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Global Education Discussion Group Fall Fair & Guest Speaker – Joshua Muskin
September 24, 2019 @ 10:00 am - 1:00 pm EDT
Joshua Muskin, Senior Director of Programs for Geneva Global (a US-based philanthropy advising firm) will use Geneva Global’s Speed School project to illuminate the conceptual and practical elements of cocreation. With accelerated education projects (Speed Schools) now in their ninth year in Ethiopia and fourth in Uganda, Geneva Global has begun a deliberate process to accompany the two host governments in the adoption of the core model and methods.
An accelerated education program, Speed School gives out-of-school children aged 8 to 14 the first three years of primary education in one year. Featuring learner- centered, activity-based instruction delivered by para-professional instructors, the model has let more than 200,000 children in Ethiopia and Uganda (over 95% of those who enrolled) transition to government primary classes, where they excel. The model includes a self-help component for mothers, raising their economic ability and motivation to support their children’s schooling until completion.
Dr. Muskin will elucidate the technical and political dimensions of this process, focusing on “how” Geneva Global has succeeded with these elements that government routinely struggles to use. He will discuss the genesis of Geneva Global’s decision to pursue full government adoption, relating both what gave the program confidence to dare this and how the government came to share this ambition. He will investigate the role of cocreation as a key element of the process, launching a process to transform these Speed Schools from Geneva Global’s leadership to full ownership by the government.
Still a ‘work-in-progress,” Dr. Muskin will recount what seems to be working and what challenges the Speed School program continues to manage. Mostly, the aim is to offer a promising experience with inclusion and to illuminate that the topic is not a simple matter of policy and plans but one that requires a bold, patient, and stumbling slog through the very messy structures, practices, interests, and other dimensions of an education system.