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SAInS – School Action for Innovations in Science

END OF PROJECT REPORT

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SAInS – School Action for Innovations in Science

Final Project Report(December 2012 - November 2015)

Agreement No. AID 497‐ 11300001 CFDA Program Number 98.001 October 2012 - November 30, 2015

Prepared for: Education office USAID Indonesia

Prepared by Columbia University 615 West 131 Street, Room 254 New York, NY 10027 7922 ‐

and

Bogor Agricultural University Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences Jl. Meranti, Kampus IPB Dramaga Bogor 16680, Indonesia

This publication was produced for review by the United States Agency for International Development. It was prepared by the Center for Environment, Economy, and Society at Columbia University, in collaboration with the Institut Pertanian Bogor. The authors’ views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Agency for International Development nor the United States Government.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

SECTION 4: LESSONS LEARNED 4

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SECTION 4: LESSONS LEARNED

1. Schools most readily pursue innovations that align with the existing curriculum. SAInS monitoring data indicate that SMAN 13 Jakarta and SMAN 1 Kepanjen, as well as SMA Kornita, mainly implemented those items in their Action Plans that are the most compatible with their existing curriculum, particularly in regard to the new requirements of the 2013 National Curriculum (C13). Luckily, most of these items are actually aligned with C13. Nevertheless, not all selected Action Plan items were implemented, due to limited schedules and/or the competing demands of provincial or national programming (training, meetings, management requirements).

2. Teachers need concrete and sustained guidance to understand new theories of pedagogy and their application. Teachers from all schools had difficulty translating the abstractions of “inquiry-based” or “experiential” learning into actual activities and curriculum units. For this reason, we added the Embedded Curriculum Expert interventions, which aimed to provide hands on and ‐personalized support according to the needs of each school. Most schools were not able to describe specific “experiential” learning activities, but rather asserted that inquiry and hands on ‐learning had become a larger part of classroom culture in general.

3. Teachers need stability of hours and salary to participate fully, and Indonesian personnel policies disincentivize non classroom activities: a challenge faced by SMA Kornita. ‐ SMA Kornita is a private school and receives funding based on the number of students enrolled. Until 2015, enrollments were below the level that would provide enough funding to employ teachers full time‐ (24 hours teaching per week). Teachers therefore had to teach in other schools to maintain the 24‐hour requirement, and only classroom teaching accrues toward that requirement. Naturally, the teachers at Kornita would prioritize participation in classroom teaching for this reason and also because they are only paid for classroom instructional hours. Training, workshop, and dissemination activities do not count toward salary or toward their24 hour requirement. This has resulted in limited availability for teachers to participate in non‐ ‐classroom SAInS activities. Despite this limitation, SMA Kornita has conducted most of its Action Plan activities, completed a substantial schedule of ECE meetings and trainings, and disseminated STEM based activities to about 300 local area students, using FabLab facilities during the Kornita ‐School Science Fair.

4. Indonesian personnel policies cause inconsistency in school leadership: a challenge faced by SMA 13 Jakarta: During the course of the USAID SAInS program, SMAN 13 Jakarta experienced some ‐instability in leadership, all of which was mandated or instigated by the Indonesian government. No personnel left the school on their own initiative. The original principal, who provided a letter of support for our technical proposal‐ Drs. H. Muhammad Effendi‐ ‐ was replaced by Dra. Een Heraena‐ Supendi, M.Si. by the time the project was approved. Midway through the project, Dra. Een was replaced by Dra. Noviolaleni, M.Pd. , as a result of the Jakarta provincial policy to test and rehire or replace all city principals in mid 2014. Finally, just following our October 2015 progress report, a ‐new principal was assigned to SMA 13: Drs. Janpiktor Pasaribu. Dra. Een Heraena Supendi, M.Si. was the longest incumbent during the SAInS program; she joined the NY Study Tour, participated in the Curriculum and Fab Lab workshops, and produced the SMA13 School Action Plan and its implementation schedule. Dra. Noviolaleni, M.Pd. joined SMAN 13 in August 2014 and committed her school to the continued implementation of the Action Plan as developed by

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Dra. Een. She had the opportunity to meet with USAID VVIP Mr. Ernesto Uribe and oversaw several VIP visits to the schools in demonstration of the SAInS program. In addition to the change of principals during the SAInS program period, two vice principals also left SMA 13 ‐Jakarta. Vice Principal Drs. Herman Syafri, M.Pd., was appointed as Principal of SMAN 95 in April 2015 and subsequently SMAN 98 a couple of months later. Most recently, at the end of October 2015, Drs. Adryansah became the Principal of SMAN 4 Jakarta. Despite changes in leadership, SMAN 13 Jakarta has made good progress in implementation of its Action Plan, although they reduced some of their commitments. As with the other two SAInS model schools, SAInS program outreach to outside schools was carried out mostly via STEM related ‐Fab Lab training sessions during subject area cluster school meetings (‐ musyawarah guru mata pelajaran - MGMP). On the positive side, model school personnel who left a SAInS school advocated for modernized STEM instruction in their new schools. Most notably, Pak Herman Syafri, formerly Vice Principal at SMA 13 in Jakarta, has implemented aspects of the SAInS program in two subsequents schools he led as Principal. In SMA 98, his first posting in 2014, Pak Herman initiated inquiry based activities and successfully solicited donation 50 ‐arduino kits to jump start a robotics program there. Although he was then instated as ‐principal of SMA 95 the following year, he simply instituted programming there as well, this time capitalizing on highly popular and developed Music and Drama activities to create a STEAM program (adding “Art” to the mix). He secured the support of the DKI Jakarta Education Agency in providing 2 3D printers for the schools use in supporting the STEAM program.

5. Support from the District Education Office is important: special conditions at SMAN 1 Kepanjen. Leadership and organization in SMAN 1 was generally stable over the course of the SAInS program. During 2015, the VP for Public Relations, Drs. Sigit Umbar Purnama, M.Pd., was appointed as principal of SMAN 1 Pagak Kabupaten Malang. However, this has had negligible impact on their SAInS acitivities. In general, SMAN 1 Kepanjen has enjoyed the most favorable conditions for the program. The principal, Drs. Maskuri Hasan Basri, M.Si. has the strong support of the Bupati (District Mayor), which is one reason he has been able to maintain his position during the entire SAInS program period. The grand launching of SMAN 1 Kepanjen FabLab was attended by Bupati Malang, H. Rendra Kresna on May 2014. As with the other two SAInS model schools, dissemination of the SAInS methods to outside schools was carried out mostly via STEM related Fab Lab training ‐sessions during subject area cluster school meetings (MGMP).‐

6. The Pesta Sains provides motivation and support for students and teachers to pursue interdisciplinary and hands on STEM instruction‐ : As mentioned above, teachers face strong incentives to maintain business as‐ usual instructional practices, which are rewarded by salary and ‐curriculum policies, and are assured of administrative support regardless of changes in school or district administration. In comparison, non conventional or extracurricular activities are ‐disincentivized. The Pesta Sains provides a counterbalance to this inertia by giving teachers and students motivation to participate in more innovative STEM activities in a forum that is certain to be regarded positively by school and government administrators, and which is supported by IPB guidance publications and outreach. The STEM Young Researcher Award (SYRA) is a vehicle for introducing and promoting cross cutting STEM research among both teachers and students. ‐Secondary student participation in the SYRA activities increased each year of the project. Most

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participants come from the islands of Java and Sumatra.

7. Innovative methods in STEM instruction are becoming mainstream, but teachers need additional support. Ability to teach using crosscutting themes and inquiry based instruction is increasingly ‐required for teachers in Indonesia as well as the United States (e.g. for the Curriculum 2013; and for the Common Core and NGSS). In the SAInS program, our partner schools expressed the need for onsite, ongoing assistance to implement their action plans and to integrate such methods into teaching across the school curriculum. Single training events are not enough to allow teachers to translate their training to other teachers and to the classroom. The embedded curriculum experts (ECE) from Universitas Negeri Jakarta (Dr. Muktiningsih) and Universitas Negeri Malang (Prof. Arif Hidayat) were added to the program to provide assistance and intensive guidance for model schools.

8. FabLabs generate excitement and pride. Students are highly motivated to create in the lab and we are exploring options for showcasing schoolwork at community “maker” events. Students report that using the lab is interesting and fun; creating their own prototypes motivates them to master technology and to demonstrate understanding of concepts via their prototype; tangible outputs and real world utility is satisfying; and parents and student peers respond positively to the items they create in the FabLab.

9. School FabLabs provide a high profile instructional venue that promotes accountability. ‐Regardless of the specific use and outputs of each lab, the very investment in prototyping equipment, training, and space triggers a need to justify the investment by investing time and effort into training and into developing instructional activities for the lab. Put simply, it is hard to ignore the FabLab, which would become a highly visible mark of school failure if left unused. Conversely, the high profile investment is also a high‐ profile asset that each school can and has ‐promoted for the benefit of the school reputation. Luckily, as mentioned above, participation in the FabLab is rarely seen as a chore. The FabLab is perceived as fun, interesting and compelling by both teachers and students. Therefore, all of the schools have expended considerable time and effort to ensure that their school FabLab is used by a wide crosssection of students for appropriate educational purposes.

10. Strong and multiple FabLab managers/ FabLab teacher coaches help teachers to use the FabLabs ‐to support instruction, and to link it to classroom instruction. Teachers vary individually and across schools in their ability to identify or create FabLab activities that support the existing curriculum or promote general learning goals. The best outcomes occur when there is a FabLab expert or “champion” who can act as a resource and point person for teachers who want to use the FabLab. In the simplest scenario, the FabLab faculty manager is drawn from the teaching staff and he or she is in charge of the logistics and scheduling for lab use. This person usually also heads a FabLab extracurricular club for students. This circumscribed role, however, leads to a smaller range of activities and usage for the FabLab, limited primarily to the faculty FabLab manager and a subgroup of motivated students.

An important step for our partner schools is to link FabLab activities to curriculum content, so that use of the lab does not remain only an extra curricular activity, but an essential part of instruction‐ for all students. In our partner schools, this has come closest to realization when the FabLab Manager is well positioned to collaborate with other teachers to develop activities that align with‐ the curriculum. The success of the FabLab manager to motivate and recruit teachers to use the

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FabLab depends in part on the personalities of the teachers involved, on the degree to which the administration encourages and requires use of the labs, and on time and resources available for lab based activities and curriculum planning. We have seen the best results when there is more‐ than one lead teacher or administrator integrally involved in managing and promoting the FabLab. When two or more people are available for consultation and to model lab activities, there is quicker visibility and acceptance of the viability of the Fab Lab as an instructional tool. The lab is also seen as a more important part of the school culture, and teachers perceive greater assistance available to them. In addition, there seems to be additional desire or pressure to ensure high quality of lab outputs when more teachers are linked identifiably to the FabLab. All of this points to the utility of creating a critical mass of teachers explicitly linked to the FabLabs, so that the labs are not marginalized as an “extra,” but seen as a mainstream part of school instruction.