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Can introducing new pedagogies to teachers in developing countries be effective in reducing learning gaps?

A recent study entitled Learning to Teach by Learning to Learn by CID Faculty Affiliate and co-authors Nava Ashraf and Abhijit Banerjee investigates this question with evidence from the 's innovative teacher training program in Uganda.

The program emphasizes scientific thinking, aiding teachers to experience education as a process that enables learners to build new knowledge on top of prior knowledge - inviting traditional knowledge to interact meaningfully with the fruits of modern science. This has the effect of teachers helping students learn by posing questions connected to processes in their own lives, forming hypotheses, and gathering evidence rather than simply memorizing facts.

The study involved a randomized evaluation of the program across 35 schools, providing a unique opportunity to measure how well these methods could bridge learning gaps among disadvantaged students.

Key Findings:

• Dramatic improvements in learning: the program led to meaningful changes in student-teacher relationships and substantial performance improvements in Uganda’s high-stakes national exams, raising pass rates from 51% to 75%.
• Lasting impact: effects persist over time, benefiting not only current students but also those who transitioned to secondary school and continued to show improved learning outcomes.
• Strengthened scientific competencies: students in treated schools excelled in hands-on scientific assessments, demonstrating higher proficiency in designing experiments, articulating hypotheses, and analyzing results, alongside stronger critical thinking skills.
• Cost-effectiveness: A conservative estimate suggests that an additional $100 of funding increases learning adjusted years of schooling by 9.62 years. This places the program among the top-performing education interventions globally based on learning-adjusted years of schooling per dollar spent.

Impact and Relevance:

The study highlights the transformative potential of teacher training programs that emphasize metacognitive skills—enabling teachers to develop students’ ability to think critically and independently, but also harnessing their intellectual capabilities towards processes of community life. By shifting focus from rote learning to inquiry-based methods, this “learning to learn” approach equips students with skills that support lifelong adaptability.

These findings show the potential of a different paradigm of knowledge and its relationship with society building to help students worldwide. Effects were very large along a variety of dimensions, including not only objective indicators like standardized tests but also novel measures of scientific capabilities applied to community processes, like agriculture or water hygiene.

The implications go beyond primary education, as adopting a “learning to learn” approach could enhance policy outcomes in other areas where effective knowledge sharing and adaptation to local practices by field officers are crucial.