In 2019 Q3 we signed a partnership with Castro, our first municipal district, with a Proof of Concept in 4 schools. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we couldn’t finish our one year long project. However, we could observe and gather some important perceptions over the final product. During the pandemic, we designed and implemented new solutions that focused on virtual-based training, suspending our main product (which has a strong in-person element to it) and is the focus of this proposal.

In 2022, we received a new fund from Imaginable Futures and Lemann Foundation to implement a new pilot in 3 new districts, including a revision to our solution as a result of our experience in Castro, a closer look to the new needs educators presented in this post-pandemic period and the platform technology development to host the content. We are deploying the first part of this project, training and preparing the coordinators of each school to be the teachers’ trainer and start using the formative track in the professional development sessions.

Curiós is an easy-to-use solution that empowers the in-school teacher trainer as a knowledge multiplier. We train the trainers virtually to conduct face-to-face professional development sessions. We have developed a methodology that fosters school-based collective learning, bringing practical (and effective!) techniques that are as easy to implement as greeting students at the door. 

Our mission is to improve each educator’s potential so that the dream of quality education becomes true. That being said, our theory of change can be resumed as follows:

If Curiós:

• Offers in-school teacher trainers all materials needed to effectively train their teachers on practical classroom management and social emotional learning 

• Provides a space for teacher feedback on the techniques and the opportunity for educators to share their own experiences, and

• Creates the culture of rapid testing and community-based learning,

Then teachers will be able to:

• Manage classrooms more effectively,

• Focus more time on pedagogical practices, and

• Provide a good learning environment for students.

As a result, students will be able to:

• Learn the content required for that school year

• Develop better emotional intelligence as an individual and part of society

• Increase their overall performance in schoolwork and standardized tests, and

• Pursue better jobs or further schooling opportunities, enabling them to break the poverty cycle.

We are now implementing our formative track, collecting data on the quality of our processes and teacher self-reported assessments on results. Even though we are able to monitor self-reported results, we still don’t have metrics on our solution’s concrete impact, which puts us in level 2 of Nesta’s Standards of Evidence. 

For our actions, to monitor that trainers receive all the materials needed to effectively train their teachers, we use a survey to map how successful the implementation has been. To make sure we are creating a space for teacher feedback on the techniques and the opportunity for educators to share their own experiences, we send a survey to teachers monitoring their perceptions of the training session and the techniques taught.

For our results, we send a survey to participating teachers to map if they are able to manage classrooms more effectively, focus more time on pedagogical practices, and provide a good learning environment for students. Of course, this is self-reported, so we are not able (yet) to verify that our training sessions have changed their classroom practice. 

For our impact, we are not able (yet) to monitor student learning, but we are developing a project that implements diagnostic, formative and summative assessments in parallel to our teacher training. 

With this new project - further described in the next question - we expect to be able to verify that we do have an impact in teachers’ practices and on student learning.

When we start at a new municipality, teachers take a survey to map the school’s main challenges in the classroom and what they believe is their performance regarding these challenges. Some of the questions we ask are:

• How often do you feel frustrated as a teacher?
• Do you feel respected as a teacher?
• Do you have a good relationship with your students?
• Are you able to start your class without delay or interruptions?
• Do you manage to complete all your tasks planned for the day?
• Do you manage to engage your students during your class?

The foundation of our methodology is to provide a toolkit for in-school trainers that includes a minute-by-minute guide for how to conduct the meeting, questions to be asked, engaging deliverables, group exercises to share best practices, and a video presenting the research-based technique for that session. Teachers leave the session armed with daily practices to help them better manage their classrooms. 

The training cycle is composed of 4 pedagogical sessions: the first 3 provide a specific strategy and the fourth is a revision session, in order to observe whether teachers are actually implementing the strategies and how/if they are being well received. At the end of every session, we monitor how that impacted their daily practice and their perceptions on our materials. At this point, we ask questions such as “Are the contents we provide relevant for your practice?” and “Have you implemented last session’s technique in the classroom?”.

Every semester we reassess their progress on the indicators collected on the diagnostic survey and their social-emotional needs. By the end of the annual cycle, we compile a report to compare their answers and get input on the transformation of their practice.

For our pilot in 2019, when asked if they felt frustrated as an educator, respondents answering “never” went from 31% to 57%. When asked if they felt respected by their students, respondents answering “always” went from 43% to 69%. When asked if they were able to complete all planned classroom activities, respondents answering “always” went from 28% to 38%. Results were even better if we only consider teachers who completed 75% of all activities or more. For these, the changes were: 29% to 59% (never frustrated), 41% to 78% (always respected) and 32% to 41% (always complete activities planned).

We recently received financial support from Imaginable Futures and Fundação Lemann to review, pilot the new version and test our solution. Within this project, there are multiple project fronts: piloting our solution, developing and testing the MVP for our platform and evidence-based evaluations both for students (standardized test) and teachers (where they send evidence of application of our strategies in the classroom, with images, videos, lesson plans and documents). With this last project front, we intend to reach the next level in Nesta’s standards, in which we are able to demonstrate causality (our solution leading to better teaching practices, which lead to improved student outcomes). 

Teacher training by Curiós: when innovation means simple, effective and scalable. When educators are in the center of change.

Our solution has been piloted and the data collected shows positive change, but we haven’t been able to prove causality between successful outcomes and our teacher training solution. We believe our solution is ready for the next level, and reaching scale is only possible by proving the positive impact it has on the lives of teachers and students. In our project funded by Imaginable Futures and Lemann Foundation, we are working to incorporate both student and teacher assessments, being well positioned to structure an RCT, using control and treatment groups. By doing so, we expect to move forward to the 3rd level of Nesta’s standards. However, we do not have the in-house expertise to design and implement an RCT, considering all the technical requirements on matching our treatment group with an optimal control group.

That being said, we have 2 main research questions we would appreciate having the LEAP fellows help:

• Do our pedagogical strategies have any impact on teachers’ effectiveness in classrooms? What impact is this?

• Does this impact on teachers improve student learning?

To be able to answer these questions, we would like to have our methodology revised to ensure only evidence-based practices are incorporated into our learning track. To do so, we would appreciate help in designing a Randomized Controlled Trial of our solution, so we can move forward to Level 3 in the Nesta Standards. 

In addition to that, we have been working on consolidating our methodology’s theoretical basis and its application in schools. Our methodology is inspired by David Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle, where teachers experience in practice what they will implement in the classroom, in order to understand each stage of learning their students experience. We have adapted this theory to better reflect and improve practice: school classrooms are diverse, and so is each individual’s learning process. With the proven impact of our solution, we will be able to consolidate and officialize our methodology, preparing us to Levels 4 and 5 of the Nesta Standards, where we are able to replicate this positive impact in other scenarios and publish the book we are writing about our methodology.