Upper Primary Education: Practical Guidelines for Forging Learning Pathways | Webinar

Kwame Akyeampong is a Professor of International Education and Development at Open University, United Kingdom (UK). He has over 25 years of experience in Education Programme Evaluation, Teacher Education Policy, and Education Access and Equity with a focus on disadvantaged and marginalized groups in sub-Saharan Africa.

Kwame has produced education review and evaluation reports for various Ministries of Education in Africa. He served as a visiting Professor at the Centre for International Cooperation in Education at Hiroshima University and was a Senior Fulbright Scholar at Georgia State University. He also served for two years as a Senior Policy Analyst with United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s Global Monitoring Education Report in Paris. 

Kwame is also an Honorary Professor of International Education and Development at the University of Sussex, and co-chairs the World Bank and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel.

Follow Kwame Akyeampong on Twitter: @kwameakyeampong

Dr. Joanie Cohen has over 30 years’ experience working in international and community development primarily in the education sector. Her expertise includes program management, design and development, monitoring and evaluation system development, qualitative and participatory approaches to development and evidence building and staff and organizational strengthening and capacity building.

She has focused her work in the areas of basic education, adult literacy, nonformal education, foundational skills, early childhood education, girls’ education and family and community engagement in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa as well as domestically. Joanie has worked for a variety of implementers, foundations, for-profit institutions and governmental organizations over her career. Joanie has also taught graduate and undergraduate courses focusing on International Education, Training Design and Facilitation and Early Childhood Education.

Joanie holds a B.S. in Early Childhood Education, an M.Ed. in International Education and an Ed.D. in Educational Policy, Research and Administration from the Center for International Education at University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Joanie currently serves as Deputy Director and Policy and Technical Leadership Lead at USAID's Center for Education. 

Follow Joanie Cohen-Mitchell on Twitter: @drjbcm

Rachel Jordan is a Research Education Analyst at RTI working on the LEGO Play Accelerator study, the Bill and Melinda Gates’ Foundation Science of Teaching program; and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’s All Children Reading -  Cambodia project. She specializes in measuring education interventions at scale, managing multi-country data collection efforts and helping organizations and programs leverage intelligent technologies and participatory approaches for better learning. 

Before joining RTI’s U.S. – based team, Rachel was a monitoring and education specialist on the RTI-implemented USAID Uganda School Health and Reading Program from 2015 to 2018. 

Follow Rachel Jordan on Twitter: @RachelJ262

Dorothy Kasanda’s impressive history in education extends over 30 years. Since 2007, she has served at CAMFED Zambia as Head of Programmes, Deputy Executive Director, Director for Partnerships, Executive Advisor, and in her current role as National Director. Dorothy began her career in education as a teacher of English and French and Head of Languages in several Zambian high schools. Entering the field of management in the Zambia’s Ministry of Education, she rose through the ranks to Senior Education Officer at Ministry headquarters where she was in charge of capacity building and was one of the four officers who spearheaded the restructuring of the Ministry of General Education to a decentralized structure.  

Additionally, Dorothy extended her experience into civil society, working at the Forum for African Women Educationalists of Zambia as Programme Manager and National Coordinator before joining CAMFED.

Dorothy holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from the East and Southern African Management Institute, a Master’s degree in Education, and a Bachelor’s degree in Education from the University of Zambia as well as numerous professional qualifications including a graduate certificate in Quality Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, an Advocacy and NGO Management Certificate through the USAID Vista Programme, and Strategic Communication and Project Management certificates through the World Bank and Crown Agents.  

Leketi Makalela is a professor and founding Director of the Hub for Multilingual Education and Literacies at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. He is a Distinguished Visiting Professor at City University of New York. His research areas include translanguaging, multilingual education and literacies. He is a B-rated researcher and a holder of the National Research Foundation SARChl Chair on Advancing African Languages for Social Inclusion and Access.

He pioneered a globally acclaimed theoretical model: “ubuntu translanguaging” and its pedagogical equivalent “ubuntu translanguaging pedagogy” to normalize simultaneous learning and teaching in more than one language in complex multilingual education systems. His highly influential book is “Shifting Lenses: Multilanguaging, Decolonization and Education in the Global South.”

In 2021, he has produced four interrelated books on innovations in language and education. These are: ‘Decolonising Multilingualism in Africa: Recentering Silent Voices from the Global South’ (with Finex Ndlovu); ‘Rethinking Language Use in Digital Africa: Technology and Communication in Sub-Saharan Africa’ (with Goodith White); ‘Not Eleven Languages: Translanguaging and South African Multilingualism in Concert’; and ‘Language and Institutional Identity in the Post-apartheid South African Higher Education: Perspectives on Policy and Practice’. 

Follow Leketi Makalela on Twitter: @LeketiMakalela

Benjamin Piper is the Senior Director for Africa Education at RTI International. He provides technical support to programs across the world and is the Principal Investigator of the Learning @ Scale research program (2019–2022), funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through the Center for Global Development, that investigates 14 highly effective learning improvement interventions in low- and middle-income countries. Benjamin is also the Principal Investigator of the Play Accelerator research program (2019–2025), funded by Lego Foundation, which evaluates the impact of five large-scale interventions increasing play-based activities in low- and middle-income countries. He is the Principal Investigator of the Science of Teaching grant (2020-2023) from the Gates Foundation which is developing materials to support the design and implementation of effective foundational literacy and numeracy interventions. 

Benjamin supervises Kenya’s national literacy program, the USAID Tusome (“Let’s Read”) Early Grade Reading Activity (2014–2021). He led the expansion of Tusome to the Kakuma refugee camp (2017–2018), funded by the United Nations Children’s Fund; and supervised Kenya’s Tayari Early Childhood Development and Education Programme (2014–2019), sponsored by the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation. Dr. Piper previously led Tusome, the Primary Math and Reading (PRIMR) Initiative, the National Tablet Programme, and the PRIMR Rural Expansion Programme in Kenya.

He has experience in quantitative methods for causal inference, longitudinal analysis, and mixed-methods research. Additionally, Benjamin has experience in program management, instructional leadership, pedagogical improvement, policy analysis and assessment and has worked with the World Bank, the U.K. Department for International Development, UNICEF, and Save the Children. 

Follow Benjamin Piper on Twitter: @benlpiper

Dr. Wendi Ralaingita is a specialist in curriculum and instruction with more than 25 years of experience in teaching, training, and teacher education and 15 years of experience in education program management. She provides technical leadership and support to curriculum and materials development and teacher training interventions in reading and writing for mother tongue and English as a Second Language, as well as mathematics, for the primary grades. 

Wendi is an expert in various qualitative research techniques, including development and implementation of a variety of classroom observation protocols. She currently serves as the Senior Reading Advisor for the USAID-funded Early Grade Reading Program in Nepal where she provides capacity building to practitioners and policymakers on core aspects of materials, curriculum, and instruction to improve reading skills of Nepali students in grades 1-3. She also provides technical assistance for mathematics education under the USAID Advancing Basic Education in the Philippines (ABC+) project.  

Wendi has experience as a teacher, teacher trainer, researcher and program manager. In her various roles she has provided capacity building to practitioners and policymakers on core aspects of materials, curriculum and instruction to support learning of reading and mathematics at the primary level. She also has extensive research and implementation experience in teacher learning and behavior change and approaches to providing ongoing support to teachers. 

Follow Wendi Ralaingita on Twitter: @WRalaingita

Patience Sowa is an expert in language and literacy who plays a key role in RTI’s international education projects. Born in Ghana, West Africa, she has lived and worked in multilingual and multicultural contexts in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and North America. Patience provides various kinds of technical leadership and support to RTI in-country experts. This includes assisting in the development of teacher professional learning communities for USAID Tusome Pamoja and Advancing Basic Education in the Philippines (ABC+) projects, collaborating to develop teacher and school head training under the USAID ABC+ project, and textbook revision and evaluation. She spearheaded the International Education Division’s strategic initiative for the upper primary grades in low- and middle-income countries. 

Prior to joining RTI in 2016, Patience was an associate professor of education, teaching graduate and undergraduate language and literacy courses in university teacher education settings. She has also been a consultant for literacy and language at the upper primary level, as well as a university lecturer of English and a teacher of English and French. 

She is a certified Trainer of Trainers for the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) and a member of the American Education Research Association, the Literacy Research Association, and the Comparative and International Education Society. She serves as an International Editorial Board Member for the Teaching and Teacher Education Journal and an Editorial Review Board Member for The Reading Teacher.