In January, Katie Beirne traveled with our team to Mali to complete the hands-on portion of her final Capstone project for her Masters’ Degree in Epidemiology. Katie worked closely with the Siraba School Health Education Director, Hawa Haidara, to develop and conduct survey quizzes to assess student knowledge and retention of concepts in two specific areas of the program, water hygiene and menstrual health. They surveyed several groups of students representing both pre- and post- cohorts (students who had or had not been exposed to the Health Education program).
While the results were somewhat mixed (particularly since Ms. Haidara has been on maternity leave for several months and her classes have not been taught in that time) there were several significant outcomes of Katie’s project in Dagabo. The water hygiene training in particular has clearly been retained by students, and in fact we were told during our meeting with the Women’s Committee how many children repeatedly correct their siblings and even parents in healthy behaviors! Hawa was disappointed by the retention levels of the menstrual health training, but Katie identified some mitigating factors and discussed those with Hawa, along with other suggestions for improvements to the program.
This process also drove out some crucial learnings for us about teaching methods, and identified that Siraba School students need more practice in taking written tests. Katie’s quizzes were written, and although able to write, many students struggled with the format and basic written test-taking concepts (multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, etc.). After collecting and reviewing results, Hawa quizzed the students orally, and a much greater number easily answered the questions correctly. We discussed this observation with Koro and Hawa, and they explained that it is standard Malian pedagogy to tests students orally, and this is the common practice for all teachers – even though our students, unlike those in many schools in Mali, have sufficient materials (copy books and pencils) to do written tests. We believe this teaching practice may be one reason that students throughout Mali do poorly on the nationwide exit exams, such as the DEF. The outcome of this discovery is that Koro subsequently met with the local government education agency (CAP) and explained our concerns, and has arranged for trainers to work with our teachers on incorporating written testing into their curricula.
Additionally Katie shared several sources of global best practices in health education and program monitoring that contributed to her research, including guidelines from UNESCO and WHO. Hawa is working to incorporate these concepts into the program when she returns to teaching in the fall, and we also will use as we seek additional funding to support and expand the Health Education program. We’ve attached a copy of Katie’s Manuscript containing her project findings and recommendations.
