Do Practitioners Respond to Evidence? Experimental Results from Three Countries

• In Event: Evidence on evidence uptake across the education ecosystem: Parents, teachers, nongovernmental organisations and policymakers

Proposal

To date, little experimental research has been done in low- and middle-income countries on evidence uptake by practitioners. We conduct a randomized trial to assess the uptake of evidence by those on the front lines of education - with about 1,000 teachers and 5,000 parents across Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. Specifically, we examine responsiveness to different types of evidence: evidence on descriptive vs. causal results of educational solutions as well as evidence from global contexts vs. local contexts. The key outcomes we track are willingness to pay for additional evidence as well as actual behavior, such as whether parents provide additional educational instruction for their children when presented with evidence of the benefits of doing so. We set up a phone line with Viamo where parents can call in to enroll their child in additional instruction and collect objective outcomes from the phone company. Results indicate that teachers and parents are willing to invest time in conducting additional remedial classes when presented with scientific evidence.

Authors

• Sharnic Djaker

• Noam Angrist, Youth Impact; What Works Hub for Global Education, University of Oxford

• Shwetlena Sabarwal, World Bank