Average vs. distributional effects: Evidence from an experiment in Rwanda

Programs and policies in education overwhelmingly focus on improving the average academic achievement for students. However, educational interventions focused on literacy improvement can impact readers at different levels of the reading score distribution differently, and the distributional differences may be more pronounced by sex. In this paper, I explore data from a field experiment in a district in Rwanda that was intended to make classroom reading pedagogy more effective and engage students, families, and communities in reading activities outside of school to improve students’ reading outcomes.I study the distributional effects of the intervention on students on two higher-order reading outcomes – Kinyarwanda fluency and Kinyarwanda text comprehension, measured for students who met a basic literacy threshold. I find that a) the set of interventions had a positive and significant, albeit modest effect on students at or above the 25th percentile of the reading distributions b) the program had positive and significant effects on reading outcomes for girls only, and these effects differed along the reading achievement distribution. This work underscores the importance of tailoring programs and policies to the needs of different types of learners.     

Beyond business as usual: Aid and financing education in Sub Saharan Africa

Since 1990 and the World Conference on Education for All well over half a trillion dollars has been disbursed as aid to education with much of it targeted on low income countries especially those in Sub-Saharan Africa. Some of the beneficiaries of this aid have transformed their economies and their education systems to the point where they can act as fiscal states and finance their recurrent and capital spending on education from domestic revenue. But too many states have failed to make this transition and remain overly dependent on sequential waves of external assistance to reduce gaps between the finance available and what is needed. Grant aid is now unlikely to grow as COVID-19 related recession supresses donor spending. Concessional lending to countries with sub-prime credit ratings and high debt service ratios looks imprudent. The architecture and goals of external assistance need to change to focus on making better use of the resources that are available though much increased efficiency and effectiveness, and on ensuring domestic revenue is increased since this is the only pathway to sustainable development that avoids the infinite do-loop of using aid to fill gaps rather than to address their causes.     

Intergenerational changes in issues related to the education of the cobbler community in Mumbai

This study is an attempt to tackle the changes in challenges associated with the education of the last three generations of the cobbler community in Mumbai. Data for this study has obtained using snowball sampling methods from 733 respondents of the cobbler community. The result indicates that most cobblers of the first generation (both male and female) were illiterate. On the opposite, however, a hundred percent of men and ninety-seven percent of women of the younger generation became literate. This community has suffered from casteism in schooling, having an education was not easy for them, and they had to do much struggle in their educational life. Before and after school/college, the last two generations assisted their fathers in cobbling work; they even had to do part-time jobs/work to meet their financial needs for continuing education. While there is a legacy of struggle and hard work for education, the young generation of cobblers is seeking to overcome certain socio-economic obstacles in order to achieve a brighter future for reaching their goals. As a result, there is upward educational mobility between generations with an overwhelming desire to change the current social standing.     

Comparing teaching practices,teacher content knowledge and pay in Punjab

This study utilises a unique school based survey of public, private and Public Partnership Programme (PPP) schools in Punjab, Pakistan to identify the correlates of: teacher behaviour in the classroom, teacher content knowledge mastery, and teacher pay. The study finds that private school teachers are associated with lower classroom observation scores than public school teachers, and both private and PPP school teachers are less likely to exhibit content knowledge mastery in Urdu than public school teachers (however, this is not the case for math and English). Public school teachers recruited after the introduction of test-based teacher recruitment are 30 percentage points more likely to demonstrate math content knowledge mastery than teachers recruited prior to test-based recruitment. The study also finds evidence of a pay gap between male and female teachers in both public and PPP schools after controlling for other characteristics. Teachers’ math content knowledge scores were found to be statistically significant correlates of teacher pay for private school teachers, but not for PPP or public school teachers. For female PPP school teachers, having higher academic qualifications is associated with higher wages however, this is not the case for male teachers in these schools.     

Curriculum,standards and professionalisation: The policy discourse on teacher professionalism in Singapore

In this article the author explores the policy discourse on teacher professionalism (TP) in Singapore. Various types of relevant policy texts are collected and analysed, considering the three different perspectives of TP discussed in the existing literature – the managerial view, the professional view and the transformative view. The author argues that the current discourse presents a hybrid notion of TP that integrates managerial and professional views to serve policymakers’ intentions, but this is a constrained view that may de-professionalise the teaching profession by narrowing TP to faithful alignment and effective implementation of the national curriculum.     

教育评估中的数据汇总合成

为使教育评估结果更具科学性、准确性,文章探讨了教育评估过程中数据汇总合成的处理方法,包含指标群体评判结果的汇总处理、评估指标属性值的规范化处理和多指标数据的合成处理等方面,并结合实例具体介绍了合成的具体做法。     

教育评估专家评判的价值取向

现阶段我国教育评估中对人的评价出现了唯分数、唯升学、唯文凭、唯论文、唯帽子的价值偏差,脱离了教书育人的根本目的。专家评判是教育评估的重要组成部分,专家评判的价值取向直接关系到评估结果的科学性和公信力,但是专家判断中也严重存在"五唯"现象。因此教育评估要回归到教育的本意,即"育人",要以"立德树人"成效为依据,以促进"人的全面发展"为目标,破除唯一性、单一性的评价价值取向,并从专家主体的价值认同和评判尺度统一、评估标准"唯"与"不唯"的平衡点、客观数据与主观评判关系、道德自律与规则他律四个方面探寻教育评估专家评判价值取向的实现路径。     

也谈教育质量及其保障

关注质量已成为教育改革当务之急。教育质量应定义为由多要素、多维度构成的教育服务的一种特性。对于教育质量的框架,国际上已有大量的理论成果。建立在目标主体建构、过程多元参与、结果共同协商基础上的发展性评估更有利于教育质量的保障。     

武汉体育学院健美操专项学生运动损伤的调查研究

对武汉体育学院221名健美操专项的学生进行了关于运动损伤的调查,得出了学生运动损伤的主要特征。在此基础上分析了产生运动损伤的原因,并根据原因列出了可以采用的预防措施,以期为进一步优化健美操专项教学提供新的思路。     

南京青奥会奥林匹克教育的机遇与挑战——借鉴北京奥林匹克教育模式

2010将在新加坡举办第一届青奥会,2010年2月10国际奥委会把第二届青奥会的主办权授予了中国南京,在同一大洲连续举办青奥会,显然是国际奥委会对中国人的信任,南京模式的青奥会是对南京人的机遇与挑战,也是国际奥委会的期盼,国际奥委会举办青奥会的目的之一是为了进一步在全世界青年中推广奥林匹克教育.国际奥委会主席罗格说:"举办青年奥运会的目的不是为了创建一个类似奥运会的小型奥运会.它承载着不同的使命.它不是全部意义的体育比赛,而是通过体育教育青年,青奥会要为青年提供了一次感受奥运精神的机会."借鉴北京奥林匹克教育模式,体现南京奥林匹克教育本土化特色是本研究重点.