Education

Overview

The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal #4 aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” and there are pressing needs for this particularly in the Global South. Our researchers are thus interested in how to improve learning outcomes of primary, secondary and tertiary level students through a variety of interventions, including Education Technology (EdTech).

The Ko Academy

In 2022, SRI launched a new learning initiative called The Ko Academy. It offers online accelerator and competency courses for all ages delivered after school and work.

Research

Primary and Secondary Education

SRI sponsored a postgraduate student consultancy project conducted by Maty Ngom, Marta Perich-Pallaruelo and Oliver Walker who are postgraduate students at the London School of Economics and Political Science’s Department of International Development. Their research is entitled “Does EdTech have a Role in Improving Kenya’s Learning Outcomes Amongst Primary and Secondary Students?” and was completed at the end of March 2022.

Tertiary Education

Dr. Ko’s paper entitled "Impact of Social Science (Economics) Distribution Requirement on Critical Thinking Skills in Kenya’s Second and Third Year Social Science Students" shows that attending a nine-week critical thinking course matters for developing overall critical thinking skills of university students. After participating in such a course, students acquired high order critical thinking skills such as inference and argument.

However, this study argues that the effects of Economics prerequisite coursework on critical thinking vary across individuals, as the students who took the beginning-level conceptual prerequisite courses had higher learning effects in critical thinking than those of advanced computational courses.