wawire

In 1994, Malawi was an early adopter of a policy introducing free primary education across sub-Saharan Africa. The policy opened the doors for unmatched opportunities for children across sub-Saharan Africa but also led to major challenges. One of which was equipping teachers to teach classes of up to 300 students. Researchers at the Learning Systems Institute (LSI) began looking for solutions to this problem in 2022

Free primary education for all in sub-Saharan Africa is a fantastic policy but class sizes of 80, 100, 200 or more has meant less time teaching and more time managing behavior. We are in Malawi looking for solutions.

LSI is leading the "Strengthening school experiences for refugee young people, families and their teachers in Tallahassee" project. Now in its 10th month, the LSI team has conducted more than 80 interviews with refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Syria, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Afghanistan.

This past January, Learning Systems Institute (LSI) Director Rabieh Razzouk awarded a new LSI SEED grant to Dr. Celia Reddick, Julie Twomey, M.Ed. and Dr. Brenda Wawire. The proposal facilitates the first systematic study of the educational experiences of refugee students, their families and teachers in Tallahassee. During the first six months of the project, 36 interviews were conducted with refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Syria.

Dr. Brenda Wawire, a research faculty member at the Learning Systems Institute (LSI) at Florida State University, has been awarded a Jacobs Foundation Research Fellowship.