Mosaik Dogme Toolkit

There are currently more than 80m displaced people around the world. Low English language skills are a huge barrier to these refugees accessing training, livelihood opportunities and tertiary education. This leaves refugees’ ambitions are unfulfilled, potential community leaders lost, and families unsupported.

Research by the British Council has found that existing programmes for refugees is teacher-centric and textbook-focused. This limits students' opportunities to apply English and become fluent - a situation that has been further exacerbated by COVID-19. Furthermore, community centres supporting have few resources for costly training and materials. 

The Dogme Toolkit provides teachers of refugees the training and tools to re-orientate remote or in-person programmes towards dialogue, emergent language, learner-generated content, and task-based learning. It has the potential to transform language learning for refugees around the world, ultimately helping millions of young refugees complete secondary education and access livelihoods, further training and tertiary education.

English language skills are a significant barrier to refugees in accessing training, livelihood opportunities and tertiary education, with a B1 or B2 level of English on the ‘Common European Framework of Reference for Languages’ (CEFR) usually required for online courses, local universities, overseas scholarships, or digital skills courses.

Low language skills are caused by minimal ELT in refugees’ country of origin and further perpetuated by a lack of access to quality learning opportunities during displacement. As such, improving teaching practice is crucial to supporting refugees to gain English language skills. The British Council has highlighted the need for more relevant and communicative teaching approaches to create stimulating environments, and methods beyond course-book based classes.

Quality of ELT has been further complicated through the restrictions of online delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent Mosaik focus groups with English teachers in Jordan found that lessons had become un-engaging during COVID-19 due to textbook based activities and their limited online teaching experience. This risks reducing language learning to isolated textbook-based study, as well as a disproportionate impact on female or disabled youth, who may be less able to travel or meet informally with peers to practice.

Mosaik’s Dogme Toolkit combines online learning materials, digital teaching resources, and an online community of practice. The Toolkit uses web based software to provide scalable access to these three resources, as well as enabling peer interactions and support at scale via the training and community of practice. All of these core resources are made open for NGOs and community organisations to use.

The Toolkit is based on the ‘Dogme’ English language teaching ELT approach that emphasises emergent language, learner-generated content over standardised materials, and is rooted in communicative language teaching and task-based learning.

The focus on learner-generated dialogue complements existing textbook focussed programmes in Jordan and Lebanon, and addresses the need to integrate relevant and communicative teaching strategies. The Toolkit has been used to create new classes or enhance existing programmes. 

Evidence gathered from our survey of teachers engaged in the Toolkit pilot in 2020 found that:

• 77% of respondents increased their overall teaching confidence; 
• 100% used techniques in their classes;
• 80% reported that the techniques led to an increase in learner participation in online classes

The Dogme Toolkit directly targets English language teachers in Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. Teachers are required to have a B2 level of English, some experience teaching and are actively involved in English language classes. From focus groups we have found that teachers require language teacher training in general, and further support on adapting to language teaching online in particular. Research from the British Council confirms, as well, a particular need for communicative teaching strategies. The results from the pilot indicate that teachers not only gain new skills and knowledge relevant to the pedagogical approach, but they also improve their overall confidence in teaching.

Through the training of teachers, Mosaik seeks to impact refugees who are learning (or would like to learn) English in Jordan and Lebanon. Refugee youth commonly cite English language skills as a key barrier they face in reaching education or livelihood opportunities, and express a need for more opportunities, as well as support in practising and applying the language to gain fluency (ibid).

The methods in the Dogme Toolkit can be adapted for all age ranges, but the training and support is currently designed for youth and secondary school age children. The Dogme Toolkit. Although the training provided to teachers is not specific to supporting specific intersectionalities, Mosaik has found the methods involved are suited to inclusive learning strategies that reflect the backgrounds and lived experiences of marginalised students. For example, Mosaik has collected evidence of the value gained by Sudanese and Somali refugees in Jordan through Dogme classes. They are minorities within the refugee community and receive particularly high levels of racial discrimination and abuse. The ability to shape their education experience around their lived experience, cultural background and interests made the courses particularly transformative for their motivation, engagement and confidence in learning.

Mosaik’s Dogme Toolkit has been developed in collaboration with teachers on Mosaik English programmes, who themselves are refugees. Mosaik's own English teachers were involved in informing design decisions for Dogme Toolkit, as well as leading consultations with other teachers of refugees through focus groups. As Mosaik has built out and delivered the services of the Toolkit, the refugee teachers have been essential in contextualising design and the teaching practices. It is envisaged that facilitation of Dogme Toolkit activities will follow a similar model of recruiting teachers involved in ELT in relevant contexts.

The Dogme Toolkit was originally created to support teachers to adapt to blended or remote learning environments in 2020. During the COVID-19 pandemic teachers have been struggling to adapt programmes to online delivery: textbook-based English programmes being taught asynchronously via online learning systems. This risks reducing language learning to isolated textbook-based self study. 

Mosaik’s Dogme Toolkit supports teachers to maintain the communicative and human side English teaching in remote or blended settings. The Dogme Toolkit also supports engagement with learners: Mosaik's pilot found that 80% of teachers reported increased engagement and enthusiasm of students during their online classes.

Mosaik piloted the Dogme Toolkit September 2020 - February 2021.  This pilot included three cohorts of English teachers in Jordan and Lebanon, enrolling a total of 60 teachers. As yet, the toolkit does not have a tested business model to support growth, and doesn't qualify for the Growth category. However, the pilot did gather evidence on teaching outcomes from surveys and interviews with teachers:

• 92% saw the techniques as very relevant to their teaching context and considered it likely or extremely likely that they would apply the techniques in their own classroom.

• 100% of respondents had used the techniques in their classes and 80% of reported that the techniques led to a moderate or large increase in student participation in the classroom. 

• In-depth interviews found the techniques not only increased participation, but also increased student enthusiasm, increased confidence, and even requests for longer or additional classes.

The Dogme Toolkit is innovative in three ways:

• It applies an innovative pedagogy to a new context. Despite the Dogme approach addressing needs for interactive and stimulating environments found in refugee contexts, it has not been offered or adapted for teachers of refugees. Dogme is an adaptable pedagogy rooted in communicative and learner-centric practices. It has won awards for teaching English. The evidence Mosaik has collected so far highlights that the Toolkit enables teachers to achieve significant enhancement of existing English language programmes for refugees 

• The Dogme Toolkit uses online training and digital resources to scale at low marginal cost. It also leverages peer learning so that in-service support capacity grows commensurate with scale of the programme. 

• The Dogme Toolkit has enabled teachers to identify new innovations in their own teaching practices in conjunction with the training e.g. applying technology in a new way. The training given to teachers encourages exploration of different technologies suitable to their class and context. For example, we has received feedback from teachers using the approach in ways we had not envisaged. This decentralises innovation away from a single product or organisation, and enables greater contextualisation and adaptation according to local needs.

The Dogme Toolkit has currently served 60 teachers, supporting over 400 refugee youth in working in Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. 

In one year we plan to serve 300 teachers, supporting 9000 refugee youth in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq,Greece and Turkey. In five years we plan to serve 10000 teachers, supporting 300,000 refugee youth in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.  

Although the growth between years 0-1 and 1-5 are large, the shift to training provided via a MOOC platform provides the means to scale up provision at low marginal costs.

Mosaik will use a combination of impact and outcome indicators to track progress

Impact indicator:

Refugee youth achieving a tertiary education or vocational training level English scores. % of refugee youth achieving a B2 score  (disaggregated by gender, nationality, age, disability) This indicator measures the proportion of refugee youth who are able to achieve an IELTs score of 5.5. or a B2 grade on the CEFR framework. 

Outcome indicators 

1.1 Refugee youth with improved English language scores: Average change in English language score (aligned with the CEFR grades). 

1.2 Refugee youth with improved quality of language production % change in syntactic complexity, fluency and accuracy scores of language produced by refugee learners 

2.1 Increased learner motivation and enjoyment of learning English: % of students reporting an increase in learner motivation, enjoyment and confidence in English. 

2.2 Improved learner participation as observed by teachers  % of teachers reporting increased classroom participation

3.1 Increased knowledge and confidence of teachers in using communicative teaching techniques: % of teachers reporting an increase knowledge and confidence in using dialogic teaching methods reported by teachers undertaking training

3.2 Teachers are applying methods in the classroom: % of teachings having used the Dogme techniques at least once in the last three months

3.3 Improved quality of classroom interaction competency: % change in CIC score 

1 full-time; 6 part-time

The Toolkit was developed with teachers on Mosaik English programmes, who themselves are refugees. Mosaik ran reflection activities with all teachers to generate insights on adapting the approach and involved them informing design of the Toolkit and leading focus groups with other teachers of refugees.

Ben Webster, CEO. Ben has worked on refugee education since 2016. Previously led work on foreign policy and technology with the UK Foreign Office, as well as UN Migration on the Syria response.

Miki Aristorenas, English Programme Manager: Miki has experience in product management and programme coordination with several ed-tech start ups and US research organisations. 

Fatima Alatsha, Teaching Assistant: an English teacher and a former student of Mosaik Dogme training. Since September 2020, she has been working as a Teacher Assistant of the Mosaik Dogme programme. Fatima is a Syrian refugee.

Ahmed Osman, English Teacher: a Mosaik English teacher in Jordan since June 2020. He is also a Community Leader in Amman, where he has established two refugee advocacy and research organisations.  Ahmed is a Sudanese refugee.

Aisha Artan: English Teacher: an English teacher in Jordan with Mosaik Education since June 2020. She has taught English for refugees at several community organisations in Amman. Aisha is a Somali refugee. 

Scott Thornbury, language teaching consultant: an internationally recognised teacher training, a co-founder of the Dogme approach. He has won several language teaching prizes for innovation.

Cindy Bonfini, Learning Design Strategist. former VP of Information Technology at Jesuit Worldwide Learning and former NASA learning designer.

Mosaik seeks to support inclusive leadership, particularly those of refugees, at multiple levels of the organisations, whether that is on our board, managing programmes or leading activities and research to underlie programmes. This is evidenced by the fact that three refugees are part of the team creating the Mosaik Dogme Toolkit. They work with ELT subject matter experts and leading learning designers to provide insights, contextualise our work and prioritise decisions. 

Although we still have significant work to do to institute diversity and inclusion practices at the organisation, Mosaik is already a diverse team. The majority of the team are female, people of colour and from countries affected by the refugee crisis. Two thirds of the board are women and one third are people of colour.

Across all of our programming, Mosaik emphasises the importance of participatory design, where decisions on the design and refinement of programmes are prioritised with refugees who are previous or prospective participants in the programme. Mosaik is also planning to develop our team’s capacities in equity centred design to further improve our approach. 

The Dogme Toolkit is at the perfect stage to benefit from MIT Solve. Our pilot found that the Toolkit helps teachers to drive higher learner participation, greater enthusiasm and even attendance of classes. Mosaik has also shown the Toolkit can be effectively delivered online and that it represents an attractive value proposition for key strategic partners, with interest from UNHCR, the British Council, community organisations, national training institutes in Jordan and Lebanon, and international universities. 

The Dogme Toolkit is well placed to achieve significant impact, but we currently face challenges on refining and testing our business model, working with governments, and generating and communicating impact data. We believe that the network of MIT Solve staff and members will be able to provide insights and support on these areas. 

Mosaik, as an organisation has limited resources having only been established three years ago. As such, the benefit gained from MIT Solve could transform the organisation, as well as the Dogme Toolkit. 

Business model: Mosaik’s current design seeks to diversify revenue by generating income from those that capture rather than consume value of the Toolkit. Further This requires careful design and testing, and would benefit hugely from the experience of Solve Members. 

Product / Service distribution, particularly working with the government: a key scaling strategy for Mosaik is national adoption. However, Mosaik has little experience of working with and marketing to national governments as a client. Mentorship and guidance on this scaling strategy would be immensely helpful in expediting progress.

Developing impact data: Mosaik would also seek to work with the Solve staff and members to help develop a monitoring and evaluation framework that supports Mosaik’s learning and is easy to communicate with the different stakeholders in the education sector. 

Researchers on language learning - at MIT and elsewhere: to partner on designing scalable and effective outcome and impact measurement tools. 

Education technologists at MIT, such as the MIT Media Lab: to advice on the technological choices being made in developing a scaling strategy. 

Teacher training agencies in countries of operation and expansion: to test value proposition and explore possibilities for partners

International agencies and regional education organisations: to support the marketing of the course to teachers, particularly those working outside of the public school system, as well working with governments.

Foundations interested in refugee education: . Mosaik will seek grants from stakeholders whose strategies aim to strengthen national systems (e.g. aid agencies) or networks of the non-formal education (private foundations). The value proposition for these stakeholders is investing in scalable resources (e.g. MOOCs, CoP) providing large returns on investments.

MOOC platforms: to support with advise on scaling strategy, learner retention and seek partnerships to adapt to different regional contexts.

Entrepreneurs and education strategists: to help advice on business model and scaling strategy.

The Mosaik Dogme Toolkit's purpose is to support the livelihood and education ambitions of refugees. Specifically, English language learning is a key tool for refugee resilience, self reliance and integration. Currently low English language skills is a significant barrier facing refugee youth globally, both for refugees countries hosting where English is a second language (e.g. Jordan) or for refugees seeking to setting in third countries. 

Furthermore, beyond promoting refugee resilience and self reliance through the impact of the Toolkit, Mosaik's approach of participatory design and refugee leadership in delivery of our programmes aligns extremely well with the ideals behind the The Adnan Prize criteria.