Influence of Gender and Inclusive Pedagogy on students’ achievement: The differentiated effects in different types of schools

• In Event: Learning and pedagogical approaches across South Asia

Proposal

Introduction:
Worldwide, inequalities in education are linked to many students’ poor participation and academic achievement at secondary schools. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated these inequalities, especially in low-income countries like Bangladesh. Besides, a global paradigm shift in curriculum from learning outcome-based education to competency and skill-based learning has challenged the current traditional ways of classroom learning as well as teaching strategies (OECD, 2020). The proposed project focuses on inclusive approach and student achievement, which is well aligned with the national guiding perspectives for secondary education including National Education Policy (2010). Therefore, this study investigates the effect of gender and inclusive pedagogy as an intervention at secondary school teaching on students’ leraning. It further explores how the intervention worked differently in different types of schools sucvh as rural-urban and single sex and co-education schools.
Methodology:
The study employed a mixed method approach of research as our aim was not only to measure the effect of GIP on student achievement, but also to understand the varied effect of the intervention and its reasons.
an experimental design was implemented to see the effect of GIP on students’ learning, with support of qualitative data from teachers and students. For the study, 20 experimental and 20 control schools were randomly selected. In experimental schools teachers taught using GIP approaches, while in control schools teachers taught in the conventional teaching learning approaches. Pretest and post test to measure students learning achievement before and after the intervention respectively was conducted in both types of schools. Total 3301 and 3940 students were tested in pre-test and posttest respectively. Besides, data were collected 20 subject teachers, 20 head-teachers, and 15 groups of students using interview and Focus Group Discussion respectively from the experimental schools. Quantitative data were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Qualitative data were analyzed using thematic analysis.

(i) Effect of GIP on student achievement:
1. Overall mean score:
When we compare the pre and post test results of the students of control and experimental schools separately, we see positive gain in both control and experimental schools. That means, in both control schools and experimental schools the students scored better in posttests (during end-line), compared to pre-test (during baseline). For both type of schools the difference between pre and post-test mean scores are statistically significant.
To understand the treatment effect better, we have also compared the pre-tests and post test results of pre-test and post-test separately for the control and experimental schools. The overall academic result or the average score of the test during baseline was better for the students of control schools than that of the experimental schools. This difference was statistically significant. In the baseline we see the opposite picture where the mean score of the students of experimental schools is higher than that of the control schools. However, this difference was not statistically significant (see table 3).
Findings from the analysis of qualitative data indicate that GIP training has contributed to a positive change in students' attitudes towards learning, making it enjoyable and engaging that further influenced students' attention and interest in learning resulted improved learning achievements.
Academic Achievement of Boys and Girls
During the post test, i.e., in end-line, we found an opposite scenario of the baseline. In end-line, the boys performed better than girls in the control group, which was also statistically significant. In the experimental schools, after intervention, the girls performed better in the test than the boys which was not significant though. So, we see that though the girls performed significantly lower than boys before the intervention, the girls performance got better after the intervention.
Teacher -2 explained, “As the GIP approach actively and consciously involve girls students in classroom activities and promote their engagement in the classroom, the girls are better motivated now to participate n class. Previously they were mostly silent audience. Now they have started to participate.”. However, it is not always the same for the co-education schools where boys and gorls are in the same class. A teacher-6 from such school reported, “In our school it took a long time just to make combined group of boys and girls to work on a school project. Even the parents were not positive. We had to have several discussion sessions with the parents. In the classroom the boys were always louder, prompt, and took the leadership. After implementing GIP in classroom, the situation is changing. However, it will take time to see a more gender balanced engagement in classroom”.
(ii) Academic achievement difference between different types of schools
Academic achievement of rural and urban schools
The intervention did not prove to be effective in reducing the achievement gap between rural and urban schools. There are different factors that inhibited the achievement of rural schools. For example one subject teacher from rural school explained, “In our school, many children also work along with attending schools because of their financial crisis. For this, their regular attendance hampered and this affects their achievement, even if we teach using GIP approaches”.
Academic achievement of government and non-government schools
During baseline or in the post test, government schools results were significantly higher than the non-government schools for both control and experimental schools. In the end-line, still the government schools outperformed the non-government schools and the difference between government and non-government schools were statistically significant. Therefore we cannot say that this intervention worked effectively for reducing the gap between government and non-government school students’ achievements.
Academic achievement of segregated and coeducation schools
The intervention did not prove to be effective in reducing the achievement gap between segregated and coeducation schools. However, it made a difference in coeducation schools more than girls’ only schools. The boys’ schools did better in both pre and post-tests.

Authors

• Sumera Ahsan, Institute of Education and Research, University of Dhaka

• Mohammad Ali Zinnah, Institute of Education and Research(IER), Dhaka University

• Md Khairul Islam, University of Dhaka

• Md Ahsan Habib, University of Dhaka

• MD ABDUS SALAM, Institute of Education and Research (IER), Dhaka University