Fieldwork in Tanzania brings insights on food security

June 13, 2014

“A world in which all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain an active and healthy life” – this was a goal identified by the United Nation’s World Food Summit in 1996 and is a definition of “food security.”

Achieving access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food is a complex issue, linked to agricultural practices, but also to economic development, environment, transportation and other factors. View of research site in Tanzania Download Full Image

Geography doctoral student John Connors is determined to examine the complexities of food security in an area of the world where a sufficient supply of food is far from universal – rural Tanzania.

Connors had previously participated in research into changing landscapes in New England, California and metropolitan Phoenix. He had built knowledge in these realms through fieldwork, analysis and interpretation of satellite imagery, and statistical analysis. He chose to pursue a doctorate at ASU, mentored by geography professor B.L. Turner II, a national leader in the realm of land change science.

Tanzania is currently the site of large-scale foreign investment in agriculture. The country is considered to be a convenient staging area for new development strategies in East Africa – so it is home to a broad constellation of agricultural development programs. Looking at Tanzania’s broad constellation of agricultural development programs, Connor felt it would be an ideal location to further investigate landscape change and food security.

Challenges: Funding and language

Connors addressed two challenges of international research – language and cost – by a focused effort at applying for grant and fellowship support. His efforts paid off with a $15,000 grant from the United States Agency for International Development, as well as funding from ASU’s Melvin G. Marcus and Matthew G. Bailey scholarship awards. In addition, a Boren Fellowship supported two months’ study of Swahili in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s largest city. He planned for five months’ field work after the language study.

The focus of the research in Tanzania was to be a large-scale agricultural development program known as Kilimo Kwanzaa. Connor planned to examine the social and environmental impacts of the program. He planned to conduct interviews with rural households in central Tanzania, and, as he traveled, to gather data on land cover and land use as a foundation for interpreting satellite imagery of the region.

In particular, he planned to investigate how Tanzania’s rural communities use forest resources to improve their food security, and the impact on these strategies of changes in agricultural policies – such as those of Kilimo Kwanzaa.

Unexpected findings

Now, after two months’ study of the Swahili language and three months’ work in his study area, Connors has a very different perception of the changes taking place. In the past, the area was dominated by small-scale farms. Several development programs, including Kilimo Kwanzaa, supported initiatives that enlisted the small-scale farmers to grow crops for larger farms, which impacts the farmers’ practices and standards but helps the farmers avoid the challenging task of getting their produce to market.

“Speaking with various government agencies and NGOs, all agree that the area has undergone extensive change in recent years,” Connors explained. “The different groups interpreted the sources of changes and the extent of their impacts on food security in vastly different ways.

“However, all the groups agreed that human migration is perhaps the greatest factor transforming livelihoods and the landscape in the region.”

As Connors learned, changes in land policies, declining rainfall and land degradation have led to a large in-migration of farmers who, as well as growing crops, raise livestock. “I expected planned development programs to be the dominant force in transforming land use and resource dependence – but I found that the entirely unplanned migration process is perhaps the most critical change to the area,” said Connors.

“Not only are the immigrant groups converting lands to cattle grazing, they also use animal labor, which allows them to farm much larger areas.” Adding to the impacts, the immigrants’ farming practices are being adopted by non-immigrant farmers.

The international research experience

Asked about some of the challenges of doing research in a foreign country, Connors points to the lack of infrastructure and amenities that are taken for granted in the United States. Poor roads and transit often stretch geographically short journeys into long expeditions. Internet and phone coverage are extensive, but not always reliable.

“Students seeking to conduct international research should pursue it wholeheartedly but prepare themselves for unexpected obstacles. Everything is likely to take longer than anticipated,” comments Connors.

“Regardless, those who accept these challenges will be rewarded with an experience that will transform their research. From the classroom and through computer screens, many research topics and places remain too abstract to comprehend. I believe that on-the-ground experience through fieldwork, particularly abroad, is essential to advancing the depth of one’s knowledge.”

B. L. “Billie” Turner is the Gilbert F. White Professor of Environment and Society in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, an academic unit in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, a Distinguished Sustainability Scientist with ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability and also teaches in ASU’s School of Sustainability as well as the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Barbara Trapido-Lurie

research professional senior, School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning

480-965-7449 BTL@asu.edu

ASU faculty spinout company aims to transform reading instruction

Education technology company Learning Ovations has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the development of an app based on ASU faculty research.

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ASU faculty spinout company aims to transform reading instruction

June 13, 2014

Just as students receive report cards at the end of each school year, so too does the United States – and the country’s most recent report card paints a bleak picture of the current state of reading instruction. According to the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress, 33 percent of students in the United States leave the third grade not knowing how to read.

This lack of early literacy skills has serious consequences – students who can’t read proficiently struggle throughout their education and are at a higher risk of dropping out, working low-wage jobs or going to prison. Compounding the problem is the considerable amount of pressure put on teachers by school districts, politicians and parents to teach all students how to read. Research has shown that individualized literacy instruction is four times more effective than whole class instruction, yet many teachers don’t have the tools and resources necessary to offer personalized instruction. Carol Connor Download Full Image

Learning Ovations, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based education technology company, has set out to change this. The company’s mission is to get every child in the United States reading at or above grade level by the end of third grade. To accomplish this, Learning Ovations is developing a technology platform to help teachers provide individualized reading instruction to students from kindergarten through third grade.

The platform gives teachers the professional development, tools and resources they need to manage their classrooms based on each individual student’s language and reading skills. It is built on a foundation of eight years of rigorous research led by Carol Connor, a professor in Arizona State University’s Department of Psychology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a senior learning scientist in ASU’s Learning Sciences Institute.

The research, funded by the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Education and conducted in part at the Learning Sciences Institute, identifies four types of classroom learning. Learning Ovations’ software uses this research to give teachers a clear understanding of how to individualize instruction based on type and duration of learning. The software, which can be used with a teacher’s existing curriculum, also helps teachers track students’ needs, provide personalized lesson plans and monitor students’ progress.

“Our research has shown that if we take into account children’s individual differences in their language and reading skills, we can develop more effective individualized instruction for them,” Connor said.

The Learning Ovations platform is currently in use in several schools and school districts, and the results to date are remarkable: Connor’s research has shown that in classrooms using the Learning Ovations platform, 94 percent of students learn how to read by the end of third grade.

In order to bring the platform to even more classrooms as quickly as possible, the company is creating a mobile app. It has launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to fund the development of the app, with the goal of making it available to individual teachers by the 2014-2015 school year. Supporters of the campaign can sponsor the use of Learning Ovations for a classroom, grade or entire school, and then receive updates on those students’ progress. In addition, educators can sign up to have their classroom, grade or school sponsored.

“Our central goal is to get all children reading by the end of third grade, so we wanted to pursue as many avenues as we could to bring these resources to teachers for the benefit of all children,” said Jay Connor, founder and CEO of Learning Ovations. “We hope this campaign will allow us to gift this app to many teachers.”

Learning Ovations is based at SkySong, the ASU Scottsdale Innovation Center, a mixed-use development designed to serve as an entrepreneurial hub for the Valley. The company is one of a number of faculty spinouts that benefit from ASU resources and services available to startup companies at SkySong.