Do teachers know their students? Exploring the alignment between teachers’ perceptions of children’s learning and children’s actual learning

• In Event: Understanding social responsibility towards teaching and learning, Part 2: The role of school actors.

Proposal

Teachers’ accurate judgement of children’s learning levels is crucial to raise academic achievements for the most marginalised, particularly in the context where children are enrolled in school but not learning. Accurate judgement is important for targeted and child-centred pedagogy, classroom management practices, innovative utilisation of educational materials, use of peer-support methods to help those pupils lagging behind, and communication with parents.

In the context of India, few studies have explored the accuracy of teachers’ judgement of children’s learning levels. The Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) model introduced in 2009 aims to reduce the pressure of summative assessments on students. Besides, it has the potential to improve instructional practices by making teachers aware of children’s low learning levels. However, the programme has a strong focus on administrative reporting and it is unclear that in practice teachers are using assessments to understand the learning levels of their pupils. For instance, Sinha, Banerji and Wadhwa (2016) find that less than 3% teachers could analyse their students’ work and understand the learning gaps, in a study conducted in Bihar schools.

It is in this context that our paper is situated. We primarily explore the magnitude of the alignment/misalignment between teacher’s judgement and children’s actual learning levels, by matching the teacher’s perception with the actual learning level of the child. Some of the questions the paper addresses are: which teachers are more likely to know the learning levels of their pupils? Do these teachers hold different perceptions of all children’s learning? Our analysis uses data collected as part of an intervention aimed to increase foundational learning in rural India and understand the role of different stakeholders in supporting children’s learning. The sample includes 23,970 children in grades 2,3 and 4 assessed in foundational reading and numeracy skills and 1,844 teachers in 850 government primary schools in 400 villages, in Sitapur district of the state of Uttar Pradesh.

We find that one out of every three teachers is misaligned with her pupils’ reading skills. Many factors affect teachers’ judgement-accuracy. It varies by teacher type: contract teachers are more likely to have better judgement than regular teachers or headmasters. Additionally, teachers teaching fewer classes are more likely to have a better judgement. Teachers’ perceptions of children’s learning levels in general predict their judgement-accuracy regarding specific children as well. Teachers who reported that their students cannot read their Hindi textbooks or they cannot solve two-digit subtraction by the time they reach 4th grade have better judgement than those reporting otherwise. Teachers’ judgement-accuracy also varies with children’s characteristics. Teachers judge the reading skills of younger children and those from comparatively poorer backgrounds more accurately.

Teacher’s misalignment with learning abilities of children in her class is a key bottleneck in raising children’s learning outcomes. Our paper not only sheds light on the magnitude of this problem in the Indian context but also attempts to uncover what might contribute to this misalignment.

Authors

• Pratik Wadmare, ASER Centre

• Mansi Nanda, University of Cambridge

• Ricardo Sabates, University of Cambridge