Data from sub-Saharan Africa show that many students leave school without the skills they need. To address this issue, it is important to understand what factors influence learning. According to the Heyneman and Loxley effect established in 1983, in low income countries school quality influences how much students learn more than those students'…

Creole-speaking contexts are significantly underrepresented in language and literacy research yet present a unique context for understanding the nature of language and literacy development among numerous learners in the Global South. In the Caribbean in particular, the poor writing outcomes of Creole speakers across all levels of education has…

The present study aimed to explore the effectiveness of a proposed program titled (creativity lamp) in improving students' thinking skills and academic achievement and promoting creativity among them in Kuwait. This program involves several enrichment activities. The experimental group consists from 26 students. The control group consists from 25…

Written argumentation is a complex skill to master. It can be assumed that students can transfer oral argumentation skills into a written format. Still, students from disadvantaged backgrounds for whom this task is highly novel require greater scaffolding to formulate persuasive arguments in writing. Therefore, there is a need for developing sound…

This study is one of the first evaluations of independent (i.e., self-guided) practice in math in a developing country. We randomly assigned 4,461 students in grades 4-7 in "unaided" private schools across seven Indian cities who were using a computer-assisted learning software to: (a) a control group, in which they moved from one unit…

Earlier studies of educational effectiveness in resource-constrained countries tended to focus on fiscal and material resources. However, the impact thereof can be limited where effective processes at the school and classroom levels are not present. Using hierarchical linear modelling, this study draws on SACMEQ data to generate an effective…

Our social studies classrooms are filled with students from many different backgrounds. This article aims to help middle grades (grades 6-8) social studies teachers consider how trade books that feature the global South can be paired with primary historical texts in order to help students develop perspective consciousness. Social studies educators…

School management in many sub-Saharan African countries has been enhanced through community participation in an attempt to improve education quality. This study uses field research in a rural district of Malawi to assess how community and parent participation differs between schools, the intentions of communities and parents when carrying out…

Growing evidence suggests that teachers in developing countries often have weak or misaligned incentives for improving student outcomes. In response, policymakers and researchers have proposed performance pay as a way to improve student outcomes by tying concrete measures like achievement scores to teacher pay. While evidence from randomized…

This paper considers what multilevel modelling approaches to analysing large scale cross-national surveys of education quality can tell us about the capabilities that support primary school children in learning to read. The impact of pupil background characteristics on achievement in reading towards the end of the primary cycle in sub-Saharan…

This dissertation focuses on a key challenge facing developing countries intent on enhancing their human capital base--namely, the issue of quality. One of the chapters evaluates the effectiveness of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative in Nepal's primary and lower-secondary schools. Although the OLPC program is being heavily promoted in…

Spelling is a critical component to literacy development. Teachers of American children living overseas as well as adult "Third Culture Kids" (TCKs) have reported that spelling is especially challenging for the TCK population. This study investigated whether a difference existed in TCK spelling achievement compared to U.S. norms, as well…

In "Teacher Incentives in Developing Countries: Experimental Evidence from Kenya"--a paper presented at the National Center on Performance Incentives research to policy conference in February--Paul Glewwe (University of Minnesota), Nauman Illias (The Brattle Group), and Michael Kremer (Harvard University) review findings from recent…

In recent years, the mathematics achievement of Peruvian students has been evaluated in three national and two international studies. The results in all cases suggest very poor learning. A similar situation is found in many developing countries. In this study, we analyzed the opportunities to learn (OTL) mathematics of sixth grade students from…

Patterns of consumption and production are not sustainable in developed/developing countries. In developed countries, the levels of pollution, especially those causing global change, are far too high and trends go in the wrong direction. In developing countries, there is too much strain on the local resource base, and this strain is increasing due…