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In developing countries, assessments of progress toward development goals are based increasingly on household surveys. These are inappropriate for obtaining information about the poorest. Typically, they omit by design: the homeless; those in institutions; and mobile, nomadic, or pastoralist populations. Moreover, in practice, household surveys typically under-represent: those in fragile, disjointed households; slum populations and areas posing security risks. Those six sub-groups constitute...

The present review examines research on the effects of educational technology applications on mathematics achievement in K-12 classrooms. Unlike previous reviews, this review applies consistent inclusion standards to focus on studies that met high methodological standards. In addition, methodological and substantive features of the studies are investigated to examine the relationship between educational technology applications and study features. A total of 74 qualified studies were included...

Student engagement is widely recognised as an important influence on achievement and learning in higher education and as such is being widely theorised and researched. This article firstly reviews and critiques the four dominant research perspectives on student engagement: the behavioural perspective, which foregrounds student behaviour and institutional practice; the psychological perspective, which clearly defines engagement as an individual psycho-social process; the socio-cultural...

Survey questions asking about taboo topics such as sexual activities, illegal behaviour such as social fraud, or unsocial attitudes such as racism, often generate inaccurate survey estimates which are distorted by social desirability bias. Due to self-presentation concerns, survey respondents underreport socially undesirable activities and overreport socially desirable ones. This article reviews theoretical explanations of socially motivated misreporting in sensitive surveys and provides an...

This paper uses a clustered randomised field experiment to explore the effects of a computer assisted learning (CAL) programme on student academic and non-academic outcomes in poor, rural public schools in China. Our results show that a remedial, game-based CAL programme in math held outside of regular school hours with boarding students in poor rural public schools improved standardised math scores by 0.12 standard deviations. Students from poorer families tended to benefit more from the...

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is a high profile initiative to narrow the inequality of access to ICT and improve educational performance. However, there is little empirical evidence on its impacts. In order to assess the effectiveness of OLPC, we conducted a randomized experiment of OLPC with Chinese characteristics involving 300 third-grade students in Beijing migrant schools. Our results show that the program improved student computer skills by 0.33 standard deviations and math scores by...

This case study discusses factors impacting the attrition and persistence rates of 60 Indonesian educators in an online programme in 2010. Course designers developed three variations of a web-based programme – a fully online, hybrid and web-facilitated model – and placed 20 learners, all with similar technology skills, in the three different models. The online cohort experienced a 31% attrition rate while 100% of learners in the hybrid and web-facilitated models completed the programme. Data...

the way most projects 'scale up' just might yield inequitable results Much is made of the necessity to 'scale up' in international development circles. Here at the World Bank, a quick search on our web site reveals publications and conferences with titles like Scaling Up Knowledge Sharing for Development, Global ...

the way most projects 'scale up' just might yield inequitable results Much is made of the necessity to 'scale up' in international development circles. Here at the World Bank, a quick search on our web site reveals publications and conferences with titles like Scaling Up Knowledge Sharing for Development, Global ...

Educational design research is a genre of research in which the iterative development of solutions to practical and complex educational problems provides the setting for scientific inquiry. The solutions can be educational products, processes, programs, or policies. Educational design research not only targets solving significant problems facing educational practitioners but at the same time seeks to discover new knowledge that can inform the work of others facing similar problems. Working...

I am sure you are wondering what Eneza is, that should not worry you at all. We have just changed our name from MPrep to Eneza. “Eneza” is a Swahili ... Read More

Teacher education has an important role in ensuring quality of learning especially for the poorest children. The article draws on a study of teacher preparation for the early primary grades in six African countries – Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda – in reading and mathematics. Initial teacher education had the strongest impact on newly qualified teachers but also induced misplaced confidence leading to standardised teacher-led approaches that failed to engage learners....

This article describes and discusses a qualitative, descriptive, and exploratory study of how 12 visually impaired teachers in Uganda experienced audio-described educational video material for teachers and student teachers. The study is based upon interviews with these teachers and observations while they were using the material either individually, in pairs, or in small groups along with sighted teachers. The findings demonstrate that audio-described material was highly appreciated by the...

Internet technology is revolutionizing education. Teachers are developing massive open online courses (MOOCs) and using innovative practices such as flipped learning in which students watch lectures at home and engage in hands-on, problem solving activities in class. This work seeks to explore the design space afforded by these novel educational paradigms and to develop technology for improving student learning. Our design, based on the technique of adaptive content review, monitors student...

Examples of mobile phones being used with teachers to provide continuing professional development (CPD) in emerging economies at scale are largely absent from the research literature. We outline English in Action’s (EIA) model for providing 80,000 teachers with CPD to improve their communicative language teaching in Bangladesh over nine years. EIA’s CPD program is delivered face to face and supported through open distance learning (ODL). This innovative model of teacher CPD is supported...

This paper estimates the effects of human capital skills largely created through education on life's chances over the life cycle. Qualifications as a measure of these skills affect earnings, and schooling affects private and social non-market benefits beyond earnings. Private non-market benefits include better own-health, child health, spousal health, infant mortality, longevity, fertility, household efficiency, asset management and happiness. Social benefits include increased...