As part of this work, Carlos Henríquez, Coordinator of the Latin American Laboratory for Assessment of the Quality of Education (LLECE) of the UNESCO Regional Office in Santiago, carried out a work agenda in the country that included meetings with authorities, visits to educational institutions and three workshops entitled “From results to pedagogical action”, aimed at teachers, coordinators and school leadership teams in the cities of Santiago de los Caballeros and Santo Domingo.
The workshops explored in greater depth the use of the assessments proposed by UNESCO’s ERCE Schools project as a formative tool that provides real-time information to guide pedagogical decisions. Based on the results, teachers and education teams can identify the learning previously developed by their students, determine where greater support is needed and, on the basis of that evidence, adjust their teaching strategies.
“Data become meaningful when they help us make better decisions in the classroom. The aim is for them to be relevant to teachers and for teachers to be able to use them to understand the needs of each student and target the support they require, so that everyone can make progress,” said Carlos Henríquez during the activities.
The agenda also included coordination meetings with the local team to align priorities, content, responsibilities and next steps for implementing the ERCE Schools project. These meetings included the participation of Carmen Taveras, Director of the Learning Assessment Directorate of the Ministry of Education of the Dominican Republic, together with other team members.
“LLECE’s initiatives complete a cycle that education research considers essential: measuring rigorously, returning information to those who teach, and learning from what is already working in our own schools. An assessment truly creates value when its results become part of pedagogical dialogue and lead to concrete decisions in the classroom. With that conviction, we began ERCE Schools with 30 educational institutions and today, in this second stage, we have scaled up to 54. We are enthusiastic about moving towards an assessment culture in which every school principal and every teacher can see themselves reflected in the data and use them to improve,” Taveras explained.
Carlos Henríquez also visited educational institutions to learn first-hand about the experiences of school communities, observe the implementation of strategies and gather inputs that can help strengthen implementation work in each school. These visits help connect technical work with the day-to-day realities and challenges faced by teachers and school leadership teams.
Through these actions, the ERCE Schools project continues to advance in the Dominican Republic with a central purpose: to ensure that assessments go beyond measurement and become a tool for pedagogical action, capable of guiding teaching and helping to ensure that each student receives the support they need to progress in their learning.
