FOCUS

FOCUS wants to offer women the opportunity to develop a basic literacy

FOCUS is an adaptive learning tool, packaged in an application, which, together with our methodology and complementary teaching material, should give our participants opportunities to develop a basic literacy that is functional, digital and critical.

The content of FOCUS is adapted for women who have limited experience of formal schooling and is constantly evolving. The development of FOCUS started in 2012 and the development is user-driven which means that new versions are tested with the target group whose feedback then is the basis for the adjustments and adaptations that are made to both FOCUS and the complementary materials.

We strive to adapt our program based on the participants' needs and interests. Our participants are adults that often find it difficult to participate at set times and places. Thanks to technology, more women can have the opportunity to develop a basic literacy as they can study in places and times that suit their life situation.

FOCUS is published on Google Play

FOCUS- a microworld

At the beginning of 2020, we introduced the concept "Maria's world" in FOCUS. In Maria's world, the participant gets to meet the protagonist María Sanchez and follow her life in the fictional village of Altamayo and its surroundings.

Maria represents our primary target group and is the person our participants get to follow through the education. Through the introduction of Maria and her world, we want to offer meaningful and useful content where participants have the opportunity to draw on their linguistic, socio-cultural and literacy-related experiences.

Texts in FOCUS

In FOCUS, participants get the opportunity to work with a range of everyday texts that they themselves state they want to learn how to master, such as an identity card, a letter, a recipe, text messages and a formal application.

FOCUS and the complementary material

The complementary learning material has been designed to complement and advance the digital work of the participants in FOCUS and in principle follows the FOCUS content. The material provides individual participants with additional opportunities to develop their literacy, both individually and with others in a group, where they get to consciously work with a range of literacy practices in combination with the work in FOCUS.

The four individual booklets, which are targeted directly at each participant, enabling specific skills training using pen and paper. With a customised contextualised content, each participant can specifically supplement the digitally-based reading and writing development that takes place in parallel in FOCUS.

The four different group booklets, which are targeted at the facilitator, consist of suggestions and support for working together with specific and everyday material in a group. This gives the participants the opportunity to discuss and reflect on various types of current and engaging texts and topics. For example, this could be how to cook nutritious food to avoid anemia or ways to counteract and avoid violence in intimate relationships.

Participants at a group meeting in Baños del Inca

Participants at a group meeting in Puylucana

Research based evaluation of FOCUS and the complementary materials

Our work is driven by a strong interest in learning more about and investigate the effect of FOCUS and the complementary materials, which in 2022 led us to initiate a research-based evaluation together with two researchers.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the participants' experience of usefulness and meaningfulness in relation to FOCUS and the materials, and to investigate whether a possible effect on the participants' learning can be captured after finishing the program.

The preliminary results show very good results where 9 out of 10 participants after completing the program can read and write at a basic level. The participants state further effects such as increased independence and increased opportunity to move around by now being able to read signs and navigate in their surroundings. Other effects that the participants stated were that they experienced increased participation in their children's lives and increased opportunities for financial support. The final results are expected to be published in 2024.

In 2024, we will continue to work together with researchers to investigate the effects of our program, this to be able to ensure that we are doing the right activities, but also to get a basis for adjusting and improving the content of FOCUS and the complementary materials for increased learning outcomes amongst our participants.

Meet Maria Clotilde, a former participant of the Dispurse Literacy Program

Our pedagogy

We use the Resource Model as the theoretical and didactic starting point for the development of our program.

Figure: The Resource Model. Qarin Franker. 2016

The Resource Model is a pedagogical and didactic model that was presented by Franker (2016). It was originally based on Freebody & Luke’s “The Four Resources Model” (1999) but has since been customised and supplemented with a clearer participant focus.

The model demonstrates how the resources that the individual already possesses can be used as a starting point for the practical work and influence the development across the four different literacy practices.

The work described in the Resource Model is consistently based on the individual’s linguistic, literacy-related and socio-cultural resources. These resources are always the premise for how the teaching is configured. By working in a theoretical and practical way across four different literacy practices, as well as on code-breaking skills, we develop the participant’s understanding and analysis of texts, their use of texts and their own text creation. Once these varied focuses are integrated into the daily work, it will provide the participants with a directly practical literacy thereby ensuring a secure footing for further studies.

The different practices are integrated into the daily work but each one offers a special focus on a detail that is vital to understand in order to become literate. This could be focusing on the external form (on letters or images) as in the code-breaking practice or on a new text or image in order to decipher its message and why it has been formulated and written exactly as it is as in the meaning-making practice. It could also be recognising texts in school and in society through their appearance (e.g. a DNI (National Identity Document) or a recipe) and creating your own texts as in the text usage practice, or it could be actively asking yourself who might have written a certain text and why and to whom it is addressed (e.g. an election poster or an advertisement) but also creating your own texts with important messages in the analysing practice.

DispurseSynch

The FOCUS app is developed to be used on tablets and thanks to our app DispurseSynch we can sync without internet. This means that our participants do not need to have internet access to work in FOCUS and that facilitators can synchronize the participants' progress in places without internet access.

DispurseAdmin

Through our administrative system, DispurseAdmin, we can follow the participant's path through the program, which exercises they are working on in FOCUS and how they are doing. We can also see when participants encounter challenges and can then support the participant to move on. It is also in DispurseAdmin that you can download diplomas for participants who have completed the program.