Social Technology aimed at promoting the quality of teaching and learning, with special emphasis on literacy in Language and Mathematics (children aged 6 to 8 years old)

Current Status

Since the end of 2022, Synapse's focus has been on disseminating the methodology to 31 new Brazilian municipalities, with the goal of having it reapplied in 58 municipalities, in 8 Brazilian states, and benefiting more than 2,500 teachers and 50,000 students annually by 2025. Another priority is to systematize and validate the impact assessment model, structured in 3 dimensions: 1) working hour in the classroom (productivity); 2) degree of fidelity in the teacher’s application of the methodology; 3) student performance.

To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key.

Historic

The construction of Synapse began in 2010, with the participation of just 4 teachers from the municipal network in Santa Luzia do Itanhy, and researchers in neuroscience and education, from São Paulo. The objective was to build a pedagogical methodology that observed the knowledge of neurosciences about how children's brains process learning Language and Mathematics, but incorporating the teachers' classroom knowledge, whose reality is very different from the ideal, and placing these teachers as real builders of the solution. It took 6 years of many mistakes and successes, until at the end of 2015 we arrived at the 1st effective version of Synapse, only for the 1st year of elementary school.

Between 2016 and 2018, we began the process of validating the scale model, with those 4 teachers acting as reappliers in 13 new municipalities in Sergipe, at the same time as we improved the methodology and built versions for the 2nd and 3rd years of elementary school. In each new municipality we also identified teachers with a profile of reappliers and we reached the end of 2018 having involved XX teachers and trained XX reapplicators. In 2019, we began the first reapplication of Synapse in another state, in this case in the city of Bacabeira, in Maranhão, which later became a reapplication hub for other municipalities in Maranhão (Icatu and Presidente Juscelino). In 2020 we began to reapply in the Vale do Jequitinhonha region, in Minas Gerais, and in 2021 in the municipality of Umari, Ceará, where we have already found excellent work in the field of Language, which served to further improve Synapse, and work together on improvement of Mathematics material, integrating LiLo Social Technology into Synapse. By the end of 2022, Synapse had already been reapplied in 27 municipalities, in 4 Brazilian states, 21 in Sergipe, 3 in Maranhão, 2 in Minas Gerais and 1 in Ceará.