Essays on Teacher Effectiveness and Student Learning in Less-Developed Countries

Abstract

It has now been widely documented that learning levels in many less-developed countries remain low. While this Global Learning Crisis is increasingly recognized, we still know very little about its specific scale. Moreover, although teacher and teaching quality are considered important determinants of student learning, there is a dearth of knowledge as to how to improve instructional quality through teacher-level interventions. This dissertation seeks to shed light on these issues through three independent essays. The first essay presents detailed, representative, and previously unpublished, learning outcomes data from India. The second essay investigates the causal effects of repeat, formative performance evaluations, under Chile’s national teacher evaluation system. In the third essay, I conduct a cluster-randomized trial in India to investigate the effects of a computer-assisted educational program that encourages teachers to blend their instruction with high-quality video materials.