Understanding TaRL Interventions in India

• In Event: Engaging with the foundations: How the global learning crisis reshapes policy and pedagogy in the Global South

Proposal

For over two decades, academics, policymakers, and politicians in India have been concerned about the same issue each year: children at school are not learning. Many surveys have highlighted the lack of foundational skills among school-going children; meeting this challenge is currently taken up substantively in the current National Education Policy, 2020 (NEP, 2020).
A key purpose of India’s schooling system is to support the development of foundational
learning in the early years. Numerous non-governmental organizations are also actively engaged in developing innovative pedagogical and technological strategies to meet this goal.
The Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) approach is touted as a solution for foundational learning. This pedagogical method, developed by Pratham, has been subjected to multiple RCTs over the past two decades and is now being implemented in more than 9 low and middle-income countries (TaRL, 2022). The World Bank (2020) claims that TaRL is one of the most cost-effective ways to reduce learning poverty globally.
Integrative Literature Reviews helps develop new frameworks and perspectives on a topic (Torraco, 2005). This paper provides an integrative literature review on the utility and tensions of using an approach like Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL). It currently analyzes eight randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that are provided as evidence for the efficacy of TaRL as a pedagogical tool. The paper places the results of these RCTs within the context of different recent debates in the literature on effect size, pedagogy, and learning. Through this paper, I caution that effect size should not be the sole criterion for assessing the impact of interventions aimed at improving learning in children.
Kraft (2020) in his work finds that features like study costs, scalability, timing and content of outcomes measured, and student experience need to be considered while analyzing the impact of field-based interventions in education research. The paper focuses on different characteristics of any study measuring effect size, for example, the content of the test, the timing of the test, and the grade level at which the test is conducted.
The review finds little evidence of the durability of the learning outcomes of the intervention. I also find that the intervention is closely connected to the outcome measure, and the interventions only pertain to students in Grade 4 or below limiting the application of this method.
This integrative literature review addresses the core issues that should be considered while implementing and evaluating interventions like TaRL. It also highlights the limitations in the conceptualization of strategies that are conducive to achieving FLN goals in India. While the current focus of the paper is to examine the effectiveness of TaRL in India, its implications and relevance could be expanded to other low and middle-income countries as well.

Author

• Aanchal Gidra, Michigan State University