Challenging the excessive demand for generating statistics to report on girls’ education

• In Event: Protesting the status quo in Girls Education: Contesting policy discourse, theoretical approaches, and methodological privilege

Proposal

Acts of protest and activism, and calls for changes in policy and practice in the ways in which girls are educated are expected to be grounded in reliable evidence. Quantitative methods that generate statistical findings are expected to be the major source of that evidence globally and at national, local, and community levels. Ever since economists extolled girls’ education as potentially having “the highest return investment available in the developing world” (Summers quoted in King and Hill, 1993, p. v), statistical analyses have led the way to promoting the value and expansion of girls’ education, especially in low-income countries. Statistics are used not only to show disparity or parity in girls’ access to school, but also to reveal gaps or failure in specific indicators of learning achievement in reading, mathematics, social-emotional learning, and other subjects from primary school through post-secondary education.
Yet quantitative research and the statistics it produces has serious limitations, which are often overlooked or ignored. Stories abound of problems encountered in using quantitative methods in research and evaluation of girls’ education in specific settings. These problems include the serious limitations of flawed design of studies and survey instruments, questionable practices in data collection and entry, system-level shortcomings such as expectations of governments to collect data in ways that far exceed their capacity, and failing to follow the norms of good practice in data analysis. Although some country-level findings have begun to explore these issues (Wyss, et al., 2023), a lack of transparency in reporting the extent of these problems is also an issue. Not infrequently problems are hidden, and the dominant practice continues of using quantitative methodology and statistical data to report on what are said to be successes and failures in girls’ education.
This presentation explores overt and covert aspects of this problem and raises questions about why it is a problem. Using Elaine Unterhalter’s (2023) four framings of issues in girls’ education, particularly the first framing of “What Works”, the presentation draws on lessons from over two decades of project design and mixed-methods evaluations on girls’ education projects from the perspective of a woman-owned CIDE firm. The added value and necessary contribution of good quality mixed-methods designs and of qualitative work (Unterhalter’s “What Matters” framing) is highlighted. Further, the presentation looks at why the quantitative approach continues to dominate the field and what drives it – that is, who the proponents are, and why such significant resources are channeled to quantitative research. The paper concludes with some possibilities for protest to challenge the status quo.

Author

• Shirley J Miske, Miske Witt & Associates International