Determinants of teacher quality in Northern Nigeria: Evidence from an early grade reading intervention

• In Event: Teaching trials: showcasing successful teacher instruction through global perspectives

Proposal

A growing body of evidence suggests that teacher quality, defined broadly, is a key determinant of student learning. Systematic reviews of experimental literature analyzed by Evans and Popova (2016) show that traditional educational inputs have little impact on test scores but incentivizing teacher effort and supporting specific aspects of pedagogy do (Hanushek, 2003). Despite the volume of literature on student learning in developing country contexts, few studies have approached the subject to discern the precise effects of teachers on student achievement in such contexts and even fewer in Sub-Saharan Africa. Additionally, few studies examine the determinants of teacher effectiveness. Most of the existing literature assess the association between teacher effects and observable teacher characteristics such as demographics and qualifications, most of which find little to no correlation.

This paper aims to contribute to this strand of literature by investigating what teacher qualities affect teacher quality from two perspectives that have normal been treated separately. We define teacher quality in terms of their outputs measured via teacher value-added (VA) methods. We conduct a formal assessment of the determinants of teacher quality based on teachers’ observable characteristics, qualifications, and teaching practices. We enhance this analysis by linking programmatic data to individual teachers to ascertain the extent to which learning interventions can influence teacher performance.

The study takes place in 200 mostly rural schools in Northern Nigeria that are implementing the reading and numeracy activity (RANA) program covering grades 1 through 3. Every 5-6 schools are clustered based on their proximity to each other and are divided between two states across 6 districts. Data were collected in the 2016-17 and 2017-18 school years once at the beginning of the year and again at the end. All schools are participants of RANA a reading and numeracy intervention designed and implemented by FHI 360. The program includes teacher professional development, mentorship and coaching in the form regularly scheduled coaching visits, weekly school-level meetings between the teachers for lesson preparation, and a monthly cluster-level meeting of lead teachers with aims of encouraging collaboration between schools. Data are thus collected from 1 classroom teacher from each grade level, and approximately 7 students per classroom. The analytic sample includes a total of 318 unique teachers, 283 of whom were observed in both years and almost all of them taught at least two grades at their school. All students are tracked longitudinally within school-year yielding a final sample of 7,516 student observations.

First, to confirm that teacher quality is a vital element to student learning in the Sub-Saharan context, we employ standard teacher VA modeling to estimate teacher quality in reading and math in grades 1 through 3 purged from student and classroom characteristics and school fixed effects. Second, the estimated VA scores coupled with detailed lesson observation data collected by the program, and teacher surveys enable us to determine the teacher qualities, program activities, and teaching practices matter most in this context. Teacher quality is thus regressed against teacher qualifications, intervention activities, and classroom practices. Since teachers are observed across grades, subjects, and school years, we can control for teacher fixed effects in our analysis. This enables us to identify changes in teacher quality as a result of within-teacher changes in either qualifications, intervention activities, or classroom practices. The final specification thus includes school-level time varying characteristics, and school, grade, and subject fixed effects as controls.

The findings first and foremost confirm that teachers are a vital component to student success. The results of our subsequent analysis highlight certain qualities of teachers and their practices are associated with high performing teachers in a largely rural and impoverished area of Northern Nigeria. In addition, we show that variation in teacher salary and moving into full-time teaching positions are also positively correlated with teacher quality. The implications for policy around teachers and potentially around instructional personnel decision making can therefore be substantial that suggest policy geared toward teacher incentives may be effective in such settings. From a program intervention standpoint, we are able to point toward specific aspects of the program design that showed the largest returns in terms of teacher performance.

We state that the findings presented in this paper are not causal but are indicative of strong correlations that distinguish teachers who are considered top performers, at least within the study’s context. This research hopefully encourages replication in other developing country contexts and continues the discussion for further research into the underlying mechanisms that make teachers and learning interventions successful.

References

Evans, David K., and Anna Popova. "What really works to improve learning in developing countries? An analysis of divergent findings in systematic reviews." The World Bank Research Observer 31, no. 2 (2016): 242-270.

Hanushek, Eric A. "The failure of input‐based schooling policies." The Economic Journal 113, no. 485 (2003): F64-F98.

Author

• Wael Moussa, FHI 360