SUMMA, or Laboratorio de Investigación e Innovación en Educación para América Latina y el Caribe, has been designated as the Coalition’s regional lead for Latin America and the Caribbean. Established by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Fundación Chile in 2016, SUMMA is supported by the Ministry of Education of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay. SUMMA aims to increase quality and access of educational systems by improving decision-making in educational policy and practice.
As regional lead, SUMMA will do coalition-building, provide technical assistance, conduct research, and share knowledge through three main activities in 2019: (1) perform a landscape review of TPD@Scale in Latin America and the Caribbean; (2) conduct webinars through their CO+INCIDE platform; and (3) host a regional meeting in partnership with the Alliance for the Digitalization of Education in Latin America (ADELA), a project of Fundacion Ceibal funded by IDRC.
The regional landscape review’s main objective is to identify and characterize successful models developed in Latin America and the Caribbean on teacher professional development mediated by technology. The identification and characterization of these models will serve to guide and support policy development and implementation across the region. More specifically, the study will map successful strategies and programs that make use of technology to address the professional development of teachers in Latin America and the Caribbean; identify the commonalities and differences of the programs that seek to address the lack of competencies and skills among teachers that compromise the improvement of student learning outcomes; and identify the key structuring principles of these programs that underpin innovative TPD@Scale models. Through this review, SUMMA will identify the country case/s which will be receiving further research support and technical assistance from the Coalition.
SUMMA’s CO+INCIDE (www.co-incide.org) is an online platform where researchers, innovators, and educational leaders from public, private and civil society sectors can share knowledge and best practices, and collaborate in accelerating regional educational improvement. The network currently has 183 institutions and 550 people, representing 20 countries in the region. In partnership with the TPD@Scale Coalition for the Global South, SUMMA has organize thematic working groups (TWGs) and is currently offering a series of webinars open to all audiences. Launched in June, these webinars feature topics around readiness for TPD@Scale in the LAC region, opportunities for adaptation of existing models, and conditions of successful adaptation. The webinar series will run through to 2020.
SUMMA has partnered with ADELA to convene a regional meeting in Costa Rica on September 27 with governments interested in implementing TPD@Scale approaches. Preliminary results of the landscape review will be presented at the meeting followed by intensive discussions on the requirements and process for co-designing, building and testing of TPD@Scale models at the national level. Government representatives from Ecuador, Chile and Peru are expected to attend the meeting.
For more information on SUMMA, please visit their website at: https://www.summaedu.org