{"id":9272,"date":"2023-09-25T16:35:55","date_gmt":"2023-09-25T16:35:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/?p=9272"},"modified":"2023-09-25T16:35:55","modified_gmt":"2023-09-25T16:35:55","slug":"your-teachers-level-of-knowledge-affects-how-well-you-perform-in-class-perspectives-from-14-french-speaking-african-nations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/9272\/your-teachers-level-of-knowledge-affects-how-well-you-perform-in-class-perspectives-from-14-french-speaking-african-nations\/","title":{"rendered":"Your teachers’ level of knowledge affects how well you perform in class: perspectives from 14 French-speaking African nations"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jan Bietenbeck*<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Countries in sub-Saharan Africa have made remarkable progress towards reaching universal school enrolment in the past 25 years. Across the region,\u00a08 in 10 children<\/a>\u00a0of primary school age are now enrolled in school, and in countries such as\u00a0Benin<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Madagascar<\/a>\u00a0this figure stands at almost 10 in 10 children.<\/p>\n

However, it is becoming increasingly clear that many children in the region are\u00a0learning very little in school<\/a>. This\u00a0\u201clearning crisis\u201d<\/a>\u00a0means that it will be difficult to reach the\u00a0United Nations\u2019 Sustainable Development Goal<\/a>\u00a0of quality education for all by 2030.<\/p>\n

Importantly, the learning crisis does not affect all countries equally. For example, a\u00a0recent study<\/a>\u00a0found that whereas almost half of all sixth-grade students (who are on average about 13 years old) in Niger have difficulties reading a simple sentence, only one in 10 sixth-grade students in neighbouring Burkina Faso has such problems. This raises the question of what explains these international learning gaps.<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0recent study<\/a>, my co-authors Natalie Irmert, Mohammad H. Sepahvand and I tried to answer this question. We hypothesised that differences in teacher quality between countries play a role. Using comparable data from 14 countries in French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa, we found that differences in teachers\u2019 subject knowledge \u2013 that is, teachers\u2019 mastery of the material they are expected to teach in a given subject \u2013 explain more than a third of the international variation in student learning.<\/p>\n

This implies that the very low levels of learning in some countries\u2019 schools are to a large extent due to a lack of knowledgeable teachers.<\/p>\n

The research<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Our study was made possible by the recent release of data from the\u00a0PASEC 2019 assessment<\/a>. The assessment measured sixth-grade students\u2019 reading and maths skills in 14 French-speaking African countries in a comparable way. Importantly for our purposes, it also measured the knowledge of these students\u2019 teachers in the same two subjects. The assessment revealed very large differences in the average reading and maths skills of students between countries.<\/p>\n

In our study, we examined whether these international differences in student skills were driven by gaps in teachers\u2019 subject knowledge. We hypothesised that this might be the case based on previous research<\/a>\u00a0from individual countries which shows that teacher quality is a key driver of learning.<\/p>\n

Our results showed student skills and teachers\u2019 subject knowledge were indeed positively correlated: better teacher knowledge tended to go hand in hand with better student skills.<\/p>\n

However, this did not necessarily mean that teachers\u2019 subject knowledge caused learning. For example, countries with more knowledgeable teachers might also invest more into school buildings. In this case, the positive correlation between teacher knowledge and student skills could simply reflect the better learning conditions due to improved school buildings.<\/p>\n

Explaining the differences<\/strong><\/h3>\n

To be sure that our correlation reflected a causal effect of teacher knowledge, we used a statistical trick: we compared each country\u2019s student skills and teacher knowledge in reading to its student skills and teacher knowledge in maths.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This meant that we could keep all factors that did not differ between the two subjects, such as the quality of school buildings, constant. If better teachers\u2019 knowledge in reading relative to maths tended to go hand in hand with better student skills in reading relative to maths, we could be certain that the effect of teacher knowledge was causal.<\/p>\n

The figure below shows that this was indeed the case: for example, Burundi\u2019s teachers scored relatively low on the reading test relative to the maths test, and consequently its students did worse in the reading assessment than in the maths assessment. In contrast, Gabon\u2019s teachers were relatively more knowledgeable in reading, and therefore its students also performed better in the reading test.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"\"
Teachers\u2019 subject knowledge boosts student skills.\u00a0Authors supplied<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Overall, differences in teachers\u2019 subject knowledge could explain a third of the differences in student learning between the 14 countries. Our data did not allow us to conclude which factors explain the remaining two thirds of these differences.<\/p>\n

Implications for policy<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Our results show that teacher quality, and especially teacher subject knowledge, is a crucial driver of cross-country differences in learning. This is an important insight for policymakers in sub-Saharan Africa who are trying to solve the \u201clearning crisis\u201d: it shows that there is a large payoff to recruiting more knowledgeable teachers.<\/p>\n

Additionally, in-service training that improves the knowledge of already employed teachers could lead to large gains in student learning.<\/p>\n

\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640<\/p>\n

* Associate Professor of Economics, Lund University<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jan Bietenbeck* Countries in sub-Saharan Africa have made remarkable progress towards reaching universal school enrolment in the past 25 years. Across the region,\u00a08 in 10 children\u00a0of primary school age are now enrolled in school, and in countries such as\u00a0Benin\u00a0and\u00a0Madagascar\u00a0this figure stands at almost 10 in 10 children. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9273,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":25,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"The Conversation","source_url":"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/how-well-you-do-at-school-depends-on-how-much-your-teachers-know-insights-from-14-french-speaking-countries-in-africa-213664","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"0","show_view_counter":"0","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"0","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"0","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"0","show_popup_post":"0","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"","hide":""},"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,28,29,27],"tags":[512,349,1495,181,1490,383,1491,1494,1493,1492],"class_list":["post-9272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-studies","category-central-africa","category-east-africa","category-west-africa","tag-benin","tag-burundi","tag-francophone-africa","tag-gabon","tag-literacy","tag-niger","tag-numeracy","tag-sub-saharan-africa","tag-teacher-training","tag-teachers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}