Download the Full Report

About the authors Alejandro J. Ganimian Assistant Professor of Applied Psychology and Economics at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Emiliana Vegas Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. Frederick M. Hess Resident Scholar and the Director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Acknowledgments The authors thank Brian Fowler for providing excellent research assistance, as well as other colleagues at the Center for Universal Education at Brookings whose feedback to a previous version greatly informed this one. The BHP Foundation, the LEGO Foundation, and HP provide support to the Leapfrogging in Education Initiative within the Center for Universal Education, which helps make the work we do possible. The views expressed in this paper are those of its authors and do not represent the views of the BHP Foundation, the LEGO Foundation, HP or their employees. ©The Brookings Institution, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Contents 1. Introduction .......................................................................................... 4 2.The framework: How can education technology help school systems? ....... 9 3. The diagnosis: How can school systems assess their needs and preparedness? .................................................................................. 13 Identifying the key challenges to improve student learning ........................ Taking stock of ed-tech infrastructure ........................................................ Assessing capacity to integrate technology in the learning process .......... 4. The evidence: How can school systems identify promising ed-tech interventions? ............................................................................... 6 Scaling up standardized instruction ........................................................................................................ Prerecorded lessons. ................................................................................................................................ Distance education. ................................................................................................................................... Preloaded hardware. ................................................................................................................................. Facilitating differentiated instruction ...................................................... 15 Computer-adaptive learning. .................................................................................................................... Live one-on-one tutoring. .......................................................................................................................... Expanding opportunities for practice ...................................................... 17 Practice exercises. .................................................................................................................................... Increasing student engagement .............................................................. 18 Video tutorials. ........................................................................................................................................... Games and gamification. .......................................................................................................................... 5. The prognosis: How can school systems adopt interventions that match their needs? ........................................................................... 52 6. Conclusions ....................................................................................... 59 7. References ......................................................................................... 63 Appendix A: Instruments to assess availability and use of technology for learning ............................................................................................. 76 Student survey ............................................................................................ Teacher survey ............................................................................................ Principal survey ........................................................................................... Appendix B: List of reviewed studies ........................................................ 97 Appendix C: How may technology affect interactions among students, teachers, and content? .......................................................................... 109 1. Introduction ver the past two decades, low- and middle-income countries have made great progress in expanding access to schooling—especially to Ochildren and youth from the most disadvantaged families (UNESCO, 2019). Yet, this expansion has brought an influx of new students to schools with widely varying levels of preparation; many of whom have parents with little or no experience with school (Pritchett & Beatty, 2015). Thus, the frontier Introducction challenge in these settings has become to reform school management and classroom instruction (which have traditionally focused on “screening” elites for higher education and the labor market) to ensure minimum levels of learning for all students. To meet this challenge, school systems need not only to change incentive structures, which often encourage teachers to focus on the top of the ability distribution, but also to build capacity within the system to cater to the diverse needs of the most disadvantaged students (see Banerjee et al., 2017; Banerjee & Duflo, 2011). Education technology, or “ed-tech,” refers to the introduction of information and technology tools in teaching and learning. Ed-tech has long been heralded as a potentially game-changing “disruption” for school systems (see, for example, Christensen, Horn, & Johnson, 2011). This is in part because of its comparative advantages, relative to traditional “chalk-and-talk” classroom instruction. It can, among other things, scale up standardized instruction, facilitate differentiated instruction, expand opportunities for practice, and increase student engagement (see, e.g., Banerjee, Cole, Duflo, & Linden, 2007; Muralidharan, Singh, & Ganimian, 2019). Recent advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, and the novel coronavirus, which caused school closings affecting over 1.5 billion students worldwide, have only intensified calls for increased use of technology in education (see, e.g., Marcus, 2020; Ovide, 2020; Weise, 2020). However, in spite of the relentless optimism that has characterized the movement for education technology, its results have been mostly disappointing (for reviews, see Bulman & Fairlie, 2016; Escueta, Nickow, Oreopoulos, & Quan, [5] forthcoming; Tauson & Stannard, 2018). Most notably, evidence from randomized experiments, which are designed to estimate the causal effect of programs and policies, suggests that merely equipping a school or a student with hardware (e.g., tablets, laptops, or desktop computers) has had little effect on student learning—and, in some cases, has distracted students from schoolwork (see, e.g., Barrera-Osorio & Linden, 2009; Beuermann, Cristia, Cruz- Aguayo, Cueto, & Malamud, 2015; Cristia, Ibarrarán, Cueto, Santiago, & Severín, Introducction 2017; Malamud & Pop-Eleches, 2011). Educational software that allows students to practice what they learned at school has been slightly more successful, but it has largely had modest effects (see, e.g., Huang et al., 2014; [6] Lai et al., 2012; Mo et al., 2015). In short, the potential of education technology has not yet been realized. In this report, we argue for a simple yet surprisingly rare approach to education technology that seeks to: (a) understand the needs, infrastructure, and capacity of a school system; (b) survey the best available evidence on interventions that match those conditions; and (c) closely monitor the results of innovations Introducction before they are scaled up. We believe this approach is sorely needed in the “ed-tech” space, where governments have often favored popular over effective reforms. The multiplicity of hardware and software products—and the eagerness in their promotion—makes it challenging for well-intended but time- constrained public officials to understand the extent to which they can improve learning. A unifying theme throughout this report is that those interested in realizing the potential of education technology should think carefully about how it will improve the learning process. [7] The report is structured as follows. Section 2 adapts a framework to think about the potential levers of system improvement—specifically, the interactions between teachers, students, and the instructional material, and how they can be mediated through parents. Section 3 proposes an approach to diagnose the needs, infrastructure, and capacity of a school system to adopt ed-tech interventions. Section 4 provides an overview of the four potential comparative advantages of technology to improve learning outcomes, and reviews the most Introducction rigorous evidence available on interventions from developing countries. Finally, section 5 outlines how school systems can monitor the results of innovations to understand how well they are implemented and whether they are delivering the desired improvements in student learning. Hil ma dus. Excessequae ventur? It modisci moluptiosae et parcitiis intota conseque non eres erspicit acearuptatis simos exerupta aut facitatist,

Load more