THE PUGGLE
SHARING WITH OTHERS TO MAKE
FASTER PROGRESS FOR ALL
Out in the bush, you’ll have to go into the pouch of a mama echidna to pet her baby puggle. Our Puggle is easier to find, showing up every month to share what we’re learning about emerging issues in girls’ education. Other posts provide our analysis of recent research and events and feature stories from our grantees. Explore more below, including a link to our resource library.

The Puggle: September 2019 edition
Dana Schmidt | October 9, 2019

We took a one-month summer hiatus from The Puggle, but rest assured that this edition covers key news and research related to girls’ education from both August and September. In other words, we’ve got an especially meaty update for you this time around. Before we get into all of that, please take a moment to encourage stellar girls’ education leaders to apply for the Echidna Global Scholars Program at Brookings before 10/15!

What it means to be a girl. According to the last of these 6 charts on gender gaps, it will take 136 years for women in Sub-Saharan Africa to reach parity with men. In their latest Goalkeepers report, Bill and Melinda Gates examine “how geography and gender stack the deck for (or against) you.” When it comes to education, “Across sub-Saharan Africa…girls average two fewer years of education than boys. [But] even when girls are well educated, they are much less likely to translate their years of schooling into a job in the formal work force.”

Why? In a recent paper, Seema Jayachandran outlines the role gender norms play in restricting women’s engagement in the workforce. She also explores how policies and programs can blunt the impact of social norms or even change the norms themselves. One set of approaches is to make it easier for women to balance work and family responsibilities, for example by providing childcare alternatives and interventions that make household chores less time consuming (check out recent evidence briefs from UNICEF on some of these policies).

Another is to directly target gender norms, including by using schools as the place to reshape adolescent gender attitudes. We supported a recent workshop at ICRW about Engaging Men and Boys to Promote Gender Equality Through Education that explored some of these interventions. Research and programming in this space is still relatively thin, as a recent review on addressing men, masculinities, and gender equality in sexual and reproductive health and rights found. 

If you’re looking to measure the impact of your own programs and investments from a gender lens, check out the Gender Equality Toolbox recently launched by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The hard stuff and the soft stuff. We recently came across more evidence that “hard” skills alone are not enough—soft skills like self-regulation and critical thinking are important for everything from countering violent extremism to empowering at risk girls in Northern Nigeria. For a feast of perspectives on cultivating social and emotional skills, checking out this compilation of 42 articles on everything from how to contextualize social and emotional learning to how to bring it to life in the classroom and how to measure and monitor it.

Given we’re faced with “learning poverty,” as the World Bank puts it, around even basic skills, can systems realistically be expected to teach a wider range of social and emotional skills? Or should education systems prioritize “universal, early, conceptual and procedural mastery of basic skills,” as Michelle Kaffenberger argues? At a recent panel about innovative pedagogies to transform education, Denis Mizne, CEO of the Lemann Foundation, insightfully argued that good pedagogy might bridge the tension between improving basic skills and attending to the whole child, because good pedagogy can foster both. The Education Commission argues that better pedagogy could be supported by Transforming the Education Workforce.

What does the future hold? UNESCO has launched a Futures of Education initiative to catalyze “a global debate on how knowledge, education and learning need to be reimagined in a world of increasing complexity, uncertainty, and precarity.” Keep an eye out for the global consultation process that will be launching soon. 

Does artificial intelligence have a role to play in the future of learning? If so, will it transform learning outcomes and help teachers foster students’ strengths? Or will it exacerbate standardized learning and leave students unprepared for a rapidly changing world? China’s grand experiment in AI education may give us some answers. 

Show me the money. At the G7, Britain pledged £90m to a global fund that provides schooling for children in conflict zones. Around the UN General Assembly, Britain and the Netherlands announced their support to launch the International Finance Facility for Education—not without controversy about whether education should be financed by debt. Meanwhile, education pundits worry that the aid architecture for education is failing the world. And The State of Global Education Finance in Six Charts suggests that aid is but a small piece of the financing puzzle.

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    • The Puggle: September 2019 edition
    Dana Schmidt | October 9, 2019

    We took a one-month summer hiatus from The Puggle, but rest assured that this edition covers key news and research related to girls’ education from both August and September. In other words, we’ve got an especially meaty update for you this time around. Before we get into all of that, please take a moment to encourage stellar girls’ education leaders to apply for the Echidna Global Scholars Program at Brookings before 10/15!

    What it means to be a girl. According to the last of these 6 charts on gender gaps, it will take 136 years for women in Sub-Saharan Africa to reach parity with men. In their latest Goalkeepers report, Bill and Melinda Gates examine “how geography and gender stack the deck for (or against) you.” When it comes to education, “Across sub-Saharan Africa…girls average two fewer years of education than boys. [But] even when girls are well educated, they are much less likely to translate their years of schooling into a job in the formal work force.”

    Why? In a recent paper, Seema Jayachandran outlines the role gender norms play in restricting women’s engagement in the workforce. She also explores how policies and programs can blunt the impact of social norms or even change the norms themselves. One set of approaches is to make it easier for women to balance work and family responsibilities, for example by providing childcare alternatives and interventions that make household chores less time consuming (check out recent evidence briefs from UNICEF on some of these policies).

    Another is to directly target gender norms, including by using schools as the place to reshape adolescent gender attitudes. We supported a recent workshop at ICRW about Engaging Men and Boys to Promote Gender Equality Through Education that explored some of these interventions. Research and programming in this space is still relatively thin, as a recent review on addressing men, masculinities, and gender equality in sexual and reproductive health and rights found. 

    If you’re looking to measure the impact of your own programs and investments from a gender lens, check out the Gender Equality Toolbox recently launched by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

    The hard stuff and the soft stuff. We recently came across more evidence that “hard” skills alone are not enough—soft skills like self-regulation and critical thinking are important for everything from countering violent extremism to empowering at risk girls in Northern Nigeria. For a feast of perspectives on cultivating social and emotional skills, checking out this compilation of 42 articles on everything from how to contextualize social and emotional learning to how to bring it to life in the classroom and how to measure and monitor it.

    Given we’re faced with “learning poverty,” as the World Bank puts it, around even basic skills, can systems realistically be expected to teach a wider range of social and emotional skills? Or should education systems prioritize “universal, early, conceptual and procedural mastery of basic skills,” as Michelle Kaffenberger argues? At a recent panel about innovative pedagogies to transform education, Denis Mizne, CEO of the Lemann Foundation, insightfully argued that good pedagogy might bridge the tension between improving basic skills and attending to the whole child, because good pedagogy can foster both. The Education Commission argues that better pedagogy could be supported by Transforming the Education Workforce.

    What does the future hold? UNESCO has launched a Futures of Education initiative to catalyze “a global debate on how knowledge, education and learning need to be reimagined in a world of increasing complexity, uncertainty, and precarity.” Keep an eye out for the global consultation process that will be launching soon. 

    Does artificial intelligence have a role to play in the future of learning? If so, will it transform learning outcomes and help teachers foster students’ strengths? Or will it exacerbate standardized learning and leave students unprepared for a rapidly changing world? China’s grand experiment in AI education may give us some answers. 

    Show me the money. At the G7, Britain pledged £90m to a global fund that provides schooling for children in conflict zones. Around the UN General Assembly, Britain and the Netherlands announced their support to launch the International Finance Facility for Education—not without controversy about whether education should be financed by debt. Meanwhile, education pundits worry that the aid architecture for education is failing the world. And The State of Global Education Finance in Six Charts suggests that aid is but a small piece of the financing puzzle.

  • Recent posts

    • SEPTEMBER

      News from Aug and Sept on everything from why girls’

      Dana Schmidt

    • JULY

      July was a hot month—literally, with record-breaking heat in many

      Dana Schmidt

    • JUNE

      In honor of Father’s Day, this June edition of the

      Dana Schmidt

    Load Older Posts

    Older posts

    • MAY

      Dana Schmidt

    • APRIL

      Dana Schmidt

    • MARCH

      Dana Schmidt

    • FEBRUARY

      Dana Schmidt

    • JANUARY

      Ed quality in 3 charts, a new teacher observation tool,

      Dana Schmidt

    • DECEMBER

      In 2019, our team will spend considerable time and effort

      Dana Schmidt

    • DECEMBER

      2018 Is A (W)rap

      Dana Schmidt

    • NOVEMBER

      What's social and emotional learning got to do with it?

      Dana Schmidt

    • OCTOBER

      Obama's Global Girls Alliance, The Human Campital Index, and India's

      Dana Schmidt

    • SEPTEMBER

      Three themes on girls' education from UNGA

      Dana Schmidt

    • AUGUST

      Before we get to our usual Puggle updates, we have

      Dana Schmidt

    • JULY

      We’re at the peak of vacation season in the Northern

      Dana Schmidt

    • JUNE

      The G7 summit in Canada in early June catalyzed a $3

      Dana Schmidt

    • MAY

      This month we’re diving deep on a topic related to

      Dana Schmidt

    • APRIL

      April marked the first full month of a new season

      Dana Schmidt

    • MARCH

      In this update from March, we celebrate the march of progress

      Dana Schmidt

    • FEBRUARY

      This month brought encouraging news on aid to education.

      Dana Schmidt

    • JANUARY

      This month, champions spoke up for girls: Oprah made a rousing

      Dana Schmidt

    • DECEMBER

      This month we are keeping it short and sweet. In

      Dana Schmidt

    • NOVEMBER

      This month we are excited to share a piece we published

      Dana Schmidt

    • DECEMBER

      The latest World Development Report focuses exclusively on education for the first

      Dana Schmidt

    • OCTOBER

      Echidna Giving team highlights emerging issues and findings related to

      Dana Schmidt

    • SEPTEMBER

      This month the World Bank released the World Development Report (WDR). For

      Dana Schmidt

    • AUGUST

      August offered plenty of great material, including a collection of essays from

      Dana Schmidt

    • JULY

      There is a notion that things slow down during the

      Lexie Wagner

    • JUNE

      Lexie Wagner

    • MAY

      In May, the Center For Universal Education (CUE) and the

      Lexie Wagner

    • APRIL

      In April, the World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings served

      Dana Schmidt

    • MARCH

      March 8th marked International Women’s Day. This month we were

      Dana Schmidt

    • FEBRUARY

      Even if every single girl completed at least 6 grades

      Dana Schmidt

    • JANUARY

      News in January seemed to be dominated by the new

      Dana Schmidt

    • DECEMBER

      In 2016, the Echidna Giving team reviewed literature related to

      Dana Schmidt

    • DECEMBER

      Welcome to the end-of-year installment of The Puggle. In this

      Dana Schmidt

    • NOVEMBER

      In September, the Echidna Giving team joined the masses of

      Dana Schmidt

    • OCTOBER

      In case you missed it, on October 11 the world celebrated

      Dana Schmidt

    • SEPTEMBER

      It turns out September was a busy month for

      Dana Schmidt

    • AUGUST

      This August we couldn’t help but be inspired by the Olympics!

      Dana Schmidt

    • JULY

      Echidna Giving is delighted to launch our blog, a space

      Dana Schmidt

    • LIBRARY
    We believe in exchanging ideas and sharing knowledge. Here’s some of what we’ve been reading to inform our thinking on girls’ education. Feel free to suggest additional resources for us to read and feature!