Linear learning profiles: where is the S curve?

• In Event: Learning from learning profiles: implications for learning goals and equity

Proposal

Learning profiles show the empirical relationship between years of schooling and concept mastery. Learning profiles for a particular skill, such as adding fractions, should therefore have an S curve, with a steep incline for the year of expected mastery in the curriculum. Analysis of large-scale assessments by ASER and Uwezo in five countries – India, Pakistan, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda – plus the Indonesian Family Life Survey, show these S curves are largely missing. Instead, learning profiles are mostly linear across the grades where a particular concept should be introduced and mastered. Only a small percentage of children gain mastery of a skill in each grade, including the grade when it should be taught. This has important implications for the structuring of primary school curriculum and classrooms. A curriculum that assumes most children master a skill in fourth grade might devote minimal review of that skill in fifth grade, but will not be structured to teach the skill to the majority of children who have not mastered it according to the curriculum’s timeline. Further, classrooms that group children primarily by age and grade level, rather than skill level, will include a wide range of student capabilities, making it difficult for teachers to teach effectively. This evidence suggests reorienting classrooms around skill levels, rather than age and grade levels, may be needed as part of reforms to create education systems coherent for learning.

Authors

• Michelle Kaffenberger, Research on Improving Systems of Education

• Lant Pritchett, Harvard University