Transactional radio instruction: Improving educational outcomes for children in conflict zones

Abstract

This book offers an important addition to the growing literature on education in emergencies. In war situations or in the wake of natural disasters, children’s education is often significantly disrupted. This book demonstrates how the authors used radio and mobile technologies to improve educational outcomes for over 20,000 displaced and out-of-school children in northeast Nigeria at the height of the Boko Haram insurgency. Interactive Radio Instruction (IRI) programs typically interact with a functional classroom teacher. However, the transactional radio instruction strategy presented provides high-quality, safe, and sensitive education in war-torn societies, where there are no schools or teachers. Summarizing the research and lessons learned from a USAID-funded Technology Enhanced Learning for All (TELA) project in Boko Haram-ravaged northeast Nigeria, the book describes in detail an education-in-emergency strategy based on a “whole of community” approach, with radio and mobile tablets at its core.