Aligning Levels of Instruction with Goals and the Needs of Students (ALIGNS): Varied Approaches, Common Principles

In this Insight Note, we present a set of principles shared by varied approaches that have all succeeded in improving foundational learning in developing countries. These approaches were not explicitly designed with this list of principles in mind; rather, the principles emerged through analysis and synthesis of successful approaches. We call such efforts ALIGNS approaches, which stands for Aligning Levels of Instruction with Goals and the Needs of Students. ALIGNS approaches take many forms, ranging from large-scale policy and curricular reforms to in-school or after-school remedial programmes. In this note, we describe the principles that ALIGNS approaches have in common (Section I); review interdisciplinary evidence on why aligning instruction with children’s learning levels improves learning (Section II); present three cases from across the spectrum of approaches and illustrate how each embodies the ALIGNS principles (Section III); and provide a longer (though not exhaustive) table of programmes that illustrates the range of possible approaches to implementing ALIGNS principles and describes the design features across which they vary (Table 1).