SUMMA participates in the First Annual Meeting of ADELA | San José de Costa Rica

Dante Castillo-Canales, Director of Innovative Policies and Practices of SUMMA, presented at the First Annual Meeting of ADELA, which brought together education and technology experts from governments, academia and civil society to identify challenges and support the implementation of solutions in the region’s educational systems.

The presentation by Mr. Castillo-Canales dealt with “Teaching Professional Development: how to ensure quality and make it scalable. Preliminary findings of cases in Latin America”. Magali Ramos, from the Ministry of Education of Ecuador, and Gabriela Gambi, from CIEB (Brazil), also presented in the same segment.

In his presentation, Castillo-Canales pointed out that some of the region’s challenges in terms of teacher training have to do with “better articulating initial training with on-the-job training, on the understanding that learning processes, both for students and teachers, take place throughout their professional lives.” He stressed that the process “must reconcile the principles of quality, equity and scale, a complex equation to which digital technologies can make a significant contribution.” On the latter, he pointed out that “at present there is a varied offer of courses and teacher training programs, much of which is provided through online courses and MOOC type, however, we know very little about the real effect of such courses and their contribution to the transformation of pedagogical practices that can make teaching processes more effective.”

SUMMA’s participation in this meeting is part of the work that it develops as a Regional Lead of the TPD@Scale Coalition for the Global South (TPD@Scale for Latin America and the Caribbean).

The instance was also useful to review progress of the various thematic working groups, convene new academic and government members, share the knowledge built, generate greater synergy among researchers and policy makers, and agree on a work agenda for the following year.

The meeting was held on September 25-27 in San José, Costa Rica and was organized by IDRC, IDB, Fundación Ceibal and Fundación Omar Dengo.

About ADELA

ADELA -Alliance for the Digitalization of Education in Latin America- is led by the Ceibal Foundation and has the financial support of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada. This initiative aims to promote the generation and exchange of knowledge on interventions and policies that favour the development of a more inclusive, equitable and quality education, through digital tools.