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This paper presents the experience of going to scale of Escuela Nueva , an educational innovation that started in Colombia and has influenced educational policy in several countries around the world during the last 30 years. The paper is based on the experience of the leaders of the innovation and its expansion over time. As an insider´s perpective, it relies on the knowledge of senior staff of Fundación Escuela Nueva and on the published evidence and experience accumulated during the decades following the creation of the innovation. The paper describes the context where Escuela Nueva was created and the practices of participating students, teachers, schools administrators and parents when undergoing learning and teaching. It presents the conceptual underpinnings of the innovation, and discusses existing evidence of impact of Escuela Nueva on students, teachers and parents. It then examines the experience of bringing Escuela Nueva to scale, using a three-stage framework: learning to be effective, learning to be efficient and learning to expand. The paper then discusses key factors for success, and the challenges of scale, impact and sustainability, and advances the argument that good design, adequate implementation and sustained support are essential to take an innovation to scale. To conclude, the following four key lessons of Escuela Nueva to the educational change field are discussed : (1) Teachers and students need to be the key actors of the change; (2) the proposed improvements have to be easily replicable within existing conditions; (3) the attitudinal change of teachers is positively affected as a result of demonstrating that the model was feasible, a good fit for its beneficiaries and that they could do it; and (4) a systemic approach is necessary to impact simultaneously on the critical factors of success.

'School Construction Strategies for Universal Primary Education in Africa' examines the scope of the infrastructure challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa and the constraints to scaling up at an affordable cost.

The aim of the study is to carry out a research on the influence of the Design Thinking as a resource and methodology in educational contexts in order to promote an active learning in preschool students at Mexican multigrade schools. These tools and methodologies will act as a key to transform learning environments in Preschool Education at rural schools. The results reveal that innovation can be introduced at these schools through communication and visual language, increasing the chances of success, without having to increment the number of resources or improve their infrastructures. Training and innovative and creative development of the educator, as well as a proper use of communication and Visual Literacy, as parts and motors of the learning, will help students to develop and strengthen their creative, innovative and critical thinking. Likewise, focusing on educational ways and learning areas promote a bidirectional and highly enriching attention. That's why educators have to be trained in research, discover, imagining and solving problems in a divergent way in real situations, would be the one who lead this learning and transformation process of the classroom of Children Education. O objetivo desse trabalho é realizar um estudo sobre a influência do Design Thinking como recurso e metodologia em contextos educativos, com o objetivo de promover uma aprendizagem ativa dos estudantes pré-escolares nas Escolas multi grau do México. Estas ferramentas e metodologias ativas atuaram como clave para transformar os entornos de aprendizagem na Educação Pré-escolar nas escolas rurais. Os resultados afirmam que se pode introduzir a inovação nessas aulas através da comunicação e a linguagem visual, aumentando as probabilidades de êxito e sem necessidade de incrementar o número de recursos ou melhorar suas infraestruturas. A formação, capacitação e desenvolvimento criativo e inovador do educador, e o uso da comunicação e a Alfabetização Visual como peças e motores de aprendizagem, favoreceram o desenvolvimento e fortalecimento do pensamento criativo, inovador e crítico. Pôr o foco nos estilos e espaços de aprendizagem permitirá uma atenção bidirecional e sumamente enriquecedora. Por isso o docente capacitado para investigar, descobrir, imaginar e resolver problemas de forma divergente e em situações reais, serão os que lideram este processo de aprendizagem e transformação da aula de Educação Infantil. El objetivo del trabajo es realizar un estudio sobre la influencia del Design Thinking como recurso y metodología en contextos educativos, con el objetivo de promover un aprendizaje activo de los estudiantes preescolares en Escuelas Multigrado de México. Estas herramientas y metodologías activas actuarán como clave para transformar los entornos de aprendizaje en la Educación Preescolar en escuelas rurales. Los resultados afirman que se puede introducir la innovación en estas aulas a través de la comunicación y el lenguaje visual, aumentando las probabilidades de éxito y sin necesidad de incrementar el número de recursos o mejorar sus infraestructuras. La formación, capacitación y desarrollo creativo e innovador del educador, y el uso de la comunicación y la Alfabetización Visual como piezas y motores de aprendizaje, favorecerán el desarrollo y fortalecimiento del pensamiento creativo, innovador y crítico. A su vez, poner el foco en los estilos y espacios de aprendizaje permitirá una atención bidireccional y sumamente enriquecedora. Por ello, el docente capacitado para investigar, descubrir, imaginar y resolver problemas de forma divergente y en situaciones reales, ha de ser quien lidere este proceso de aprendizaje y transformación del aula de Educación Infantil. 

We report a novel proposal for reducing the digital divide in rural multigrade schools, incorporating knowledge of robotics with a STEM approach to simultaneously promote curricular learning in mathematics and science in several school grades. We used an exploratory qualitative methodology to implement the proposal with 12 multigrade rural students. We explored the contribution of the approaches to the promotion of curricular learning in mathematics and science and the perceptions of using robotics to learn mathematics and science. As data collection techniques, we conducted focus groups and semi-structured interviews with the participants and analyzed their responses thematically. We concluded that the proposal could contribute to meeting the challenges of multigrade teaching. Our findings suggest that the proposal would simultaneously promote the development of curricular learning in mathematics and science in several school grades, offering an alternative for addressing various topics with different degrees of depth.

This research investigates the challenges and opportunities rural elementary teachers perceive in using AI as a pedagogical tool to support student learning in rural schools. Using a convergent parallel mixed methods approach, we analyzed the responses from 45 rural teachers who participated in professional development on AI integration in rural education. Through both closed-ended and open-ended survey responses, we employed an adaptation of the TPACK framework (I-TPACK) and the AI literacy framework proposed by UNESCO to identify the primary challenges and opportunities in utilizing AI for pedagogical purposes in rural education. The results highlight resource accessibility and teacher professional development as critical challenges and opportunities to reduce the digital divide in rural communities. Teachers see the inclusion of AI as an opportunity to personalize learning, reduce workload, and facilitate teaching in multigrade classrooms without perceiving it as a job threat. At the same time, they emphasize the need for technological and didactic resources aligned with the specific characteristics of their contexts, such as offline resources and adaptable AI curricula to address the prevalent issue of limited or absent internet connectivity in many rural schools.

This paper presents the results of a research project whose main purpose is to analyse the concept of multigrade teaching resources and the teaching materials used by teachers in rural schools, in particular the role of textbooks. The use and dimensions of teaching materials are studied in order to promote inclusion and learning in multigrade classrooms with children of different ages mixed together. The present systematic review aims to identify and analyse all of the research papers published internationally on teaching resources in rural schools for the Web of Science and Scopus databases (from 1992 to 2021) and Google Scholar (between 2010 and February 2021). Due to the dearth of publications focused on the topic of study, the reviewed articles have broad inclusion and exclusion criteria. This gives relevance and an innovative character to the research, allowing us to objectify the state of the question on multigrade didactic materials and their relation to teaching-learning processes. From a total of 332 research papers in the field of rural multigrade teaching identified for further analysis, only papers that met the inclusion and exclusion criteria and passed all phases of the PRISMA flow diagram were used (N = 33). Some research publications contributed to identifying opportunities and needs, and to suggesting criteria to be taken into account for the selection and creation of materials to promote inclusion and active learning methodologies. The first results show the need to create one's own materials that analyse the reality of these schools, as well as the need to personalise and adapt printed or digital textbooks and other teaching materials in order to involve the students actively in the learning process and to respond to the needs of rural students in multigrade classrooms. V prispevku predstavljamo rezultate raziskovalnega projekta, katerega glavni namen je bil analiza koncepta kombiniranih učnih sredstev in učnih gradiv, ki jih uporabljajo učitelji podeželskih šol, zlasti vloge učbenikov. Uporaba in razsežnosti učbenikov so preučene z vidika spodbujanja inkluzije in učenja v kombiniranih oddelkih z otroki različnih starosti. Sistematični pregled skuša prepoznati in preiskati vse mednarodno objavljene prispevke o učnih gradivih v podeželskih šolah z uporabo podatkovnih baz Web of Science in Scopus (1992–2021) ter Google Učenjaka (2010–2021). Zaradi pomanjkanja publikacij, ki bi se osredinjale na izbrano tematiko, imajo pregledani članki blaga merila glede vključenosti oz. izključenosti. To daje raziskavi relevantnost in inovativnost, kar nam dopušča, da objektiviziramo stanje glede kombiniranega didaktičnega gradiva in njihovo razmerje do procesov poučevanja/učenja. Od skupno 332 člankov s področja poučevanja v kombiniranih oddelkih podeželskih šol, ki smo jih vključili v obdelavo, so bili nazadnje uporabljeni samo prispevki, ki so zadostili merilom in prestali vse faze diagrama PRISMA (N = 33). Nekatere raziskovalne publikacije so prispevale k prepoznanju priložnosti in potreb ter k predlaganju meril, ki bi jih bilo treba upoštevati pri izboru in ustvarjanju gradiv za spodbujanje inkluzije in metod aktivnega učenja. Prvi izsledki kažejo potrebo po oblikovanju lastnih gradiv, pri čemer bi se preučilo samo realnost teh šol, pri tem pa tudi potrebo po personalizaciji in prilagoditvi tiskanih ali digitalnih učbenikov ter drugega učnega gradiva, da bi lahko učence aktivno vključevali v učni proces in se odzivali na potrebe podeželskih učencev v kombiniranih oddelkih.

This study aims to analyze the graphical comprehension of 5th and 6th grade students in multigrade rural primary education in Chile. The theoretical framework considers levels of reading and semiotic levels in statistical graphs. A qualitative methodology of descriptive level is followed, using content analysis method for the responses given to a questionnaire by 22 students from five multigrade rural schools. The results show that, overall, students do not encounter difficulties in answering questions at level 1 reading (literal reading), but difficulties gradually increase as the reading level increases. Regarding semiotic levels, difficulties arise in constructing graphs using data distribution (semiotic level 3) and completing a graph with two data distributions (semiotic level 4).

Multigrade classrooms represent a widely extended educational modality in rural contexts and territories with low demographic density. This organizational model, in which a single teacher serves students from different levels in the same space, poses particular challenges but also significant pedagogical opportunities. In this systemic literature review, a total of 40 international studies were analyzed according to the PRISMA guidelines, published between 2019 and 2024 in databases such as Scopus and ERIC. The objective of this analysis is to identify the main organizational and methodological approaches, as well as the strengths and weaknesses, associated with teaching in multigrade contexts. This systematic review has been prospectively registered in the Open Science Framework (OSF) under registration number: 64rsu. A qualitative thematic analysis was employed to organize the results into five categories: organizational models, pedagogical practices, teacher training, impact on learning, and school-community links. The findings underscore the efficacy of this model in promoting educational inclusion, cooperative learning, and curricular contextualization. Nevertheless, they also underscore the necessity for specific teacher training and support policies. This review offers a comparative and critical perspective that has the potential to inform the development of more effective pedagogical and training strategies in a range of educational settings.

In the research, the effect of adverse teaching conditions on the Turkish listening comprehension, speaking, written expression, and reading comprehension skills of bilingual students was investigated. In the study, some indicators of the basic language skills of bilingual children were examined according to the multi-grade classroom and COVID-19 factors. The universe of the study is bilingual children studying in multi-grade classrooms of primary education in Muş province. The population is made up of sixty-nine third and fourth-year students from four different primary schools. Three questions were analyzed: (1) What is the level of students’ listening comprehension, speaking, written expression, and reading comprehension skills? (2) How is the effect of independent variables (gender, age of acquisition of Turkish, school level, parents’ education, and school) on students’ language skills? (3) How is the relationship between students’ listening comprehension, speaking, written expression, and reading comprehension skills? The study adopted a multiple-case study design. The data were collected using two rubrics and two achievement tests. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, multiple group comparisons, nonparametric tests, and correlation. The results revealed findings regarding participants’ listening comprehension, speaking, written expression, and reading comprehension skills. It was observed that the independent variables did not significantly affect the language skills of the participants. According to the findings, students’ language indicators of written expression are weak and relatively inadequate. Alike students’ language indicators of reading comprehension are partially inadequate. On the other hand, the indicators in speaking and listening comprehension skills were observed to be good but partially insufficient. The results show that the performance of bilingual students in multi-grade classrooms on Turkish language indicators observed during the COVID-19 outbreak is not at an adequate level completely.