Nueva Escuela Unitaria : une experiencia educativa innovativa en Guatemala

NEU is based on active learning principles that stress collaborative learning, peer teaching, use of self-instructional guides, and the like. NEU is being implemented in two regions, one with a predominantly indigenous population, the other with a nonindigenous or Latino population. The results in the first year, based on tests of student achievement combined with focused observations of children in the classrooms, show that the program was successful in decentralizing education by encouraging children"s participation in small group contexts. Significant correlations were found between participation in small group learning contexts and academic achievement of first and second graders in Spanish and Mathematics among children in the NEU program. The nature of the small groups however, differed in terms of the Spanish language proficiency of the children. Little relationship was found between the learning contexts and academic achievement in traditional rural schools that served as a comparison group for the study. Implications of the results for social constructivist theory and approaches to rural education are discussed. (Author abstract, modified)