Higher grounds

Senior Literacy and Language Advisor

Education

PhD, Curriculum and Instruction – TESOL, University of Kansas

MA, Mass Communications, California State University, Northridge

M.Phil, English, University of Ghana, Legon

BA, English, French, University of Ghana, Legon

Patience Sowa is an expert in language and literacy who plays a key role in our international education projects. Born in Ghana, West Africa, she has lived and worked in multilingual and multicultural contexts in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and North America. Her experience includes teacher education accreditation, program management and coordination, and the development of strategies to improve educational outcomes. Dr. Sowa is passionate about strengthening research in and developing forms of bilingual teaching and learning for school children in low- and middle-income countries particularly as they transition from mother tongue education in the early grades to education in international languages of teaching and learning in the upper primary grades. She is also enthusiastic about exploring innovative ways of preparing preservice teachers for schools.

Dr. Sowa provides various kinds of technical leadership and support to RTI in-country experts. This includes assisting in the development of teacher professional learning communities for USAID Tusome Pamoja, and Advancing Basic Education in the Philippines (ABC+) projects, collaborating to develop teacher and school head training under the USAID ABC+ project, and textbook revision and evaluation. She spearheaded the International Education Division’s strategic initiative for the upper primary grades in low- and middle-income countries.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Sowa has collaborated with RTI project staff to pivot away from face-to-face school head and teacher training, to develop radio and interactive voice response scripts, online training environments and self-paced learning modules.

Prior to joining RTI in 2016, Dr. Sowa was an associate professor of education, teaching graduate and undergraduate language and literacy courses in university teacher education settings. She has also been a consultant for literacy and language at the upper primary level, as well as a university lecturer of English and a teacher of English and French.

She is a certified Trainer of Trainers for the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) and a member of the American Education Research Association, the Literacy Research Association, and the Comparative and International Education Society. She serves as an International Editorial Board Member for the Teaching and Teacher Education Journal and an Editorial Review Board Member for The Reading Teacher.

Research Education Analyst

Education

MS Ed, International Education Development, University of Pennsylvania

BS Ed, Secondary Education and History, Temple University

Rachel Jordan is a Research Education Analyst at RTI working on the LEGO Play Accelerator study, the Bill and Melinda Gates’ Foundation Science of Teaching program; and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’s All Children Reading - Cambodia project.

She specializes in measuring education interventions at scale, managing multi-country data collection efforts and helping organizations and programs leverage intelligent technologies and participatory approaches for better learning.

Before joining RTI’s U.S. – based team, Ms. Jordan was a monitoring and education specialist on the RTI-implemented USAID Uganda School Health and Reading Program from 2015 to 2018.

Senior Education Advisor

Education

PhD, International Education Policy, University of Maryland

MA, International Training and Education, American University

BA, Anthropology, University of Michigan

Dr. Wendi Ralaingita is a specialist in curriculum and instruction with more than 25 years of experience in teaching, training, and teacher education and 15 years of experience in education program management. Dr. Ralaingita provides technical leadership and support to curriculum and materials development and teacher training interventions in reading and writing for mother tongue and English as a Second Language, as well as mathematics, for the primary grades.

Dr. Ralaingita is an expert in various qualitative research techniques, including development and implementation of a variety of classroom observation protocols. She currently serves as the Senior Reading Advisor for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded Early Grade Reading Program in Nepal where she provides capacity building to practitioners and policy-makers on core aspects of materials, curriculum, and instruction to improve reading skills of Nepali students in grades 1-3. She also provides technical assistance for mathematics education under the USAID Advancing Basic Education in the Philippines (ABC+) project. 

Dr. Ralaingita has experience as a teacher, teacher trainer, researcher and program manager. In her various roles she has provided capacity building to practitioners and policymakers on core aspects of materials, curriculum and instruction to support learning of reading and mathematics at the primary level. She also has extensive research and implementation experience in teacher learning and behavior change and approaches to providing ongoing support to teachers.