Developing Multimedia Programmes for Out-of-School Girls: The Case of GIRLS Inspire in Tanzania - Gasuku, Samwel (Journal of Learning for Development, 2021)
Learning resources such as audio, video and online content are developed as supplementary learning resources to print-based materials. This study focuses on the development of multimedia learning in adult education programmes for out-of-school girls and young women in Tanzania. It defines multimedia and adult education before showing the relationship between them. The study used a descriptive paradigm and adopted a qualitative case study design. It is informed by 25 in-depth interviews that were conducted with Institute of Adult Education (IAE) facilitators in April, 2018. Participants were purposely selected based on their multimedia experience. The findings revealed that most facilitators have little experience in multimedia resource development. However, 13 self-instructional audio and audio-visual programmes were produced to elaborate and enhance the effectiveness of instructions. It will be argued that IAE should include development and use of multimedia resources in its strategic rolling plan. Learning material development policy should also include multimedia resources and create awareness.
Keywords: _genre:PR-primary_research; adult education; multimedia; out-of-school girls and young women; ⛔ No DOI found

Cochrane Rapid Reviews. Interim Guidance from the Cochrane Rapid Reviews Methods Group​ - Garritty, C.; Gartlehner, G.; Kamel, C.; King, V.J.; Nussbaumer-Streit, B.; Stevens, A.; Hamel, C.; Affengruber, L. (2020)

More Than "If Time Allows": The Role of Ethics in AI Education - Garrett, Natalie; Beard, Nathan; Fiesler, Casey (AIES '20: AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society, 2020)

Socioeconomic inclusion during an era of online education - Garcia, Manuel B. (IGI Global, 2022)

La trascendencia de la Realidad Aumentada en la motivación estudiantil. Una revisión sistemática y meta-análisis - García, Gerardo Gómez; Jiménez, Carmen Rodríguez; Marín, José Antonio Marín (Alteridad: revista de educación, 2020)
Keywords: __C:filed:1; ⛔ No DOI found

Improving Early-Childhood Human Development: Experimental Evidence from India - Ganimian, Alejandro; Muralidharan, Karthik; Walters, Christopher R. (2020)
Keywords: ⛔ No DOI found

Realizing the promise: How can education technology improve learning for all? - Ganimian, Alejandro J.; Vegas, Emiliana; Hess, Frederick M. (2020)
This research is intended as an evidence-based tool for ministries of education to adopt and more successfully invest in education technology.

Realizing the promise: How can education technology improve learning for all? - Ganimian, Alejandro J.; Vegas, Emeliana; Hess, Frederick M (Brookings, 2020)
This research is intended as an evidence-based tool for ministries of education to adopt and more successfully invest in education technology.
Keywords: Final_citation; cited; existing; ⛔ No DOI found

Challenge-based learning in higher education: an exploratory literature review - Gallagher, Silvia Elena; Savage, Timothy (Teaching in Higher Education, 2020)
The application of Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) has increased in higher education institutions, fostering student transversal competencies, knowledge of sociotechnical problems, and collaboration with industry and community actors. However, a broad range of different frameworks, hybrid approaches, and educational interventions are using this term to define their approach. This lack of standardization creates definitional and conceptual challenges for the domain. A review of CBL literature was conducted to examine key characteristics, challenges and benefits, and educational factors. A total of 100 articles were reviewed using a qualitative thematic matrix. Results describe CBL benefits despite many institutional, practical and academic challenges. Although there was much variability in CBL approaches, eight common characteristics emerged from the literature. This research can support future research and implementation of CBL by providing a guiding conceptual framework and a preliminary classification of CBL approaches.
Keywords: Challenge-based learning; educational methods; educational theories; higher education

Difficulties in the Material of Skeleton Systems and the Application of ICT in Learning Natural Sciences (IPA) - Gafur, Irfan Andi; Yustina, Yustina; Zulfarina, Zulfarina (Journal of Educational Sciences, 2020)
Keywords: _C:China CHN; _C:Indonesia IDN; _C:Malaysia MYS; _C:Singapore SGP; __C:filed:1; __C:scheme:1

Country Dashboard - G3ICT (2020)

Will, Skill or Conscientiousness: What Predicts Teachers' ICT-Related Professional Development? - Fütterer, Tim; Lachner, Andreas; Scheiter, Katharina; Scherer, Ronny; Stürmer, Kathleen (2020)
Keywords: _C:Germany DEU; _C:Netherlands NLD; _C:United Kingdom GBR; __C:filed:1; __C:scheme:1; ⛔ No DOI found

A Comparison of Children’s Reading on Paper Versus Screen: A Meta-Analysis - Furenes, May Irene; Kucirkova, Natalia; Bus, Adriana G. (Review of Educational Research, 2021)
This meta-analysis examines the inconsistent findings across experimental studies that compared children’s learning outcomes with digital and paper books. We quantitatively reviewed 39 studies reported in 30 articles (n = 1,812 children) and compared children’s story comprehension and vocabulary learning in relation to medium (reading on paper versus on-screen), design enhancements in digital books, the presence of a dictionary, and adult support for children aged between 1 and 8 years. The comparison of digital versus paper books that only differed by digitization showed lower comprehension scores for digital books. Adults’ mediation during print books’ reading was more effective than the enhancements in digital books read by children independently. However, with story-congruent enhancements, digital books outperformed paper books. An embedded dictionary had no or negative effect on children’s story comprehension but positively affected children’s vocabulary learning. Findings are discussed in relation to the cognitive load theory and practical design implications.
Keywords: ECE; Mixed outcomes; Primary; _Import_to_OpenDevEd_EvLib; adult support; ebooks; high quality; reading; vocabulary

Indigenous Authorship on Open and Digital Platforms: Social Justice Processes and Potential - Funk, Johanna; Guthadjaka, Kathy (Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2020)
Online digital platforms can increase access to educational opportunities for marginalised students, authors and communities, but digital platform design can further marginalise Indigenous knowledge because such platforms are structured according to western epistemological assumptions. They do not accommodate for Indigenous or alternative knowledge frameworks. In addition, the premium placed on openness by certain platforms and licenses contradicts the approaches preferred by Indigenous knowledge authorities who tie the sharing of some types of knowledge to the identity and authority level of the intended audience. Knowledge in this context is not understood as discrete units of information that can be abstracted from their communities, easily shared on public platforms, but rather as sensitive materials that can only be shared by recognized knowledge authorities for specific purposes. The processes by which Indigenous knowledge authorities engage with knowledge sharing on digital platforms comprise a complex landscape in which social justice concerns come into play. This paper discusses how, within institutional design contexts, open educational practice (OEP) by Northern Australian Indigenous authors can enable different forms of social justice and work incrementally towards achieving greater recognition of Indigenous intellectual sovereign acts with due respect to the wider significance of Indigenous Sovereignty (Rigney 2001). It examines three sets of Indigenous open resources to gauge the extent to which open digital platforms allow for the expression of Indigenous knowledge authority, one necessary feature for achieving social justice in the Australian context. It examines the resources using Fraser’s social justice framework (2005) as modelled by Hodgkinson-Williams and Trotters’ (2018) and Lambert’s (2018) approach to educational resources, and how design decisions can result in greater justice in knowledge affirmation and transformation but originate in offline decision making.
Keywords: Indigenous knowledge and language; Open Education Practice; authority; authorship; digital inclusion and diversity; social justice

Introducing EIDU’s Solver Platform: Facilitating Open Collaboration in AI to Help Solve the Global Learning Crisis - Friedberg, Aidan (Springer International Publishing, 2022)
EIDU provides child-focused learning content along with digitally supported structured pedagogy programmes for teachers and is being rolled out to all public pre-primary schools across four counties in Kenya. EIDU is content-agnostic, allowing any provider to integrate new content into the platform, with the choice and order of content for each individual child optimised through personalisation algorithms. Autonomous digitised assessment tools enable real-time learning measurement which can be fed back to content providers and researchers, facilitating continuous improvement cycles. EIDU is providing open access to its platform to facilitate collaboration in the personalisation space with ‘the Solver Platform’. Researchers will have access to a vast, anonymised learning dataset to train and develop personalisation algorithms. These algorithms can be deployed onto the platform using a plug-in system and will automatically be evaluated and selected based on their measured learning impact, always ensuring the safety of learners comes first.
Keywords: Final_citation; cited; existing

Towards a Maturity Model for Learning Analytics Adoption An Overview of its Levels and Areas - Freitas, Elyda; Fonseca, Fernando; Garcia, Vinicius; Ferreira, Rafael; Gašević, Dragan (2020 IEEE 20th International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT), 2020)
Learning Analytics is a new field in education whose adoption can bring benefits for teaching and learning processes. However, many higher education institutions may not be ready to start using learning analytics due to challenges such as organizational culture, infrastructure, and privacy. In this context, Maturity Models (MMs) can support institutions to systematize their processes, enabling them to progress successively in the learning analytics adoption. MMs are used in different fields to support the improvement of processes, describing them in terms of maturity levels, and identifying enhancements that could lead an organization to higher levels of such maturity. Thus, this paper presents an outline of a MM for Learning Analytics adoption in higher education institutions, describing its levels and areas, together with its development methodology.
Keywords: Analytical models; Data analysis; Data models; Education; Final_citation; Organizations; Standards organizations; Task analysis; adoption; learning analytics; maturity model; policy development

Government of Sierra Leone Education Data Hub: A User Research Report - Freiermuth, Sophie; Bedoui, Claire; Middleton, Emily; Taddese, Abeba (EdTech Hub, 2020)
Report on the Government of Sierra Leone Education Data Hub
Keywords: C:Sierra Leone; ES:Educational data; LP: English; _C:Sierra Leone SLE; _DOILIVE; _EdTechHub_Output; _MELA_seen; _cover:v1; _zenodoETH

Identifying publication bias in meta-analyses of continuous outcomes - Freeman, Suzanne; Sutton, Alex (Cochrane Training, 2020)

The ripple effects of school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic - Freeman, Sloane J.; Cohen-Silver, Justine; Baker, Jillian M.; Rozenblyum, Evelyn; Suleman, Shazeen (Canadian Family Physician, 2020)
Keywords: __C:filed:1; ⛔ No DOI found

K4D Strengthening Cross-sector Learning for Education and FCAS - Freed, Danielle (2022)
This K4D Impact Story shares how the K4D’s Education in Fragile and Conflict Affected States (FCAS) Learning Journey supported the UK Government’s and global partners’ understanding of the subject, facilitated dialogue and learning, and equipped advisors with evidence and ideas that promote ongoing stability. This case study was made possible through the contribution of the K4D Programme team, staff at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and others who engaged with the resources and K4D Programme.

Preprinting the COVID-19 pandemic - Fraser, Nicholas; Brierley, Liam; Dey, Gautam; Polka, Jessica K.; Pálfy, Máté; Nanni, Federico; Coates, Jonathon Alexis (bioRxiv, 2021)
The world continues to face a life-threatening viral pandemic. The virus underlying the COVID-19 disease, SARS-CoV-2, has caused over 98 million confirmed cases and 2.2 million deaths since January 2020. Although the most recent respiratory viral pandemic swept the globe only a decade ago, the way science operates and responds to current events has experienced a paradigm shift in the interim. The scientific community has responded rapidly to the COVID-19 pandemic, releasing over 125,000 COVID-19 related scientific articles within 10 months of the first confirmed case, of which more than 30,000 were hosted by preprint servers. We focused our analysis on bioRxiv and medRxiv, two growing preprint servers for biomedical research, investigating the attributes of COVID-19 preprints, their access and usage rates, as well as characteristics of their propagation on online platforms. Our data provides evidence for increased scientific and public engagement with preprints related to COVID-19 (COVID-19 preprints are accessed more, cited more, and shared more on various online platforms than non-COVID-19 preprints), as well as changes in the use of preprints by journalists and policymakers. We also find evidence for changes in preprinting and publishing behaviour: COVID-19 preprints are shorter and reviewed faster. Our results highlight the unprecedented role of preprints and preprint servers in the dissemination of COVID-19 science, and the impact of the pandemic on the scientific communication landscape.
Keywords: _genre:PR-primary_research

The evolving role of preprints in the dissemination of COVID-19 research and their impact on the science communication landscape - Fraser, Nicholas; Brierley, Liam; Dey, Gautam; Polka, Jessica K.; Pálfy, Máté; Nanni, Federico; Coates, Jonathon Alexis (PLOS Biology, 2021)
The world continues to face a life-threatening viral pandemic. The virus underlying the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has caused over 98 million confirmed cases and 2.2 million deaths since January 2020. Although the most recent respiratory viral pandemic swept the globe only a decade ago, the way science operates and responds to current events has experienced a cultural shift in the interim. The scientific community has responded rapidly to the COVID-19 pandemic, releasing over 125,000 COVID-19–related scientific articles within 10 months of the first confirmed case, of which more than 30,000 were hosted by preprint servers. We focused our analysis on bioRxiv and medRxiv, 2 growing preprint servers for biomedical research, investigating the attributes of COVID-19 preprints, their access and usage rates, as well as characteristics of their propagation on online platforms. Our data provide evidence for increased scientific and public engagement with preprints related to COVID-19 (COVID-19 preprints are accessed more, cited more, and shared more on various online platforms than non-COVID-19 preprints), as well as changes in the use of preprints by journalists and policymakers. We also find evidence for changes in preprinting and publishing behaviour: COVID-19 preprints are shorter and reviewed faster. Our results highlight the unprecedented role of preprints and preprint servers in the dissemination of COVID-19 science and the impact of the pandemic on the scientific communication landscape.
Keywords: Altmetrics; COVID 19; Metadata; Pandemics; Peer review; SARS CoV 2; Scientific publishing; Twitter

SparseGPT: Massive Language Models Can be Accurately Pruned in One-Shot - Frantar, Elias; Alistarh, Dan (International Conference on Machine Learning, 2023)
We show for the first time that large-scale generative pretrained transformer (GPT) family models can be pruned to at least 50% sparsity in one-shot, without any retraining, at minimal loss of accuracy. This is achieved via a new pruning method called SparseGPT, specifically designed to work efficiently and accurately on massive GPT-family models. We can execute SparseGPT on the largest available open-source models, OPT-175B and BLOOM-176B, in under 4.5 hours, and can reach 60% unstructured sparsity with negligible increase in perplexity: remarkably, more than 100 billion weights from these models can be ignored at inference time. SparseGPT generalizes to semi-structured (2:4 and 4:8) patterns, and is compatible with weight quantization approaches. The code is available at: https://github.com/IST-DASLab/sparsegpt.

Addressing the climate, environment, and biodiversity crises in and through girls’ education - Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (2022)
Keywords: selected_for:effects of climate ch...on learning...LMICs 2024

'Political vandalism': DfID and Foreign Office merger met with anger by UK charities - Ford, Liz (The Guardian, 2020)
Unicef, Save the Children and Christian Aid among organisations warning move will harm those most in need and reduce UK’s power overseas
Keywords: Aid; Boris Johnson; Department for International Development (DfID); Global development; Politics; Society; UK news; World news

COVID-19: Supporting the Government of Sierra Leone with mobility data - Flowminder Foundation (2020)
Keywords: _C:Sierra Leone SLE

Mental health and wellbeing outcomes of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies: A systematic review - Flores, Elaine C.; Brown, Laura J.; Kakuma, Ritsuko; Eaton, Julian; Dangour, Alan D. (Environmental Research Letters, 2023)
Abstract Climate change has already impacted the health and wellbeing of ∼5 billion people globally. However, the potential influence of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies on mental health and wellbeing outcomes in low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs) remains insufficiently understood. We aimed to determine the effect of these strategies on mental health and wellbeing outcomes among LMIC beneficiaries. We carried out a systematic review to identify intervention and case studies published from 2013 to 2022, searching OVID Medline, Embase, PsycINFO, Global Health, Cochrane Library, GreenFile, Web of Science, and a subset of studies from the ‘Global Adaptation Mapping Initiative’ database. We included controlled, quasi-experimental, pilot, and focussed case studies reporting mental health or wellbeing outcomes assessments of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. We categorised studies by design, geographic region, target population, setting, environmental hazard, strategy type and primary outcomes. PROSPERO registry: CRD42021262711. A total of 9532 studies were initially retrieved, and 15 studies involving 12 255 participants met the inclusion criteria. Among these, twelve studies described evidence from single-adaptation strategies in nine LMICs, while three reported mitigation programmes. Only two randomised evaluations assessed common mental disorders such as depression, trauma or anxiety using validated scales. Most studies evaluated broader wellbeing at the community and individual levels. Nine studies (53.3%) reported significant beneficial changes in mental health or wellbeing outcomes among beneficiaries, while six (46.7%) obtained mixed results linked to local and sociocultural factors. The interventions ‘practical significance and overall impact remained unclear due to the heterogeneous reporting in program effectiveness, gaps in effect size assessments or qualitative insights. Our review highlights the scarcity and limited nature of the current evidence, underscoring the need for further equitable research. The ongoing global climate and mental health crises press us to fully understand and address these strategies’ psychosocial impacts and translate these findings into effective policy and transdisciplinary action as an opportunity to prevent and ameliorate significant, long-term problems in the population’s mental health and wellbeing.
Keywords: openalex:citedBy; openalex:import; selected_for:effects of climate ch...on learning...LMICs 2024; tagged

Digital Technologies and Innovative Learning Environments in Schooling: A New Zealand Experience - Fletcher, Jo; Everatt, John; Mackey, Julie; Fickel, Letitia Hochstrasser (New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies, 2020)
Keywords: __C:filed:1; ⛔ No DOI found

EXBOX-Digital–Praxisorientiertes Unterrichtskonzept zum Einsatz digitaler Medien im Chemie-und Physikunterricht - Fleischer, Timo; Deibl, Ines; Strahl, Alexander; Moser, Stephanie; Maier, Simone Christine; Zumbach, Jörg (Neue Impulse in der Naturwissenschaftsdidaktik, 2020)
Keywords: __C:filed:1

Communicating Scientific Uncertainty in an Age of COVID-19: An Investigation into the Use of Preprints by Digital Media Outlets - Fleerackers, Alice; Riedlinger, Michelle; Moorhead, Laura; Ahmed, Rukhsana; Alperin, Juan Pablo (Health Communication, 2021)
In this article, we investigate the surge in use of COVID-19-related preprints by media outlets. Journalists are a main source of reliable public health information during crises and, until recently, journalists have been reluctant to cover preprints because of the associated scientific uncertainty. Yet, uploads of COVID-19 preprints and their uptake by online media have outstripped that of preprints about any other topic. Using an innovative approach combining altmetrics methods with content analysis, we identified a diversity of outlets covering COVID-19-related preprints during the early months of the pandemic, including specialist medical news outlets, traditional news media outlets, and aggregators. We found a ubiquity of hyperlinks as citations and a multiplicity of framing devices for highlighting the scientific uncertainty associated with COVID-19 preprints. These devices were rarely used consistently (e.g., mentioning that the study was a preprint, unreviewed, preliminary, and/or in need of verification). About half of the stories we analyzed contained framing devices emphasizing uncertainty. Outlets in our sample were much less likely to identify the research they mentioned as preprint research, compared to identifying it as simply “research.” This work has significant implications for public health communication within the changing media landscape. While current best practices in public health risk communication promote identifying and promoting trustworthy sources of information, the uptake of preprint research by online media presents new challenges. At the same time, it provides new opportunities for fostering greater awareness of the scientific uncertainty associated with health research findings.

Preprints Involving Medical Research—Do the Benefits Outweigh the Challenges? - Flanagin, Annette; Fontanarosa, Phil B.; Bauchner, Howard (JAMA, 2020)
A preprint is a complete manuscript posted to a preprint server by authors before peer review and publication in a journal. The goals of preprints are to enable authors to obtain timely feedback and comments on research before submission to a peer-reviewed journal, to claim provenance of an idea, and to facilitate and expedite dissemination of and access to research. Preprints can be amended or updated, commented on by others, and remain on the preprint server even if subsequently published in a journal. They can be cited and indexed and increasingly are given attention in the news and social media.

Multimodal digital classroom assessments - Fjørtoft, Henning (Computers & Education, 2020)
Keywords: __C:filed:1

The Connection Between Socio-emotional Learning and Girls’ Educational Outcomes - Fitzpatrick, Rachel; Page, Ella (2022)
The literature on socio-emotional learning is vast, with a broad range of programmes and interventions spanning multiples ages with a variety of different objectives. A USAID systematic literature review of SEL interventions, identified a broad range of outcomes identified in evaluations of SEL programmes. The majority of the literature on academic outcomes is drawn from high-income contexts, though a small number of studies looking at the impact of girls’ clubs have sought to make a connection between participation in clubs and academic performance (Marcus et al, 2017; Amenya et al, 2021). Interventions targeting Early Years typically focus on play-based interventions at home and in primary care settings, and on parenting and prenatal skills development and support (Sánchez Puerta et al., 2016). The outcomes of these interventions typically focus on the development of socio-emotional learning skills, parenting behaviours, but also on academic performance (ibid). A World Bank review found that interventions before school were more likely to show favourable results during follow-up. Aside from the direct academic outcomes, SEL is found to have intermediate outcomes too, particularly in lower-income contexts. For example, girls’ clubs are associated with increased enrolment and retention rates at multiple levels of education (Marcus et al, 2017), in addition to increasing girls’ self-esteem and motivation to learn (Amenya et al, 2021). Other programmes with a focus on SEL have been found to improve career-related outcomes, delay pregnancy and early marriage, and support the development of skills required by the workplace, or advancing prosocial/anti-conflict behaviours (Sánchez Puerta et al., 2016).
Keywords: ⚠️ Invalid DOI; ⛔ No DOI found

Programmes to Support Foundational Learning in South Asia - Fitzpatrick, Rachel (2022)
Despite great achievements in improving school enrolment and completion levels in South Asia, a high proportion of learners continue to live in learning poverty, with approximately 50 per cent of learners unable to read or understand a simple text by age ten (UNICEF, 2021). Learning levels were severely impacted by large scale school closures as a result of Covid-19, with approximately 434 million learners impacted in the region (UNICEF, 2021). Improving foundational learning outcomes, particularly for the most marginalised, is a key policy priority for many South Asian countries. This report draws together learning from seven programmes in South Asia aimed at improving foundational learning, to provide insight into effective approaches that have previously or continue to have an impact on foundational learning levels.

Improving Resilience, Adaptation and Mitigation to Cimate Change Through Education in Low- and Lower-middle Income Countries - Fitzpatrick, Rachael; West, Helen (2022)
Climate resilience is the ability to anticipate, prepare for, and respond to hazardous events, trends, or disturbances related to climate (C2ES, 2022). Mitigation focuses on reducing the human impacts contributing to climate change (Burton, 2007, cited in Rousell & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, 2020). Adaptation is about increasing people’s adaptive capacity, reducing the vulnerability of communities and managing risks (Anderson, 2012). Anderson further defines adaptation as not just being able to adapt from one stable climate to another but having the skills to adapt to uncertainty and make informed decisions in a changing environment. While ‘climate change’ is the term used throughout these briefs, it should be read as a shorthand for a more inclusive approach, which also captures associated environmental degradation. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned, in their latest report, that global surface temperatures will continue to increase until 2050 (IPCC, 2021, p. 17). This will take place regardless of human intervention to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The report also warns that the traditional technocratic approaches are insufficient to tackle the challenge of climate change, and that greater focus on the structural causes is needed. High- and upper-middle-income countries have been persistently shown to be the biggest contributors to the global carbon dioxide emissions, with lower income countries facing the most disruptive climate hazards, with Africa countries particularly vulnerable (CDP, 2020; IPCC, 2021). The vulnerability of low-income contexts exacerbates this risk, as there is often insufficient infrastructure and resources to ensure resilience to climate hazards (IPCC, 2021). For decades, advocates of climate change education have been highlighting the potential of education to help mitigate against climate change, and support adaptation efforts. However, implementation has been patchy, with inconsistent approaches and a lack of evidence to help determine the most effective way forward.This paper is divided into three sections, drawing together evidence on the key aspects of system reform,green and resilient infrastructure and Curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and teacher development.

Enablers and Barriers to the Successful Delivery of Accelerated Learning Programmes - Fitzpatrick, Rachael (2020)
This review identified enablers and barriers to the successful delivery of accelerated learning programmes and complementary education. The policy environment is identified as being an overarching factor that can behave as both an enabler and a barrier, with contexts that integrate non-formal education into policy texts being among the most enabling. Other enablers and barriers are explored in relation to programme delivery, followed by a brief exploration of learners transitioning into the formal education system. The report identified inconsistencies in the terminology surrounding accelerated learning and complementary learning programmes, and has therefore adopted the most common language used: accelerated education programmes (AEPs). A key reflection from this review is on the tension that exists between successful AEPs integrating effectively with national systems, whilst also remaining independent enough to overcome the barriers faced by those same systems.
Keywords: ⛔ No DOI found

Evidence on the Impact of Population Growth on Education Financing and Provision in Tanzania - Fitzpatrick, Rachael (2022)
Tanzania has made great strides in increasing enrolment rates amidst a rapidly growing population. However, despite gains made in primary enrolment, completion rates have not exceeded 70% in the past five years, and enrolment at secondary level remains low (37%). An analysis of expenditure suggests a lack of equitability in distribution of funds within the education sector. Having achieved near universal enrolment at primary level, since 2016 the Government of Tanzania has almost doubled spend on secondary education and increased spending on higher education. In the same period, however, spend per pupil at primary level has halved suggesting that budget is being directed away from pre-primary and primary education to fund secondary, with higher education slightly increasing. Furthermore, the Education Sector Analysis outlines that 35% of the education budget is spent on the top 10% highest educated in the system (Kahangwa et al. 2021, 168). In addition to disparities on spend by education level, regional differences persist in the number of classrooms, textbooks, desks and teacher shortages also exist. Despite current disparities and challenges, Tanzania’s economic growth in recent years suggests that, with increased commitment in minimum spending on education as a proportion of GDP, the education needs of the population could be met. However, this would assume continued economic growth and require a greater proportion of spend to be allocated to education, suggesting trade-offs may be required.

Secondary Education Provision and Impacts of Low Secondary Uptake on Wider Societal Outcomes - Fitzpatrick, Rachael (2022)
This report explores the current uptake and completion of secondary education globally, with a particular focus on sub-Saharan Africa. The report also explores the wider societal benefits of increased secondary completion rates, and the financial considerations that are needed to increase uptake and completion. Using data from UIS (2022) and UNESCO WIDE (2022), the report identified disparities in net enrolment, attendance and completion between primary and both levels of secondary education, particularly upper secondary. In sub-Saharan African countries, achievements in net enrolment at primary level are rarely met with high enrolment levels at either lower or upper secondary level, with this difference even more stark when observing completion rates. Currently, both lower and upper secondary education is not a funding priority amongst many countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Of the 27 countries included in analysis, only one country (Mauritius) spent a higher proportion on secondary education compared to other levels (UIS, 2022). Some countries were found to spend a higher proportion of GDP on tertiary education compared to other education levels, with over double the amount spent on tertiary compared to both lower and upper secondary education combined in some instances (Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan) (UIS, 2022).

Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling (LAYS): Defining a New Macro Measure of Education - Filmer, Deon; Rogers, Halsey; Angrist, Noam; Sabarwal, Shwetlena (Economics of Education Review, 2020)

Learning-adjusted years of schooling (LAYS): Defining a new macro measure of education - Filmer, Deon; Rogers, Halsey; Angrist, Noam; Sabarwal, Shwetlena (Economics of Education Review, 2020)
The standard summary metric of education-based human capital used in macro analyses is a quantity-based one: The average number of years of schooling in a population. But as recent research shows, students in different countries who have completed the same number of years of school often have vastly different learning outcomes. We therefore propose a new summary measure, the Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling (LAYS). This measure combines quantity and quality of schooling into a single easy-to-understand metric of progress, revealing considerably larger cross-country education gaps than the standard metric. We show that the comparisons produced by this measure are robust to different ways of adjusting for learning and that LAYS is consistent with other evidence, including other approaches to quality adjustment. Like other learning measures, LAYS reflects learning, and barriers to learning, both inside and outside of school; also, cross-country comparability of LAYS rests on assumptions related to learning trajectories and the validity, reliability, and comparability of test data. Acknowledging these limitations, we argue that LAYS nonetheless improves on the standard metric in key ways.
Keywords: Education; Human capital; Learning; Returns to education; Schooling; Test Scores

Identifying Effective Teachers: Lessons from Four Classroom Observation Tools - Filmer, Deon; Molina, Ezequiel; Wane, Waly (Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE), 2020)

Teacher Performance-Based Incentives and Learning Inequality - Filmer, Deon; Habyarimana, James; Sabarwal, Shwetlena (Rise Programme, 2020)
This study evaluates the impacts of low-cost, performance-based incentives in Tanzanian secondary schools. Results from a two-phase randomized trial show that incentives for teachers led to modest average improvements in student achievement across different subjects. Further, withdrawing incentives did not lead to a “discouragement effect” (once incentives were withdrawn, student performance did not fall below prebaseline levels). Rather, impacts on learning were sustained beyond the intervention period. However, these incentives may have exacerbated learning inequality within and across schools. Increases in learning were concentrated among initially better-performing schools and students. At the same time, learning outcomes may have decreased for schools and students that were lower performing at baseline. Finally, the study finds that incentivizing students without simultaneously incentivizing teachers did not produce observable learning gains.
Keywords: _B:important; _G:important; _G:reviewed; _Tanzania; _final_bib; _important

Evidence and Lessons Learned Regarding the Effect of Equitable Quality Education on ‘Open Society’ - Fieldsend, Astrid (2021)
The purpose of this review is to assist FCDO in understanding the evidence of impact and any valuable lessons regarding the effect equitable quality education can have on ‘open society’. The search revealed that there is a considerable volume of evidence which focuses on education’s ability to reduce poverty, increase economic growth, boost employability and achieve better health outcomes. There is less which focuses on the aspects of ‘open society’ as defined in this paper. The scope of this review was narrowed to focus upon areas of the ‘open society’ definition where the most evidence does exist, given the timeframe for the review. The scope was narrowed to focus on: democracy, civic engagement, and social cohesion. The review of the literature found strong evidence that equitable quality education can have a range of positive impacts on democracy (specifically, its institutions and processes), civic engagement and social cohesion. There is a considerable body of evidence which indicates that there is a correlation between equitable quality education and benefits to societies (more peaceful, higher levels of trust, greater participation in politics, etc). However, there was no clear evidence that investment in equitable quality education directly leads to positive societal outcomes. This is because there are so many other factors to account for in attempting to prove causation. The lack of rigorous studies which attempt to attribute causation demonstrates a clear evidence gap. It is important to note that education systems themselves are politicised and cannot be divorced from the political process. The extent to which education can impact positively on open society depends a great deal on the value education has within the political system in which it is operating.

Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM): Sierra Leone Design Report 2019–2021 - Field, Tracey-Lynn (Open Government Partnership, 2020)
Keywords: _C:Sierra Leone SLE

Wheels of Change: Transforming Girl’s Lives with Bicycles - Fiala, Nathan; Garcia-Hernandez, Ana; Narula, Kritika; Prakash, Nishith (Working Paper, 2020)

Wheels of Change: Transforming Girls' Lives with Bicycles - Fiala, Nathan; Garcia-Hernandez, Ana; Narula, Kritika; Prakash, Nishith (IZA Discussion Papers, 2022)
Reducing the gender gap in education is a primary goal for many countries. Two major challenges for many girls are the distance to school and their safety when commuting to school. In Zambia, we studied the impact of providing a bicycle to a school-going girl who lives more than 3 km from the school. We randomized whether a girl received a bicycle with a small cost to her family to cover replacement parts, a bicycle where these costs are covered by the program, and therefore is zero cost to the family, or a control group. One year after the intervention, we find that the bicycle reduced average commuting time to school by 35%, reduced late arrival by 66%, and decreased absenteeism by 27%. We find continued improvement in girls' attendance and reduction in dropouts two, three, and four years after the intervention. We also find evidence of improved math test scores, girls expressing higher feelings of control over their lives and, for those who received bicycles with a small cost to her family, higher levels of aspirations, self-image, and a desire to delay marriage and pregnancy. Heterogeneity analysis by distance to school shows an inverted U-shape for most of the schooling and empowerment results, suggesting greater impact for girls that live further away from school. These results suggest that empowerment outcomes worked through increased attendance in school.
Keywords: Zambia; attendance; bicycles; dropout; female aspiration; female empowerment; girls' education; grade transition; safety; test scores; ⛔ No DOI found

Wheels of Change: Transforming Womens Lives with Education and Empowerment - Fiala, Nathan; Garcia-Hernandez, Ana; Narula, Kritika; Prakash, Nishith (2020)
Keywords: ⛔ No DOI found

Tich mi ar tich dem (E-Cubed) - Open Development & Education - Ferrao, Evette (2022)
Funded by Dubai Cares via the Interagency Network for Education in Emergencies’ E-Cubed research grant, the Tich Mi Ar Tich Dem (‘Teach me to teach them’) programme research addresses the Sierra Leonean government’s need to optimise and validate an effective model for in-service teacher professional development (TPD) in crisis-vulnerable areas of the country.

Gamification for climate change engagement: review of corpus and future agenda - Fernández Galeote, Daniel; Rajanen, Mikko; Rajanen, Dorina; Legaki, Nikoletta-Zampeta; Langley, David J; Hamari, Juho (Environmental Research Letters, 2021)
Abstract Both bottom-up and top-down initiatives are essential for addressing climate change effectively. These include initiatives aiming to achieve widespread behavioral change towards reduction of greenhouse gas emissions as well as pursuing education regarding adaptation measures. While awareness of the issue of climate change is now pervasive, and actions are being taken at all levels of society, there is still much to do if international goals are to be met. Games and gamification offer one approach to foster both behavioral change and education. In this paper, we investigate the state-of-the-art of game-based climate change engagement through a systematic literature review of 64 research outputs comprising 56 different gamified approaches. Our analysis of the literature reveals a trend of promising findings in this nascent and growing area of research, suggesting the potential to impact multiple engagement dimensions simultaneously, as well as create an engaging gameful experience. Overall, the corpus appears to offer a fruitful balance in foci between climate science, mitigation, and adaptation, as well as a variety of formats in game-based approaches (i.e. digital, analog, and hybrid). However, shortcomings were also observed, such as geographic and demographic imbalances and the short duration of interventions. The reviewed studies yield a large number of results indicating climate change engagement through gamification, especially in the form of cognitive engagement, affect towards climate change-related topics, and in-game behavioral engagement with others. Nevertheless, heterogeneity in terms of contexts, designs, outcomes, and methods, as well as limited rigor in research designs and reporting, hinders drawing overall conclusions. Based on our review, we provide guidelines regarding contexts, interventions, results, and research quality and internal validity for advancing the space of game-based interventions for climate change engagement.

Impact of Educational Technology on Teacher Stress and Anxiety: A Literature Review - Fernández-Batanero, José-María; Román-Graván, Pedro; Reyes-Rebollo, Miguel-María; Montenegro-Rueda, Marta (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2021)
Educational technology has become an increasingly important element for improving the teaching and learning process of students. To achieve these goals, it is essential that teachers have the skills they need to be able to introduce technology into their teaching practice. However, this is often overwhelming and stressful for many of them. The aim of this review was to find out how research on teacher stress and anxiety associated with the use of educational technology was proceeding. A systematic review was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines through the following bibliographic databases: PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus. Sixteen articles were found from the review. The main findings show that teachers present high levels of anxiety or stress due to their use of educational technology in the classroom. Among the conclusions, the need for research on different strategies to prevent the emergence of these anxiety and stress symptoms in teachers stands out.
Keywords: Final_citation; anxiety disorders; anystyle; cited; educational technology; existing; mental health; review; teacher burnout

Education and Disability in the Global South: New Perspectives from Africa and Asia - Fennell, Shailaja (Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 2020)

The role of professional learning communities to support teacher development: A social practice theory perspective - Feldman, Jennifer (South African Journal of Education, 2020)

The global digital skills gap: Current trends and future directions - Feijao, Carolina; Flanagan, Isabel; Van Stolk, Christian; Gunashekar, Salil (Rand Corporation, 2021)
The overarching aim of the research was to carry out a scoping study to examine the evidence associated with various aspects of the current digital skills landscape, focusing on the digital skills gap. We sought to better understand whether and why the digital skills gap is widening, as well as its implications for digital and social inequalities, and what various stakeholders are doing in response.

Challenges and burden of the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic for child and adolescent mental health: a narrative review to highlight clinical and research needs in the acute phase and the long return to normality - Fegert, Jörg M.; Vitiello, Benedetto; Plener, Paul L.; Clemens, Vera (Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, 2020)
Background:  The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is profoundly affecting life around the globe. Isolation, contact restrictions and economic shutdown impose a complete change to the psychosocial environment in affected countries. These measures have the potential to threaten the mental health of children and adolescents significantly. Even though the current crisis can bring with it opportunities for personal growth and family cohesion, disadvantages may outweigh these benefits. Anxiety, lack of peer contact and reduced opportunities for stress regulation are main concerns. Another main threat is an increased risk for parental mental illness, domestic violence and child maltreatment. Especially for children and adolescents with special needs or disadvantages, such as disabilities, trauma experiences, already existing mental health problems, migrant background and low socioeconomic status, this may be a particularly challenging time. To maintain regular and emergency child and adolescent psychiatric treatment during the pandemic is a major challenge but is necessary for limiting long-term consequences for the mental health of children and adolescents. Urgent research questions comprise understanding the mental health effects of social distancing and economic pressure, identifying risk and resilience factors, and preventing long-term consequences, including—but not restricted to—child maltreatment. The efficacy of telepsychiatry is another highly relevant issue is to evaluate the efficacy of telehealth and perfect its applications to child and adolescent psychiatry. Conclusion:  There are numerous mental health threats associated with the current pandemic and subsequent restrictions. Child and adolescent psychiatrists must ensure continuity of care during all phases of the pandemic. COVID-19-associated mental health risks will disproportionately hit children and adolescents who are already disadvantaged and marginalized. Research is needed to assess the implications of policies enacted to contain the pandemic on mental health of children and adolescents, and to estimate the risk/benefit ratio of measures such as home schooling, in order to be better prepared for future developments.
Keywords: __C:filed:1

Large Learning Gains in Pockets of Extreme Poverty: Experimental Evidence from Guinea Bissau - Fazzio, Ila; Eble, Alex; Lumsdaine, Robin; Boone, Peter; Bouy, Baboucarr; Hsieh, Pei-Tseng Jenny; Jayanty, Chitra; Johnson, Simon; Silva, Ana Filipa (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2020)
Children in many extremely poor, remote regions are growing up illiterate and innumerate despite high reported school enrollment ratios. Possible explanations for such poor outcomes include demand – for example, low perceived returns to education compared to opportunity cost; and supply – poor state provision and inability of parents to coordinate and finance better schooling. We conducted a cluster-randomized trial in rural Guinea Bissau to understand the effectiveness and cost of concerted supply-based interventions in such contexts. Our intervention created simple schools offering four years of education to primary-school aged children in lieu of the government. At endline, children receiving the intervention scored 58.1 percentage points better than controls on early grade reading and math tests, demonstrating that the intervention taught children to read and perform basic arithmetic, from a counterfactual condition of very high illiteracy. Our results provide evidence that particularly needy areas may require more concerted, dramatic interventions in education than those usually considered, but that such interventions hold great potential for increasing education levels among the world’s poorest people.

Knowledge hiding behavior in higher education institutions: a scientometric analysis and systematic literature review approach - Fauzi, Muhammad Ashraf (Journal of Knowledge Management, 2022)
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to systematically review knowledge hiding (KH) behavior in higher education institutions (HEIs). KH is regarded as an unethical and antisocial behavior by many scholars, which should not be prevalent in HEIs. Design/methodology/approach A two-phase analysis through quantitative scientometric analysis and qualitative systematic literature review method through the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) model was applied. In phase 1,174 articles were analyzed using the VOSviewer through co-word and co-citation analyses. In Phase 2, 20 related studies on KH in HEIs were qualitatively analyzed on the fundamental concept of KH. The main themes were determined based on current research findings, through the identification of relevant gaps in the context of higher education. Findings In Phase 1, co-word and co-citation analyses resulted in six and three clusters, respectively. Subsequently, in Phase 2, five themes were discovered: terminology of KH, scale of KH, cultural and geographical context, KH among academics and students and relevant theories. Further, discussion on the institutional factors of individuals, organizations, technology and culture is presented. Practical implications This review lays out a practical guide to facilitate HEIs in managing KH behavior among academics, employees, and students. Strategies can be planned and implemented to foster and inculcate knowledge sharing behavior to circulate knowledge while at the same time diminishing KH behavior in HEIs. Originality/value To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first to review KH behavior in the context of HEIs through quantitative and qualitative analysis.
Keywords: Academics; Higher education institution; Knowledge hiding; Knowledge sharing; Students

Examining the Practices and Challenges of Distance Education of PhD Candidates in the Context of COVID-19 - Fast, Olha; Semenog, Olena; Vovk, Myroslava; Buhaichuk, Nazar; Golya, Galyna (Journal of Learning for Development, 2022)
The distance education system is actively developing in the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The sharp transition of PhD candidates to distance education caused difficulties in organising the educational process. The aim of this study was to analyse the methods of distance education for postgraduate students in the context of a COVID-19 pandemic. A survey of graduate students was conducted through specially- designed and semi-standardised interviews of focus groups of producers and consumers of educational services. The study showed that the process of adaptation of postgraduate students majoring in Physical Culture and Sports and Biology was much more difficult than in the major Educational, Pedagogical Sciences and Philology. The reasons for the problems of distance education of PhD candidates included the complexity of creating educational and methodological materials for distance learning; lack of a centralised system of certification and accreditation of electronic courses; insufficient motivation of teachers; shortage of teachers who could competently develop distance learning courses in higher education. The study identified opportunities to implement promising areas of online learning in the system of training of academic and teaching staff: retraining of a large proportion of the teaching staff, implementation of a system approach to the development of the online environment of educational institutions, development of skills and abilities to use educational content. Prospects for further research include the study of problems of violation of academic integrity by postgraduate students in the course of distance learning.
Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Distance Education/Learning; Health and Recreational Technologies; Online Learning Technologies; Training of PhD Candidates; ⛔ No DOI found

SemOpenAlex: The Scientific Landscape in 26 Billion RDF Triples - Färber, Michael; Lamprecht, David; Krause, Johan; Aung, Linn; Haase, Peter (2023)
Abstract We present SemOpenAlex , an extensive RDF knowledge graph that contains over 26 billion triples about scientific publications and their associated entities, such as authors, institutions, journals, and concepts. SemOpenAlex is licensed under CC0, providing free and open access to the data. We offer the data through multiple channels, including RDF dump files, a SPARQL endpoint, and as a data source in the Linked Open Data cloud, complete with resolvable URIs and links to other data sources. Moreover, we provide embeddings for knowledge graph entities using high-performance computing. SemOpenAlex enables a broad range of use-case scenarios, such as exploratory semantic search via our website, large-scale scientific impact quantification, and other forms of scholarly big data analytics within and across scientific disciplines. Additionally, it enables academic recommender systems, such as recommending collaborators, publications, and venues, including explainability capabilities. Finally, SemOpenAlex can serve for RDF query optimization benchmarks, creating scholarly knowledge-guided language models, and as a hub for semantic scientific publishing. Data and Services: https://semopenalex.org https://w3id.org/SemOpenAlex Code: https://github.com/metaphacts/semopenalex/ Data License: Creative Commons Zero (CC0) Code License: MIT License

The effects of ventilation and temperature on sleep quality and next-day work performance: pilot measurements in a climate chamber - Fan, Xiaojun; Shao, Huiqi; Sakamoto, Mitsuharu; Kuga, Kazuki; Lan, Li; Wyon, David P.; Ito, Kazuhide; Bivolarova, Mariya P.; Liao, Chenxi; Wargocki, Pawel (Building and Environment, 2022)
Ten healthy young adults slept one by one in a specially designed and constructed sleep capsule located in a climate chamber at two temperatures (24 °C and 28 °C) and two ventilation rates that ensured that the resulting CO2 concentrations were 800 and 1700 ppm. Subjectively rated sleep quality was reduced at 28 °C and reduced ventilation, while sleep onset latency was longer under these conditions. Sleep efficiency was lower at 28 °C. Subjectively rated fatigue and sleepiness decreased after sleeping under all conditions but less so after sleeping at 28 °C. The subjects indicated that their work performance improved after sleeping at 24 °C but not when ventilation was reduced and the temperature increased. Both objectively measured and subjectively rated work performance was worse after sleeping in the condition with increased temperature. The subjects felt warmer at 28 °C although the thermal environment was still rated as acceptable but the air in the capsule was rated stuffier, the acceptability of the air quality decreased and the rated odour intensity increased at this condition. The wrist skin temperature was always higher at 28 °C with reduced ventilation but only during the sleep onset latency period. The subjects felt slightly warm and rated the air stuffier when ventilation was reduced. The present results, albeit from a small exploratory pilot study, show that increased temperature and reduced ventilation both have negative effects on sleep quality, which may have consequences for next-day work performance. These pilot experiment results require validation due to the low number of subjects.
Keywords: BE:RELEVANT; Next-day work performance; Physiological responses; Sleep quality; Temperature; Ventilation

Incentivizing Textbooks for Self-Study: Experimental Evidence from the Democratic Republic of Congo - Falisse, Jean-Benoit; Huysentruyt, Marieke; Olofsgård, Anders (Academy of Management Proceedings, 2020)
We use a randomized field experiment to study the impact of a simple “textbooks for self-study” incentive scheme targeting primary school students in South Kivu. Students in the treatment schools scored 0.320s higher in French but did no better in math. They were more likely to take the high-stakes end-of-6th-grade national exam and to aspire to a non-manual profession.. The largest positive impact was found in schools with lower-quality teaching performance and for lower-ability students. Our results demonstrate that programs designed to intensify and diversify students’ use of existing school resources can sharply improve student achievement and career aspirations.
Keywords: AOM Annual Meeting Proceedings 2020

Digital technology and the futures of education: Towards ‘Non-Stupid’optimism - Facer, Keri; Selwyn, Neil (Paper commissioned for the UNESCO Futures of Education report, 2021)
Keywords: Final_citation; ⛔ No DOI found

Climate, Enviroment and Education - Presentation for the Tanzania Education Donors-Partners working group - Fab Inc; Laterite; Open Development and Education (Tanzania Education Donors-Partners working group, 2023)
Presentation for the Tanzania Education Donors-Partners working group – session on Education, Climate and Environment.

Learning from Experience: A post-Covid-19 data architecture for a resilient education data ecosystem in Sierra Leone - Fab Inc. (EdTech Hub, 2021)
An output of the EdTech Hub, https://edtechhub.org
Keywords: _C:Sierra Leone SLE; _DOILIVE; _r:AddedByZotZen; _zenodo:submitted

ChatGPT has entered the classroom: how LLMs could transform education - Extance, Andy (Nature, 2023)
Researchers, educators and companies are experimenting with ways to turn flawed but famous large language models into trustworthy, accurate ‘thought partners’ for learning.
Keywords: Computer science; Education; Machine learning; Mathematics and computing

Notes from the Field: 'Nurses International' Uses OER to Support Nurse Educators - Ewing, Helen; Chickering, Miriam; Burner, Lindsay; Keating, Stacen A.; Berland, Alex; Frank, Erica (Journal of Learning for Development, 2020)
Educating nurses in developing countries is challenging due to limited resources. Nurses International advances nursing education through the use of Open Educational Resources which provides a unique model to teach and mentor nurse educators globally. Using current resources and materials that are free online and teacher-facing, an innovative program has been established that can be employed to scale up education of the healthcare workforce through teaching the teachers and enhancing the education of nurses.
Keywords: Open Educational Resources; educator development; nurse education; ⛔ No DOI found

What Happens When AI is Used to Set Grades? - Evgeniou, Theodoros; Hardoon, David R.; Ovchinnikov, Anton (Harvard Business Review, 2020)
In 2020, with high school exams canceled in many countries, the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) deployed an AI to determine final grades based on current and historical data. When the results came in, many scores did not correlate with grades that had been predicted, as had been the case in previous years, prompting many people to appeal their grades. Unfortunately, the appeals system for grades had not been changed from previous years, which was assumed that students would write examination papers. Since university place offers in many countries are contingent on students achieving predicted grades, many students have been denied places at their universities of choice, which has resulted in a great deal of anger. This experience highlights the risks of delegating life-altering decisions to AI without considering how apparently anomalous decisions can be appealed and, if necessary, changed.
Keywords: Business education; Final_citation; Technology and analytics; anystyle; existing; ⛔ No DOI found

From Modernisation, Dependency and Soft Power Toward a Commonwealth of Learning - Evans, Terry; Jakupec, Victor (Journal of Learning for Development, 2021)
This article reflects on some influential theories, concepts and institutions that have shaped the nature and substance of international development since the mid-20th century. In particular, theories of modernisation and dependency are deployed to reflect on the ways in which the International Financial Institutions, such as, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have adopted a ‘Washington Consensus’ concerning the social and economic development of ‘developing’ nations. ‘Soft power’ national agencies, such as, the British Council and USAID are brought into consideration, especially, for their interests and influences over matters of learning for development. The multi-national Commonwealth of Learning’s particular contribution to learning for development is discussed with suggestions made for developing member nations’ capacities to produce new local knowledge and to bring their existing local knowledge to the fore to share as part of a (Lockean) ‘commonwealth of learning’.
Keywords: dependency theory; learning for development; modernisation theory; soft power; the Washington Consensus.; ‘commonwealth of learning’; ⛔ No DOI found

How big are effect sizes in international education studies? - Evans, David; Yuan, Fei (Center for Global Development, 2020)
In recent years, a growing literature has measured the impact of education interventions in low- and middle-income countries on both access and learning outcomes. But interpretation of those effect sizes as large or small tends to rely on benchmarks developed by a psychologist in the United States in the 1960s. In this paper, we demonstrate the distribution of standardized effect sizes on learning and access from hundreds of studies from low- and middle-income countries.

Gender gaps in education: The long view - Evans, David; Akmal, Maryam; Jakiela, Pamela (Centre for Global Development, 2020)
Many countries remain far from achieving gender equality in the classroom. Using data from 126 countries between 1960 and 2010, we document four facts. First, women are more educated today than fifty years ago in every country in the world. Second, they remain less educated than men in the vast majority of countries. Third, in many countries with low levels of education for both men and women in 1960, gender gaps widened as more boys went to school, then narrowed as girls enrolled; thus, gender gaps got worse before they got better. Fourth, gender gaps rarely persist in countries where boys are attaining high levels of education. Most countries with large, current gender gaps have low levels of male educational attainment. Many also perform poorly on other measures of development such as life expectancy and GDP per capita. Improving girls’ education is an important goal in its own right, but closing gender gaps in education will not be sufficient to close critical gaps in adult life outcomes.

Education in Africa: What Are We Learning? [preprint] - Evans, David; Acosta, Amina Mendez (2020)
Countries across Africa continue to face major challenges in education. In this review, we examine 145 recent empirical studies (from 2014 onward) on how to increase access to and improve the quality of education across the continent, specifically examining how these studies update previous research findings. We find that 64 percent of the studies evaluate government implemented programs, 36 percent include detailed cost analysis, and 35 percent evaluate multiple treatment arms. We identify several areas where new studies provide rigorous evidence on topics that do not figure prominently in earlier evidence syntheses. New evidence shows promising impacts of structured pedagogy interventions (which typically provide a variety of inputs, such as lesson plans and training for teachers together with new materials for students) and of mother tongue instruction interventions, as well as from a range of teacher programs, including both remunerative (pay-for-performance of various designs) and non-remunerative (coaching and certain types of training) programs. School feeding delivers gains in both access and learning. New studies also show long-term positive impacts of eliminating school fees for primary school and positive impacts of eliminating fees in secondary school. Education technology interventions have decidedly mixed impacts, as do school grant programs and programs providing individual learning inputs (e.g., uniforms or textbooks).
Keywords: ⛔ No DOI found

How Big Are Effect Sizes in International Education Studies? - Evans, David K.; Yuan, Fei (Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 2022)
A growing literature measures the impact of education interventions in low- and middle-income countries on both access and learning outcomes. But how should one contextualize the size of impacts? This article provides the distribution of standardized effect sizes on learning and access from 234 studies in low- and middle-income countries. We identify a median effect size of 0.10 standard deviations on learning and 0.07 standard deviations on access among randomized controlled trials. Effect sizes are similar for quasi-experimental studies. Effects are larger and demonstrate higher variance for small-scale studies than for large-scale studies. The distribution of existing effects can help researchers and policymakers to situate new findings within current knowledge and design new studies with sufficient statistical power to identify effects.
Keywords: Final_citation; cited; existing

How Big Are Effect Sizes in International Education Studies? - Evans, David K.; Yuan, Fei (Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 2022)
A growing literature measures the impact of education interventions in low- and middle-income countries on both access and learning outcomes. But how should one contextualize the size of impacts? This article provides the distribution of standardized effect sizes on learning and access from 234 studies in low- and middle-income countries. We identify a median effect size of 0.10 standard deviations on learning and 0.07 standard deviations on access among randomized controlled trials. Effect sizes are similar for quasi-experimental studies. Effects are larger and demonstrate higher variance for small-scale studies than for large-scale studies. The distribution of existing effects can help researchers and policymakers to situate new findings within current knowledge and design new studies with sufficient statistical power to identify effects.

What We Learn about Girls’ Education from Interventions That Do Not Focus on Girls - Evans, David K; Yuan, Fei (The World Bank Economic Review, 2022)
What is the best way to improve access and learning outcomes for girls? This review brings together evidence from 267 educational interventions in 54 low- and middle-income countries – regardless of whether the interventions specifically target girls – and identifies their impacts on girls. To improve access and learning, general interventions deliver average gains for girls that are comparable to girl-targeted interventions. General interventions have similar impacts for girls as for boys. Taken together, these findings suggest that many educational gains for girls may be achieved through nontargeted programs. Many of the most effective interventions to improve access for girls relax household-level constraints (such as cash transfer programs), and many of the most effective interventions to improve learning for girls involve improving the pedagogy of teachers. Girl-targeted interventions may make the most sense when addressing constraints that are unique to, or most pronounced for, girls.

Education in Africa: What Are We Learning? [journal paper] - Evans, David K; Mendez Acosta, Amina (Journal of African Economies, 2021)
Countries across Africa continue to face major challenges in education. In this review, we examine 145 recent empirical studies (from 2014 onward) on how to increase access to and improve the quality of education across the continent, specifically examining how these studies update previous research findings. We find that 64% of the studies evaluate government-implemented programs, 36% include detailed cost analysis and 35% evaluate multiple treatment arms. We identify several areas where new studies provide rigorous evidence on topics that do not figure prominently in earlier evidence syntheses. New evidence shows promising impacts of structured pedagogy interventions (which typically provide a variety of inputs, such as lesson plans and training for teachers together with new materials for students) and of mother tongue instruction interventions, as well as from a range of teacher programs, including both remunerative (pay-for-performance of various designs) and non-remunerative (coaching and certain types of training) programs. School feeding delivers gains in both access and learning. New studies also show long-term positive impacts of eliminating school fees for primary school and positive impacts of eliminating fees in secondary school. Education technology interventions have decidedly mixed impacts, as do school grant programs and programs providing individual learning inputs (e.g., uniforms or textbooks).
Keywords: _genre:LR-literature_review

Education Technology for Effective Teachers - Evans, David K. (2021)

Virtual Teacher Coaching May Not Be the Solution We Hoped For - Evans, David (Center For Global Development, 2020)
How can we help teachers to upgrade their pedagogical skills? Teacher coaching is a promising and increasingly popular candidate. Teacher coaching means teachers receive feedback in their place of work on specific things they can do better, not some general theory of pedagogy that’s completely disconnected from their day-to-day practice.

The influence of mobile technologies on preschool and elementary children’s literacy achievement: a systematic review spanning 2007–2019 - Eutsler, L.; Mitchell, C.; Stamm, B.; Kogut, A. (Educational Technology Research and Development, 2020)
Keywords: __C:filed:1; ⛔ No DOI found

Public-private partnerships for skills development: a governance perspective. Volume II, Case studies. - European Training Foundation. (Publications Office, 2020)
Keywords: Final_citation

The likely impact of COVID-19 on education: reflections based on the existing literature and recent international datasets. - European Commission. Joint Research Centre. (Publications Office, 2020)

Who Needs Global Citizenship Education? A Review of the Literature on Teacher Education - Estellés, Marta; Fischman, Gustavo E. (Journal of Teacher Education, 2021)
Given the seemingly ever-increasing scholarly production about the ideas and ideals of global citizenship education (GCE), it is not surprising those discussions started to gain influence in teacher education (TE) debates. In this study, we examine the discourses that tacitly shape the meanings of GCE within the contemporary academic literature on TE. After analyzing the peer-reviewed scholarship published from 2003 to 2018, we identified patterns in how GCE for TE was described and defended, beyond the differences in their conceptual frameworks. The dominant trend found is to frame GCE as a redemptive educational solution to global problems. This framing requires teachers to embrace a redemptive narrative following a model of rationality based on altruistic, hyperrationalized and overly romanticized ideals. Ultimately, TE literature contributes to the configuration of an excessively naïve discourse that tends to ignore the neoliberal context in which both GCE and TE take place today.
Keywords: civic education discourses; global citizenship education; literature review; teacher education

Supervised Machine Learning Approaches for Predicting Key Pollutants and for the Sustainable Enhancement of Urban Air Quality: A Systematic Review - Essamlali, Ismail; Nhaila, Hasna; Khaïli, Mohamed El (Sustainability, 2024)
Urban air pollution is a pressing global issue driven by factors such as swift urbanization, population expansion, and heightened industrial activities. To address this challenge, the integration of Machine Learning (ML) into smart cities presents a promising avenue. Our article offers comprehensive insights into recent advancements in air quality research, employing the PRISMA method as a cornerstone for the reviewing process, while simultaneously exploring the application of frequently employed ML methodologies. Focusing on supervised learning algorithms, the study meticulously analyzes air quality data, elucidating their unique benefits and challenges. These frequently employed ML techniques, including LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory), RF (Random Forest), ANN (Artificial Neural Networks), and SVR (Support Vector Regression), are instrumental in our quest for cleaner, healthier urban environments. By accurately predicting key pollutants such as particulate matter (PM), nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), and ozone (O3), these methods offer tangible solutions for society. They enable informed decision-making for urban planners and policymakers, leading to proactive, sustainable strategies to combat urban air pollution. As a result, the well-being and health of urban populations are significantly improved. In this revised abstract, the importance of frequently employed ML methods in the context of air quality is explicitly emphasized, underlining their role in improving urban environments and enhancing the well-being of urban populations.
Keywords: openalex:citedBy; openalex:import; selected_for:effects of climate ch...on learning...LMICs 2024; tagged

Learning for all? Second-level education in Ireland during COVID-19 - ESRI; Mohan, Gretta; McCoy, Selina; ESRI; Carroll, Eamonn; ESRI; Mihut, Georgiana; ESRI; Lyons, Seán; ESRI; Mac Domhnaill, Ciarán; ESRI (ESRI, 2020)

School Leaders’ Preferences on School Location in Sierra Leone: An individual and school-level study - Espinoza-Revollo, Patricia; Ramirez, Ana; Atherton, Paul; Mackintosh, Alasdair (EdTech Hub, 2022)
Attracting qualified teachers to remote areas is a challenge in Sierra Leone. The pupil-to-qualified-teacher ratio in rural areas is 76:1, rising to 83:1 for schools located more than 15 km away from urban centres — well above the national target of 40:1. As equitable teacher deployment is crucial to ensure high-quality education, the Teaching Service Commission (TSC) aims to increase the deployment of qualified teachers to the most remote areas of the country. This paper describes a quantitative survey of school leaders’ perceptions of what shapes school location preferences and what factors need to be in place (i.e., incentives) to address the imbalanced distribution of qualified teachers in the country. We used data from a text message survey sent to school leaders around the country. This paper accompanies a qualitative inquiry on the same topic: What Matters Most for Teacher Deployment? A case study on teacher school choice preferences in Sierra Leone. Together with the qualitative study, our findings aim to address a gap in empirical evidence on teacher school preferences in Sierra Leone and contribute to a growing literature on teachers’ preferences in low- and middle-income countries. An output of the EdTech Hub, https://edtechhub.org
Keywords: _C:Sierra Leone SLE; _r:AddedByZotZen

School-to-School Mobility Patterns and Retention Rates of Payroll Teachers in Sierra Leone - Espinoza-Revollo, Patricia; Ali, Yusuf; Garrod, Oliver; Atherton, Paul; Mackintosh, Alasdair; Beoku-Betts, Iman; Haßler, Björn (EdTech Hub, 2023)
This report is one of several on the research project on the Impact of GIS-Supported Teacher Allocation in Sierra Leone. Recent studies from this series have shown that being put on the government payroll can incentivise teachers to relocate to remote areas of the country. There is a concern, however, that being put on the payroll does not necessarily ensure the retention of teachers in these areas and that teachers will soon move to locations they consider more favourable. As there is no data on teacher mobility patterns and schools’ teacher retention rates, policies tend to be based on anecdotal evidence. This paper aims to fill this evidence gap by exploring teachers’ school-to-school mobility trends and retention rates using the Annual School Census (ASC) data from 2015 to 2021. Using data on teachers’ individual characteristics, as well as geospatial location data of each school, the paper explores whether mobility patterns vary by teachers’ gender or qualifications and whether the teaching workforce is urbanising. While studies have looked at teacher retention, this study is the first in a low-income country to use school census data to create a panel dataset to study teachers’ movements and school retention rates over time. Keywords: teacher mobility; teacher retention rates; mobility patterns; teacher deployment; Sierra Leone; education An output of the EdTech Hub https://edtechhub.org

School-to-school mobility patterns and retention rates of payroll teachers in Sierra Leone - Espinoza-Revollo, Patricia; Ali, Yusuf; Garrod, Oliver; Atherton, Paul; Beoku-Betts, Iman; Haßler, Björn (EdTech Hub, 2022)
An output of the EdTech Hub, https://edtechhub.org
Keywords: _C:Sierra Leone SLE; _r:AddedByZotZen

Analyzing the Impact of COVID-19 on Education Professionals. Toward a Paradigm Shift: ICT and Neuroeducation as a Binomial of Action - Espino-Díaz, Luis; Fernandez-Caminero, Gemma; Hernandez-Lloret, Carmen-Maria; Gonzalez-Gonzalez, Hugo; Alvarez-Castillo, Jose-Luis (Sustainability, 2020)
This study analyzed the current situation of education in the context of the pandemic caused by COVID-19. The worldwide health emergency situation has caused the confinement of people and with it, the closure of centers and the transfer of face-to-face education to online education. Faced with these facts, teachers have had to adapt at a dizzying pace not only to new methodological approaches, but also to their own confinement, presenting high levels of stress. The purpose of this study is to offer a proposal that optimizes the work of education professionals in the current context of a pandemic through the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) under the novel approach of the contributions of neuroeducation in the field of managing emotions and motivational processes, contributing to meaningful learning in students. The symbiosis of ICT and neuroeducation can make a great contribution to the paradigm shift that is taking place today.
Keywords: COVID-19; ICT; __C:filed:1; neuroeducation; stress; teachers

Integrated Phase Change Material windcatcher system for hybrid cooling and ventilation in tropical building - Eso, Olamide; Darkwa, Jo; Calautit, John (World Energy Storage Conference, 2022)
This study presents a novel solar fan-assisted multi-directional windcatcher (MDW) with encapsulated phase change material tubes (E-PCMT) for tropical buildings. The ventilation, cooling, and thermal storage performance of the integrated ventilative cooling system is investigated using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Ansys Fluent software under tropical climate conditions. A parametric geometric analysis of three different E-PCMT configurations with melting temperatures at 28oC was conducted to assess the thermal storage performance at different air velocities. The impact of the optimised EPCMT when incorporated inside the air stream of the MDW was further studied. To overcome air flow resistance caused by the obstruction by EPCM-T inside the air streams, the windcatcher airflow is assisted by a wall-mounted axial solar fan that is activated when outdoor air velocity is less than 2m/s. The results based on a typical tropical location showed that the system was able to achieve a consistent and stable air temperature drop of up to 2.64oC over a 4-6-hour. Even at an outdoor air velocity of 1.88m/s, the novel integrated system, in addition to its cooling performance was still able to achieve a supply air velocity rate of 0.16 - 0.57 m/s, meeting the ventilation rates required for indoor comfort.
Keywords: _z:class:countries; _z:class:themes; ⛔ No DOI found

Thermal energy storage enhanced windcatcher system for hybrid cooling and ventilation in buildings - Eso, Olamide (2023)
Keywords: _z:class:countries; _z:class:themes

Rethinking A Framework for Contextualising and Collaborating in MOOCs by Higher Education Institutions in Africa - Erkkie, Haipinge; Kadhila, Ngepathimo (Journal of Learning for Development, 2021)
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are online courses that are open to anyone with Internet access. Pioneered in North America, they were developed for contexts with broader access to technology and wider access to the Internet. As globally networked learning environments (GNLEs), MOOCs foster collaborative communities and learning in ways not conceived as feasible until recently. The affordances of MOOCs, such as the ability to access learning beyond one’s immediacy, exemplify their benefits for open and distance learning, especially in developing countries that continue to consume rather than produce online courses. However, the globality of MOOCs and their delivery mode pose a challenge of contextualising learning content to the local needs of educational institutions or individual students that choose to use the courses. This theoretical paper used a desk-research approach by revising literature to investigate and propose ways of contextualising MOOCs to the African higher education setting. It applied the principles of reuse and repurposing learning content, while suggesting the use of mobile learning as a technological delivery solution that is relevant to the local context. The paper also suggests a framework for inter-institutional collaboration for higher education institutions to guide future efforts in the creation and sharing of credit-bearing MOOCs.
Keywords: MOOCs; Sub-Saharan Africa; connectivism; contextualisation; higher education; online learning; ⛔ No DOI found

A Meta-Analysis of the Effect of Parental Involvement on Students’ Academic Achievement - Erdem, Cahit; Kaya, Metin (Journal of Learning for Development, 2020)
This study aims to examine the effect of parental involvement on students’ academic achievement at pre-school, elementary and secondary levels by using the meta-analysis method with respect to home-based and school-based parental involvement strategies. Data consisted of 55 independent research studies in English published between 2010 and 2019, and accessed through ERIC, Academic Search Complete, Science Direct, Wiley Online Library, and PsycNet databases. Findings revealed that the effect of parental involvement on academic achievement was positive but small. Parental expectations had the biggest effect on academic achievement and parental control had a negative and small effect. The mean effect of parental involvement on students’ academic achievement does not differ significantly according to moderator variables of education level, measurement type or measurement area but differs by developmental level of the country. The results are discussed using available related meta-analysis studies in the literature.
Keywords: academic achievement; developing countries; education level; meta-analysis; parental involvement; ⛔ No DOI found

An Assessment of the Transition to Virtual Learning in the OECS - Emmanuel, Royston; Anthony, Germain (2020)
This assessment of the transition to Virtual Learning in the OECS is an initial step of a series of programmed activities that will help strengthen both the capacity and resilience of education systems in the region, particularly with respect to Online Learning. The context described here outlines some of the major challenges associated with regional efforts to successfully integrate ICTs in education. There appears to be consensus that Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) can well support ambitions for improving equity of access to education, the quality and the relevance of education. What this assessment reveals, is that there is wide disparity in the region with respect to approaches to adopting and adapting to VLEs.

School bus routing problem: Contemporary trends and research directions - Ellegood, William A.; Solomon, Stanislaus; North, Jeremy; Campbell, James F. (Omega, 2020)
The school bus routing problem (SBRP) is a challenging operations research problem that has been studied by researchers for almost 50 years. SBRP publications address one or more operational sub-problems, including: bus stop selection, bus route generation, bus route scheduling, school bell time adjustment, and strategic transportation policy issues. This paper reviews 64 new SBRP research publications and analyzes them by sub-problem type, problem characteristics and solution approach. The impact of key SBRP characteristics (number of schools, mixed load, fleet mix, service environment, objective and constraints) are discussed and the different solution approaches to the SBRP are summarized by sub-problem type and methodology. We found in recent years, SBRP researchers are examining more complex real-world problem settings, adopting both evolutionary-based and trajectory-based metaheuristic solution approaches, and considering ridership and travel time uncertainty. This review documents recent trends in SBRP research and highlights research gaps and promising opportunities for future SBRP research.

Elimu Scholarship Programme 2021 - Elimu Centre (Elimu Centre, 2020)
Elimu scholarship programme is sponsored by Kenya government, Equity Bank and World Bank. The programme benefits students from poor background

Achieving Net Zero within the NHS: System-wide transition to greener, sustainable care - Eldridge-Thomas, B.; Carden, S.; Bücker, C.; Davies, B.; Ajadi, S.B.; Coffey, C.; Fauconberg, A. (2021)

KS-TVET Life Skills Course: Process Report - El-Serafy, Yomna; Macharia, Grace; Klune, Christopher (Open Development & Education, 2023)
An output of the Open Development & Education, https://opendeved.net/

KS-TVET Life Skills Course: Process Report - El-Serafy, Yomna; Macharia, Grace; Klune, Christopher (Open Development & Education, 2023)
An output of the Open Development & Education, https://opendeved.net/
Keywords: _comingsoon; _r:AddedByMyEducationEvidence

KS-TVET Life Skills Course: Needs Analysis Report - El-Serafy, Yomna; Klune, Christopher (Open Development & Education, 2023)
An output of the Open Development & Education, https://.opendeved.net/
Keywords: _comingsoon; _r:AddedByMyEducationEvidence

KS-TVET Life Skills Course Progress Report - El-Serafy, Yomna; Klune, Christopher (Open Development & Education, 2023)
An output of the Open Development & Education, https://.opendeved.net/

KS-TVET Life Skills Course Progress Report - El-Serafy, Yomna; Klune, Christopher (Open Development & Education, 2023)
An output of the Open Development & Education, https://.opendeved.net/
Keywords: _comingsoon; _r:AddedByMyEducationEvidence

KS-TVET Life Skills Course: Validation Report - El-Serafy, Yomna; Klune, Christopher (Open Development & Education, 2023)
An output of the Open Development & Education, https://.opendeved.net/

KS-TVET Life Skills Course: Validation Report - El-Serafy, Yomna; Klune, Christopher (Open Development & Education, 2023)
An output of the Open Development & Education, https://.opendeved.net/
Keywords: _comingsoon; _r:AddedByMyEducationEvidence

Strategy for Tanzania — Focus Area: TCPD in primary schools - El-Serafy, Yomna; Khalayleh, Abdullah; Carter, Alice; Haßler, Björn; Proctor, Jamie; Adam, Taskeen (EdTech Hub, 2021)
Keywords: Author:OpenDevEd

The effectiveness of technology-supported teacher professional learning communities in emergency settings. Future-Proofing Teacher Education: Voices from South Africa and Beyond - El-Serafy, Yomna; Adam, Taskeen; Haßler, Björn (Future-Proofing Teacher Education: Voices from South Africa and Beyond, 2022)
Keywords: Author:OpenDevEd; _forthcoming

A portrait of hope: Experiences of a visually-impaired refugee with education in Lebanon - El-Serafy, Yomna (University of Cambridge, 2020)
Keywords: Author:OpenDevEd

Human Firewall: Cyber Awareness using WhatApp AI Chatbot - El Hajal, Georges; Daou, Roy Abi Zeid; Ducq, Yves (IEEE, 2021)

National Tutoring Programme: Nimble RCTs - EEF (EEF, 2021)
The EEF is an independent charity dedicated to breaking the link between family income and educational achievement.
Keywords: Final_citation; cited; existing

Interplay between Literacy and Health Services Access: The Case of Elderly Exemption Beneficiaries in Tanzania - Edward, Joshua (Journal of Learning for Development, 2021)
Over the last two decades research has indicated an unpleasant experience for the elderly with exemptions. An important question for this paper is whether the unpleasant exempted experience for the elderly in accessing health services is linked to illiteracy. Since illiteracy can affect how services are used and its results, the answer to this paper’s question could affect how health services are accessed and their associated outcomes. Policy implementors are operating without a solid knowledge of this relationship. The study used a mixed methods approach. Purposive random sampling was applied to select  879 elderly and was guided by research assistants in filling in the questionnaires. Also, purposive sampling was used to recruit 23 key informants. Results indicates a significant relationship between illiteracy and selected indicators of health service access: awareness, acceptability and adequacy. This paper argues for more training opportunities through non-formal programs among adults and communication capacity building among health providers based on the results of implementing the elderly exemption policy in Ubungo and Mbarali districts in Tanzania.
Keywords: exemption policy; health services access and elderly; literacy; ⛔ No DOI found

Innovative Education Workforce Analysis for More Equitable Education: Sierra Leone - Education Workforce Initiative (Education Commission, 2020)
Keywords: _C:Sierra Leone SLE

EEF Evidence Database Coding Guide – Effect Size Data Extraction - Education Endowment Foundation; Durham University (2022)
Keywords: _yt:b

EEF Evidence Database Coding Guide – Main Data Extraction - Education Endowment Foundation; Durham University (2022)
Keywords: _yt:a

Early Years Toolkit - Education Endowment Foundation (2021)
An accessible summary of educational research for early years teaching

Education Workforce Initiative: Sierra Leone - Education Commission (2020)

Innovative Education Workforce Analysis for More Equitable Education: Sierra Leone - Education Commission (Education Workforce Initiative, 2020)

Standards - EdTech Tulna - EdTech Tulna (2021)
The EdTech Tulna standards define a set of expectations for the design of EdTech products

Knowledge Pack : Digital Teaching and Learning - , EdTech Team (World Bank, 2022)

The Impact of GIS-Supported Teacher Allocation in Sierra Leone - EdTech Hub; Education Commission; Fab Inc. (EdTech Hub, 2022)
Keywords: _C:Sierra Leone SLE

Curated Tools for Teacher Continuous Professional Development - EdTech Hub (EdTech Hub, 2021)
EdTech Hub has created curated lists of teacher professional development (TPD) tools along with evidenced-based advice on how to effectively use them. Because, of course, it’s not only which tool you choose, but how you use it that will determine whether it will lead to better teaching and learning.

How the Government of Sierra Leone is improving its Education Data Hub - EdTech Hub (EdTech Hub, 2020)
Sierra Leone’s Education Data Hub, is designed to make school-level data more useful in decision making. Nine months into its launch, MBSSE and DSTI were keen to understand who was using the Data Hub, the kinds of decisions it informed, and where improvements were needed to ensure that non-technical users, including policymakers, teachers, parents, and […]
Keywords: _C:Sierra Leone SLE; _DOILIVE; _EdTechHub_Output; _zenodoETH

Sandbox Handbook V.2.0 - EdTech Hub (EdTech Hub, 2022)
Keywords: Final_citation; cited; existing

Sandbox Handbook V.2.0 - EdTech Hub (EdTech Hub, 2022)

The Impact of a Tech-Supported, School-Based TPD Model on Learning Outcomes in Tanzania - EdTech Hub (EdTech Hub, 2022)
The Impact of a Tech-Supported, School-Based TPD Model on Learning Outcomes in Tanzania In partnership with Aga Khan University and Tanzania Institute of Education Country: Tanzania | Topic Area: Teacher Continuous Professional Development (TCPD) Project summary The study researches effective and cost-effective sustainable, technology-supported, decentralised, and school-based Teacher Continuous Professional Development (TCPD) models to improve learning outcomes in rural primary…

Government of St Lucia deprives 8,000 students ‘one-laptop-per child programme’ - Editorma (Caribbean News Global, 2020)

How much can we remedy very low learning levels in rural parts of low-income countries? Impact and generalizability of a multi-pronged para-teacher intervention from a cluster-randomized trial in The Gambia - Eble, Alex; Frost, Chris; Camara, Alpha; Bouy, Baboucarr; Bah, Momodou; Sivaraman, Maitri; Hsieh, Pei-Tseng Jenny; Jayanty, Chitra; Brady, Tony; Gawron, Piotr (Journal of Development Economics, 2021)

Online initial teacher education: a systematic review of the literature - Dyment, Janet E.; Downing, Jillian Jane (Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 2020)
This paper presents a systematic review of the literature on online initial teacher education. This review is timely given the growing numbers of online students studying teacher education in Australia and beyond. The paper begins with a presentation of the search protocol including search terms, databases, and inclusion/exclusion criteria that resulted in 492 refereed articles being included in the review. Analysis of title and abstract of these articles allowed insight into a variety of factors and trends, including journal of publication, year of publication, research approach, and key focal areas. Two well-established research focal areas emerged: technological pedagogical innovations and student experiences of studying teacher education online. Two emerging research focal areas were teacher educator experiences of teaching online and online teacher education in traditionally experiential specialisations, such as drama and outdoor education. When all the articles are considered holistically, a fragmented and siloed research approach is revealed, evidenced by a large number of journals publishing articles on multiple focal areas, leading to considerable repetition among the evidences presented across the articles. As such, this paper highlights the need for a more coherent and organised approach to research in online teacher education and its dissemination to all stakeholders.
Keywords: Online; blended; initial teacher education; pre-service; systematic review; teacher education

Lessons Learned from Online PLCs of Rural STEM Teachers - Durr, Tony; Kampmann, Jennifer; Hales, Patrick; Browning, Larry (The Rural Educator, 2020)
This exploratory study of a Title II grant funded project analyzed the design and delivery of online professional learning communities (PLC) for rural STEM teachers. This research identified the frequency a video posting, the type of videos posted, and the style of reflection questions, as critical aspects to the engagement to participating teachers. Additionally, teachers showed an increase in teacher efficacy as a result of being part of the online PLCs and they indicated strong enjoyment and value in participation of the program.

Co-design for a Competency Self-assessment Chatbot and Survey in Science Education - Durall, Eva; Kapros, Evangelos (Springer International Publishing, 2020)
This paper describes a co-design process for a formative assessment tool in the area of core competencies such as creativity, communication, collaboration, and critical thinking. This process has been carried out in the context of non-formal science education institutions in 19 countries in Europe and the Middle East. The results of the co-design have been influential in the design of a formative assessment chatbot and survey that supports learner competency and self-regulation. We also discuss some preliminary results from the use of the tool and introduce additional considerations with regard to inclusion, technical aspects, and ethics, towards a set of best practices in this area.
Keywords: Chatbots; Co-design; Competencies

The Ivory Tower Lost: How College Students Respond Differently than the General Public to the COVID-19 Pandemic - Duong, Viet; Pham, Phu; Yang, Tongyu; Wang, Yu; Luo, Jiebo (arXiv:2004.09968 [cs], 2020)
Recently, the pandemic of the novel Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) has presented governments with ultimate challenges. In the United States, the country with the highest confirmed COVID-19 infection cases, a nationwide social distancing protocol has been implemented by the President. For the first time in a hundred years since the 1918 flu pandemic, the US population is mandated to stay in their households and avoid public contact. As a result, the majority of public venues and services have ceased their operations. Following the closure of the University of Washington on March 7th, more than a thousand colleges and universities in the United States have cancelled in-person classes and campus activities, impacting millions of students. This paper aims to discover the social implications of this unprecedented disruption in our interactive society regarding both the general public and higher education populations by mining people's opinions on social media. We discover several topics embedded in a large number of COVID-19 tweets that represent the most central issues related to the pandemic, which are of great concerns for both college students and the general public. Moreover, we find significant differences between these two groups of Twitter users with respect to the sentiments they expressed towards the COVID-19 issues. To our best knowledge, this is the first social media-based study which focuses on the college student community's demographics and responses to prevalent social issues during a major crisis.
Keywords: Computer Science - Computation and Language; Computer Science - Machine Learning; Computer Science - Social and Information Networks; __C:filed:1; ⛔ No DOI found

A literature review of emotional intelligence and nursing education - Dugué, Manon; Sirost, Olivier; Dosseville, Fabrice (Nurse Education in Practice, 2021)
Aim The purpose of this study is to investigate the current state of knowledge about emotional intelligence (EI) in nursing education Background Human relationships and emotions are an integral part of nursing care and contribute to care quality. This part of the profession must be addressed in nursing education to prepare students and deal with their emotions and the patients’s. Research on emotional intelligence (EI) in nursing has been particularly developed recently. A broad understanding of many benefits of EI is crucial to include EI in this training program. Design Systematic literature review Methods Undertaken using electronic database (Cairn; PubMed; Science Direct; Wiley online library) and specific search terms. This research covered articles published in English and French between 2007 and 2021. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis guidelines (PRISMA) directed the systematic review process. Results 57 articles are included in this systematic review. The literature focuses on EI and nursing education. The findings categorized into four themes: EI and performances; EI and Physical and mental health; EI and Social Relationship; and EI program. Conclusions This literature review reveals that EI has many benefits in nursing students. Several training programs aimed at developing this concept have proven to be effective in nursing education. We believe that a synthesis of this knowledge will then allow us to better understand the benefits of EI for a further implementation in nursing education. Perspectives and recommendations will also be formulated to enable the implementation of emotional skill development programs in such training.
Keywords: Emotional intelligence; Health; Nursing education; Performances; Social relationships; Training

Indoor Conditions in Educational Buildings: the Case of Bolzano Schools - Dugaria, S.; Pernigotto, G.; Gasparella, A. (2021)
Keywords: BE:RELEVANT; ⛔ No DOI found

Experimental Evidence on Alternative Policies to Increase Learning at Scale - Duflo, Annie; Kiessel, Jessica; Lucas, Adrienne (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2021)
Keywords: C:Ghana; _C:Ghana GHA

External Validity: Four Models of Improving Student Achievement - Duflo, Annie; Kiessel, Jessica; Lucas, Adrienne (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2020)
Randomized controlled trials in lower-income countries have demonstrated ways to increase learning, in speciﬁc settings. This study uses a large-scale, nationwide RCT in Ghana to show the external validity of four school-based interventions inspired by other RCTs. Even though the government implemented the programs within existing systems, student learning increased across all four models, more so for female than male students, and many gains persisted one year after the program ended. Three of the four interventions had a similar cost eﬀectiveness. The intervention that directly targeted classroom teachers increased the likelihood that teachers were engaged with students.
Keywords: C:Ghana; __C:filed:1

The Art of Feature Engineering: Essentials for Machine Learning - Duboue, P.; Eisenstein, J. (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

Promising practices for equitable remote learning Emerging lessons from COVID-19 education responses in 127 countries - Dreesen, Thomas; Akseer, Spogmai; Brossard, Mathieu; Dewan, Pragya; Giraldo, Juan-Pablo; Kamei, Akito; Mizunoya, Suguru; Correa, Javier Santiago Ortiz (2020)

Critical understandings of digital technology in education meta-connective pedagogy - Dreamson, Neal (2021)

ChatGPT Pricing: How Much Does ChatGPT Cost? - Drapkin, Aaron (Tech.co, 2023)
ChatGPT has lots of different plans, models and services. But how much do they actually cost? We take a closer look.

The outcomes of sexting for children and adolescents: A systematic review of the literature - Doyle, Caoimhe (Journal of Adolescence, 2021)
Introduction Given associated risks, sexting among children and adolescents has yielded significant interest in recent years. Several previous reviews have examined data on the prevalence, determinants, and correlates of sexting behaviour, however, in an ever-changing digital media context, a comprehensive overview of findings regarding its outcomes is warranted. This novel review aimed to systematically identify and conduct a narrative synthesis of empirical evidence regarding the outcomes of sexting involvement for children and adolescents. Methods Four databases were searched for peer-reviewed literature on sexting, and 54 articles were identified for inclusion in the review. The quality of included studies was appraised using Dixon-Woods et al. (2006) five question prompts. Results Four ‘outcomes’ categories were derived, namely, psychological (victimisation; sexual abuse/victimisation; mental health and quality of life; and emotional outcomes), behavioural (sexual activity, risk behaviours, and perpetration of abuse and harassment), relational (personal connections with others & reputational outcomes), and systems-level (distribution/public exposure of sexting content). Conclusions Findings indicate that the outcomes of sexting for children and adolescents (aged ≤19 years) are wide-ranging, some positive and desirable, others negative and unwanted. Furthermore, identified outcomes were located along a continuum spanning benefits for adolescents’ well-being and relationships, stigma and associated difficulties, and serious harm or trauma. Limitations (e.g., methodological constraints of studies) and implications (e.g., informing harm prevention/intervention initiatives; further large-scale and replication studies) are discussed within.
Keywords: Adolescents; Children; Cybersex; Final_citation; Review; Sexting; anystyle; existing

Why Publish a Systematic Review: An Editor’s and Reader’s Perspective - Dowd, Alicia C.; Johnson, Royel M. (Systematic Reviews in Educational Research: Methodology, Perspectives and Application, 2020)
Systematic reviews provide more than just a summary of the research literature related to a particular topic or question--rather they offer clear and compelling answers to questions related to the ”who,” "why," and "when" of studies. In this chapter, the authors draw on their experiences with systematic reviews—one as an editor of a highly regarded educational research journal, the other as a researcher and review author—to trace the growing popularity of systematic reviews in education literature and to pose a series of challenges to aspiring review authors to motivate and enliven their work. In particular, the authors stress the importance of melding scientific and rigorous review procedures with 'stylish' academic writing that engages its audience through effective storytelling, attention to context (the people, places, policies, and practices represented in the studies under review), and clear implications for research and practice.

Mitigating the wider health effects of covid-19 pandemic response - Douglas, Margaret; Katikireddi, Srinivasa Vittal; Taulbut, Martin; McKee, Martin; McCartney, Gerry (BMJ, 2020)
Keywords: __C:filed:1

A Topic is Not a Theme: Towards a Contextualised Approach to Topic Modelling - Doogan, Caitlin (Monash University, 2022)

Learning Development’s Role in Supporting Academic Synergies through Co-evolution of Teaching Excellence and Practice - Donnelly, Roisin (Journal of Learning for Development, 2021)
This report from the field discusses a new approach taken to the co-evolution of teaching excellence and evidence-based practice in the context of Learning Development in a Technological University in Ireland. It explores supporting faculty in their exploration of pedagogic inquiry and teaching excellence and how this can co-evolve to generate synergies in academic productivity (the core activity sets of the faculty). A key part of this Learning Development work is understanding how integrating inquiry and teaching can drive excellence and pedagogic innovation in practice.
Keywords: co-evolution; pedagogic inquiry; scholarship; teaching excellence; ⛔ No DOI found

Unintended consequences of English school stock energy-efficient retrofit on cognitive performance of children under climate change - Dong, J.; Schwartz, Y.; Korolija, I.; Mumovic, D. (Building and Environment, 2024)
School building stock retrofit forms a key part of UK’s commitment to net-zero carbon target by 2050. However, with a changing climate, the retrofit of school buildings may have unintended consequences on classroom thermal environments and cognitive performance of children in non-heating seasons. This paper aims to quantify the impact of school stock retrofit in accordance with increasingly tightening energy efficiency regulatory requirements on cognitive performance of English children, while also exploring the potential adaptation measures under climate change. The results indicate that English schools that undergo envelope insulation exhibit higher Cognitive Performance Loss (CPL) of children compared to their original conditions. Passive climate adaptation measures, especially increased daytime ventilation rate was found to be an effective strategy for mitigating the impact of climate change on cognitive performance. However, the benefits of passive measures will diminish as the climate warms, while air conditioning will be required to maintain cognitive performance loss at relatively low levels. In addition to the reduction of heating load, envelope insulation can provide benefits for English schools in cooler climatic regions from both cognitive performance and energy point of view. The study calls for the CPL to be added as one of the key performance indicators when considering the long-term impact of climate change on schools. This would enable policy makers and relevant stakeholders to make more holistic decisions regarding school stock retrofit while ensuring that classrooms are conducive to learning.
Keywords: _z:class:countries

Revisiting Brainstorming within an Educational Context: A Meta-Thematic Analysis - Doğan, Yunus; Batdı, Veli (Journal of Learning for Development, 2021)
An increase in research on teaching of creativity in learning environments is being witnessed as more studies continue to reveal its effects on learning outcomes and academic achievement. Thus, any investigative attempt to examine the relevant approaches to teaching of creative thinking skills is appreciated within the creativity literature. However, it is evident that the research on brainstorming as a creativity-promoting technique within educational context has been overlooked for a while. Therefore, this research sythesis tried to recombine and reinterpret the results of some qualitative studies on the impacts of brainstorming technique on learners’ achievement. To this end, 34 studies were reached and 7 of them were found to be conducive to the meta-thematic analysis. The results of the meta-thematic analysis suggest that the brainstorming technique has positive effects on learners’ cognitive skills and affect. It is believed that designing instruction with brainstorming could foster students’ creativity, by directing them to solving problems via critical thinking. The study further dwells on the reported drawbacks that are encountered during the implementation of this technique within classroom, and discusses some possible solutions as implications.
Keywords: academic achievement; brainstorming; creativity; meta-thematic analysis; thinking skills; ⛔ No DOI found

DSTI | Home - Directorate of Science, Technology & Innovation (Sierra Leone) (2020)

Scientists at DSTI go the extra mile to make it easier for children to get to school - Directorate of Science, Technology & Innovation (Sierra Leone) (2020)
Mike Fabrikant, a software developer from Washington D.C., is embedded within the data science team at the Directorate of Science, Technology, and Innovation (DSTI) to support systems delivery. His workRead More

Principles for Digital Development - Digital Impact Alliance (Principles for Digital Development, 2021)
Resources & Expertise for the Digital Principles
Keywords: ___duplicate_item; auto_merged

Child Rights Impact Assessment - A tool to realise children’s rights in the digital environment - Digital Futures Commission (2021)
Keywords: Final_citation

Strengthening the Governance of Skills Systems: Lessons from Six OECD Countries - Di Maio, Gina; Seitzl, Lina; Unterweger, Daniel Franz (2020)
Keywords: Final_citation; ⛔ No DOI found

Role of artificial intelligence in operations environment: a review and bibliometric analysis - Dhamija, Pavitra; Bag, Surajit (The TQM Journal, 2020)

Social protection responses to the COVID-19 lockdown in South Africa - Devereux, Stephen (The Conversation, 2020)
Several groups of people are at high risk of hardship, especially those who have effectively become unemployed because of the lockdown.

Calculating the Educational Impact of COVID-19: Closed Schools, Lost learning, Unequal Impact | SharEd - DeStefano, Joe (2020)

A review of research on teacher competencies in higher education - Dervenis, Charalampos; Fitsilis, Panos; Iatrellis, Omiros (Quality Assurance in Education, 2022)
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to thoroughly assemble, analyze and synthesize previous research to investigate and identify teaching staff competencies derived from the roles and tasks attributed to university professors. Design/methodology/approach In this literature review, the authors looked at both the conceptual framework exploring the educational concepts and the learning theories focusing on teaching staff roles and competencies in higher education. Thirty-nine scientific papers were studied in detail from a total of 102 results, which were eligible based on the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses statement. Findings A multi-dimensional approach to teacher competencies in higher education was proposed, which consists of six main dimensions with their respective characteristics. Thirty-two discrete teaching staff competencies were identified and distributed in the aforementioned dimensions. The research revealed that specific competencies, such as the digital competence of teachers, which have lately become of high importance worldwide due to the COVID-19 pandemic implications, surprisingly, until recently, they were considered secondary in the educational process. Research limitations/implications The study was based on the existing literature without using data drawn from an appropriate questionnaire addressed to students and/or interviews with academics. In addition, in an effort to maintain a homogeneous base of teacher competencies, inclusion of domains of expertise was avoided. Further research should focus on designing and developing a holistic model using analytical learning approaches that will contribute to the assessment of teachers’ competencies and explore the relationship of these competencies to students’ academic achievement, contributing quality to higher education. Practical implications A specific framework of teacher competencies in higher education, in practice, can be a useful reference point not only for ensuring quality in the selection of teachers and their career-long professional development but also for national education policy strategies. The definition of teacher competencies framework contributes to facilitating effective dialogue for the evaluation and quality assurance in education between agencies, authorities, researchers, teachers, policymakers, education managers and different communities at large. Social implications These competencies are at the heart not only of the teaching and learning process but also in the workplace and in society in general and are increasingly recognized as essential. An adequately prepared community and management equipped with the required employee competencies is able to react immediately and in a positive way to any obstacle, yielding optimal results. Originality/value This is the first review, to the authors’ knowledge, to comprehensively explore the literature to identify, classify and rank the teaching staff competencies in higher education, revealing the gap between perceived and actual importance of various competencies.
Keywords: Competencies; Higher education; Quality education; Skills; Teacher effectiveness; Teacher quality

2020 Draft Framework for Curriculum Recovery Post COVID-19 - Department of Basic Education (Department of Basic Education, South Africa, 2020)

Covid-19 Practice in Primary Schools in Ireland Report: A Two-month Follow-up - Dempsey, Majella; Burke, Jolanta (2020)
This research report looks at leadership and wellbeing in Primary Schools two months after the COVID-19 school closures, in total 939 leaders completed the survey. It follows a previous report on practice in Primary Schools two weeks after school closures (Burke and Dempsey, 2020). It reports on the changes in communication, concerns and wellbeing from week two to month two after the COVID-19 school closure; the wellbeing of school leaders in the middle of the COVID-19 school closure; and, investigates the intricacies in wellbeing between teaching and administrative principals, given that their daily duties differ significantly. Quantitative data was analysed using SPSS, and qualitative data was analysed using MAXQDA. It found that principals are adapting to the impact of the pandemic, both professionally and personally, however there have been significant challenges noted. It was noted that social wellbeing is the biggest challenge for principals, however seven out of 10 principals have taken specific actions to address this challenge during the lockdown. Lack of time was an issue for those principals who have not taken positive action regarding their wellbeing, with some fulfilling multiple professional and personal roles. While there have been challenges associated with the adaptation and implementation of new online practices, and some schools lack technology, there has been a positive move to online learning.

From the Field: Education Research During a Pandemic - DeMatthews, David; Knight, David; Reyes, Pedro; Benedict, Amber; Callahan, Rebecca (Educational Researcher, 2020)
Education researchers have been impacted by COVID-19 as school closures interrupted ongoing education research, including clinical trials, case study and ethnographic inquiry in schools, and longitudinal studies using federal, state, or district administrative data. The recommendations we present here focus on immediate and future actions education researchers can take to support public health and educational institutions dealing with a pandemic. Clearly not exhaustive, our recommendations are intended to prompt the education research community to collectively consider how the field’s efforts can both inform the knowledge base and support frontline educators and health care researchers dealing with COVID-19.
Keywords: __C:filed:1

Predicting and resolving non-completion in higher (online) education – A literature review - Delnoij, Laurie E. C.; Dirkx, Kim J. H.; Janssen, José P. W.; Martens, Rob L. (Educational Research Review, 2020)
Non-completion in higher education is a persistent problem and even worse of a problem in higher online education. Although there is a lot of research on predictors of non-completion, less is known about what interventions resolve the non-completion problem and to what extent these interventions focus on relevant predictors of non-completion. To close that gap, the literature was systematically reviewed with a twofold aim: 1. Identify modifiable predictors of non-completion in higher (online) education 2. Investigate characteristics of effective interventions to reduce non-completion in higher (online) education. Results showed that study- or learning strategies, academic self-efficacy, (academic) goals and intentions, institutional or college adjustment, employment, supportive network, and faculty-student interaction are modifiable consistent predictors of non-completion. Coaching, remedial teaching, and peer mentoring are promising interventions to resolve the problem of non-completion in higher education. Interventions aimed at increasing completion rates are limited in targeting relevant modifiable predictors of non-completion.
Keywords: Higher education; Intervention; Non-completion; Predictors; Review

Working From Home Under COVID-19: Who Is Affected? Evidence From Latin American and Caribbean Countries - Delaporte, Isaure; Pena, Werner (Social Science Research Network, 2020)
Millions of individuals are required to work from home as part of national efforts to fight COVID-19. To evaluate the employment impact of the pandemic, an important point is whether individuals are able to work from home. This paper estimates the share of jobs that can be performed at home in 23 Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries as well as examines the workers' characteristics associated with such jobs. To carry out this analysis, this paper uses rich harmonised household surveys and presents two measures of teleworkability. The first measure of the feasibility of working from home is borrowed from Dingel and Neiman (2020), while the second closely follows the methodology of Saltiel (2020). We use the second measure as our benchmark, as it is based on a more representative task content of occupations for LAC countries. We find that the share of individuals who are able to work from home varies from 7% in Guatemala to 16% in the Bahamas. We document considerable variation in the potential to work from home across occupations, industries, regions and workers' socioeconomic characteristics. Our results show that some individuals are better positioned to cope with the current situation than others. This highlights the need to assist the most vulnerable workers in the context of the global pandemic.
Keywords: COVID-19; Demographics; Employment; Teleworking

Framing the News:From Human Perception to Large Language Model Inferences - del Barrio, David Alonso; Gatica-Perez, Daniel (2023)
Identifying the frames of news is important to understand the articles' vision, intention, message to be conveyed, and which aspects of the news are emphasized. Framing is a widely studied concept in journalism, and has emerged as a new topic in computing, with the potential to automate processes and facilitate the work of journalism professionals. In this paper, we study this issue with articles related to the Covid-19 anti-vaccine movement. First, to understand the perspectives used to treat this theme, we developed a protocol for human labeling of frames for 1786 headlines of No-Vax movement articles of European newspapers from 5 countries. Headlines are key units in the written press, and worth of analysis as many people only read headlines (or use them to guide their decision for further reading.) Second, considering advances in Natural Language Processing (NLP) with large language models, we investigated two approaches for frame inference of news headlines: first with a GPT-3.5 fine-tuning approach, and second with GPT-3.5 prompt-engineering. Our work contributes to the study and analysis of the performance that these models have to facilitate journalistic tasks like classification of frames, while understanding whether the models are able to replicate human perception in the identification of these frames.
Keywords: Computer Science - Computation and Language; Computer Science - Human-Computer Interaction

Guidance Note on Qualitative Research in Education: Considerations for Best Practice - DeJaeghere, J; Morrow, V; Richardson, D; Schowengerdt, B; Hinton, R; Muñoz Boudet, A (Department for International Development, prepared for Building Evidence in Education (BE2), 2020)
This guidance note presents examples of qualitative research on education, privileging those from low and middle-income countries when available; however, the content of the note is not exclusive to research in one sector or income level, and the main principles and processes outlined apply across research topics and locations. The research examples provided in this note meet the criteria for strong evidence and present evidence-based guidance based on qualitative research. These studies included at minimum: a solid explanation of the study purpose and the methodology used; a detailed account of the data collection process, including sampling and/or selection of participants; an explanation of the analysis process and how data were analyzed to arrive at findings; and findings that are supported by a detailed description of data.

Evaluation of Rural Public Libraries to Address Telemedicine Inequities - DeGuzman, Pamela B.; Siegfried, Zack C.; Leimkuhler, Megan E. (medRxiv, 2020)
Keywords: _C:United States USA; __C:filed:1; __C:scheme:1; ⛔ No DOI found

COVID-19's spring 2020 school closures: The effect on teacher candidates - DeFeo, Dayna; Tran, Trang (Institute of Social and Economic Research, 2020)
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Dunleavy mandated that Alaska’s K12 schools closed to in-person instruction; later, these school closures were extended until the end of the 2019-2020 academic year. Across the state, educators worked not only to ensure they met their responsibilities for instruction, but also other key school functions including parent resources, meal services, and social-emotional learning. Concurrently, senior college students in teacher licensure programs at the University of Alaska (UA) were in classrooms fulfilling their clinical experience (student teaching) requirements. During the school closures, students were still “placed” in schools, but the nature of their internship experience changed fundamentally as classes were moved to distance delivery. On March 20, Alaska’s Education Commissioner Michael Johnson announced that the state of Alaska would grant emergency certification to teachers who were unable to complete the required number of clinical placement hours due to COVID-19 school closures. Many of these new graduates will qualify for licensure, but how will the pandemic affect them as they become teachers? In this paper, we explore how teacher candidates perceive their readiness for teaching in the fall, and their career intentions. By comparing survey responses collected from spring 2020 graduates against graduates of spring 2019 (the students who had a “typical” student teaching experience), we find that the 2020 graduating class feels ready for the classroom. However, these new teachers – and those hired from teacher education programs (TEPs) outside of Alaska – will need supports as they transition to teaching.

An investigation of using a tablet computer for searching on the web and the influence of cognitive load - Debue, Nicolas; Ou, Nora; van de Leemput, Cécile (Tutorials in Quantitative Methods for Psychology, 2020)
Keywords: __C:filed:1

The Reach of the COVID-19 Crisis in Rwanda: Lessons from the RECOVR Survey - Debenedetti, Luciana; Kirke-Smith, Doug; Habarimana Mfura, Jean Leodomir (Innovations for Poverty Action, 2020)
During the COVID-19 pandemic, countries have worked to reduce prevalence as well as to mitigate the socioeconomic impact of lockdown and other measures that have slowed down economic activity. To better understand the impact of the crisis on the Rwandan population, IPA ran the first round of our RECOVR survey in Rwanda from June 4-12. Similar to our approach in other RECOVR countries, we surveyed 1,482 respondents on a number of health, economic, and education outcomes by randomly dialing phone numbers in a sample that is representative of the set of active mobile phone numbers held by adults in Rwanda. A large portion of our respondents live in Kigali, the average age of the sample is 30, and 37 percent of respondents are female.This blog post summarizes the key findings and their policy implications. More information about the RECOVR survey, a cross-country panel survey that is tracking the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19 over time in nine countries, is available here.

Cryptocurrencies on the road to sustainability: Ethereum paving the way for Bitcoin - De Vries, Alex (Patterns, 2023)
Keywords: _yl:b

The growing energy footprint of artificial intelligence - De Vries, Alex (Joule, 2023)
Keywords: _yl:a

AI Insights: A Case Study on Utilizing ChatGPT Intelligence for Research Paper Analysis - De Silva, Anjalee; Wijekoon, Janaka L.; Liyanarachchi, Rashini; Panchendrarajan, Rrubaa; Rajapaksha, Weranga (arXiv, 2024)
This paper discusses the effectiveness of leveraging Chatbot: Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT) versions 3.5 and 4 for analyzing research papers for effective writing of scientific literature surveys. The study selected the Application of Artificial Intelligence in Breast Cancer Treatment as the research topic. Research papers related to this topic were collected from three major publication databases Google Scholar, Pubmed, and Scopus. ChatGPT models were used to identify the category, scope, and relevant information from the research papers for automatic identification of relevant papers related to Breast Cancer Treatment (BCT), organization of papers according to scope, and identification of key information for survey paper writing. Evaluations performed using ground truth data annotated using subject experts reveal, that GPT-4 achieves 77.3% accuracy in identifying the research paper categories and 50% of the papers were correctly identified by GPT-4 for their scopes. Further, the results demonstrate that GPT-4 can generate reasons for its decisions with an average of 27% new words, and 67% of the reasons given by the model were completely agreeable to the subject experts.
Keywords: Computer Science - Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence to automate the systematic review of scientific literature - De La Torre-López, José; Ramírez, Aurora; Romero, José Raúl (Computing, 2023)
Abstract Artificial intelligence (AI) has acquired notorious relevance in modern computing as it effectively solves complex tasks traditionally done by humans. AI provides methods to represent and infer knowledge, efficiently manipulate texts and learn from vast amount of data. These characteristics are applicable in many activities that human find laborious or repetitive, as is the case of the analysis of scientific literature. Manually preparing and writing a systematic literature review (SLR) takes considerable time and effort, since it requires planning a strategy, conducting the literature search and analysis, and reporting the findings. Depending on the area under study, the number of papers retrieved can be of hundreds or thousands, meaning that filtering those relevant ones and extracting the key information becomes a costly and error-prone process. However, some of the involved tasks are repetitive and, therefore, subject to automation by means of AI. In this paper, we present a survey of AI techniques proposed in the last 15 years to help researchers conduct systematic analyses of scientific literature. We describe the tasks currently supported, the types of algorithms applied, and available tools proposed in 34 primary studies. This survey also provides a historical perspective of the evolution of the field and the role that humans can play in an increasingly automated SLR process.

Understanding Teacher Digital Competence in the Framework of Social Sustainability: A Systematic Review - De la Calle, Ana Maria; Pacheco-Costa, Alejandra; Gomez-Ruiz, Miguel Ángel; Guzman-Simon, Fernando (MDPI Journals, 2021)
Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, ICT has been urgently introduced in education systems in a generalised manner. In this context, it is essential for teachers to master a spectrum of basic digital competencies and manifest digital leadership in the classroom. In addition, it is necessary to consider the relationship between digital competence development and social sustainability, that is, social and cultural heritage, and to what extent they contribute to improving social cohesion and living conditions in a community. This study presents a systematic review of research on teacher digital competence and social sustainability based on the PRISMA model and a review of 22 studies indexed in SCOPUS. The review reveals that most are intended to measure the digital competence level of teachers, usually in compulsory stages of the educational system and through quantitative studies based on virtual questionnaires comprised of closed-ended questions. However, the studies tend to ignore questions related to social sustainability (access to resources, heritage culture, intergenerational transmission, employability, or gender equality). It is therefore urgent to develop research committed to a sustainable society that is oriented towards social justice.

Quality Education in Rwanda: A Critical Analysis of Quality Indicators - de Dieu, Habyarimana Jean; Theogene, Hashakimana; Philothere, Ntawiha; Ke, Zhou (2020)
Keywords: ⛔ No DOI found

Mitigating COVID-19 impacts and getting education systems up and running again: Lessons from Sierra Leone - Davis, Edward; Berry, Chris (Global Partnership for Education, 2020)
Reflexions on some of the lessons from the Sierra Leone Ebola education response that could be relevant for countries facing shutdowns of their education systems due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Keywords: _C:Sierra Leone SLE

Special Education in Mainstream Schools: Guidance Report - Davies, Kath; Henderson, Peter (Education Endowment Foundation, 2020)

An analysis of the impact of the Accelerated Learning Project with year 11 students in Bristol schools, Bristol City Council - Davies, John Dwyfor; Last, Kathryn; Smart, Dean (2020)
1.1 Context In the summer of 2005, thirty-six per cent of Year 11 pupils in the City of Bristol Local Authority (LA) schools achieved 5 or more GCSE A*-C grades compared to the national average of 57%, with other further indicators of under performance. This resulted in considerable disquiet locally and much negative media interest. Bristol is England‟s eighth largest city and is the biggest population centre in the South West government region. Areas of the City are very multicultural, with about 10% of young Bristolians having English as an additional language. The regional importance, and service industry/financial base, of the city attracts a higher than average number of graduates to employment in greater Bristol, but conversely 28% of adults locally have limited or no qualifications. Some districts enjoy considerable wealth and 24% of the regions employment is centred here, with the local unemployment figure below the national average at 3.1% of the working age population. There are also pockets of extreme socio-economic deprivation, with some wards within the bottom percentage point of the most socio-economically deprived districts in England. 75% of Bristol 11-16 year olds are educated in the LA secondary schools, with the remainder educated in the schools of neighbouring LAs or in the large local independent sector.
Keywords: Marginalised; _AcademicRecoveryOECS; ⛔ No DOI found

Using Machine Learning to Analyze Physical Causes of Climate Change: A Case Study of U.S. Midwest Extreme Precipitation - Davenport, Frances V.; Diffenbaugh, Noah S. (Geophysical Research Letters, 2021)
Abstract While global warming has generally increased the occurrence of extreme precipitation, the physical mechanisms by which climate change alters regional and local precipitation extremes remain uncertain, with debate about the role of changes in the atmospheric circulation. We use a convolutional neural network (CNN) to analyze large‐scale circulation patterns associated with U.S. Midwest extreme precipitation. The CNN correctly identifies 91% of observed precipitation extremes based on daily sea level pressure and 500‐hPa geopotential height anomalies. There is evidence of increasing frequency of extreme precipitation circulation patterns (EPCPs) over the past two decades, although frequency changes are insignificant over the past four decades. Additionally, we find that moisture transport and precipitation intensity during EPCPs have increased. Our approach, which uses deep learning visualization to understand how the CNN predicts EPCPs, advances machine learning as a tool for providing insight into physical causes of changing extremes, potentially reducing uncertainty in future projections. , Plain Language Summary Extreme precipitation and flooding cause widespread impacts on human society. While global warming has increased the occurrence of these damaging events, there is still uncertainty about how climate change will affect precipitation and flooding, making it difficult to adequately prepare for future hazards. We use machine learning to understand why extreme precipitation is becoming more common in the U.S. Midwest by analyzing the atmospheric circulation patterns during extreme precipitation events. Our results show that there is heavier precipitation when extreme precipitation patterns occur, but the patterns themselves have not changed significantly in frequency over the past four decades. Our method could be used to better understand changes in extreme events in the Midwest and in other regions of the world. , Key Points We use a neural network to predict extreme precipitation from daily sea level pressure and 500‐hPa geopotential height fields Increasing Midwest extreme precipitation is linked to increasing moisture transport and precipitation during specific circulation patterns Our method is generalizable to studying how climate change affects the physical causes of various types of extreme events in other regions
Keywords: _z:no_pdf

The implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for policy in relation to children and young people - DARMODY, MERIKE; SMYTH, EMER; RUSSELL, HELEN (ESRI Survey and Statistical Report Series, 2020)
Keywords: ⛔ No DOI found

Challenging Systematic Prejudices - An Investigation into Bias Against Women and Girls in Large Language Models - Daniel van Niekerk; María Pérez-Ortiz; John Shawe-Taylor; Davor Orlič; Ivana Drobnjak; Jackie Kay; Noah Siegel; Katherine Evans; Nyalleng Moorosi; Tina Eliassi-Rad; Leonie Maria Tanczer; Wayne Holmes; et al. (UNESCO / IRCAI, 2024)

Radio: A Rapid Evidence Review - Damani, Kalifa; Mitchell, Joel (EdTech Hub, 2020)
Keywords: Final_citation; cited; existing

Radio: Rapid Evidence Review - Damani, Kalifa; Mitchell, Joel (2020)
This Rapid Evidence Review (RER) provides an overview of the existing literature on the use of radio in education in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The present RER has been produced in response to the novel 2019 coronavirus (COVID-19), and the resulting widespread shutdown of schools. It, therefore, highlights transferable insights that may be applicable to educational responses resulting from the limitations caused by COVID-19. Established approaches to delivering distance education have renewed salience during this period because many students cannot access schooling in a school building due to social distancing requirements. As one of the longest-serving and most accessible types of educational technology (EdTech), and one that has had some success in education delivery in an LMIC context that was affected by an epidemic, it is particularly useful to focus on radio (Barnett et al., 2018; Hallgarten, 2020). Notably, the RER aims neither to advocate nor discourage the use of radio in education in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, it provides an accessible summary of existing evidence on the topic so that educators, policy makers and donors might make informed decisions about the potential of radio in education delivery.

Rapid Evidence Review: Radio - Damani, Kalifa; Mitchell, Joel (2020)

Accelerated Learning and EdTech: A Rapid Evidence Review - Damani, Kalifa (EdTech Hub, 2020)
Keywords: L:Gender and education; LP: English; _DOILIVE; _EdTechHub_Output; _MELA_seen; _P:Evidence review VCMFM9ZD; _cover:v2; _zenodoETH; ⛔ No DOI found

Accelerated Learning and EdTech: A Rapid Evidence Review - Damani, Kalifa (EdTech Hub, 2020)
Keywords: Final_citation; cited; existing

Rapid Evidence Review: Accelerated Learning and EdTech - Damani, Kalifa (The EdTech Hub, 2020)

Silenced by an Unknown Language? Exploring Language Matching during Transitions from Complementary Education to Government Schools in Ghana - Daly, Kieran; Carter, Emma; Sabates, Ricardo (Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 2021)
Mother tongue-based education has been central to the promotion of early literacy skills in many multilingual contexts of the Global South. However, learners in such environments may face significant linguistic challenges when changing language of instruction during schooling. In particular, the linguistic distance between mother tongue and official language may be a significant barrier to learners. This paper provides an empirical approach to this issue by employing language matching based on linguistic distance between languages to explore changes in literacy scores for learners who change language of instruction. Findings show that the greater the linguistic distance between two languages, the larger the loss in foundational literacy. We conclude that language matching could be introduced as a tool to identify at-risk learners during transitions and, if possible, as a tool for linguistic allocation of students who have the possibility of selecting between schools with different languages for instruction.
Keywords: Ghana; Mother tongue education; language matching; literacy; multilingualism

Distribution of Soil Chemical Properties of Smallholder Farms on Derelict Mined-Sites of Jos South LGA, Jos Plateau, Nigeria - Dakagan, J.B.; Tudunwada, I.Y.; Ajiji, S.A.; Aliyu, J.A. (Asian Journal of Soil Science and Plant Nutrition, 2024)

Collaborative construction of artificial intelligence curriculum in primary schools - Dai, Yun; Liu, Ang; Qin, Jianjun; Guo, Yanmei; Jong, Morris Siu‐Yung; Chai, Ching‐Sing; Lin, Ziyan (Journal of Engineering Education, 2023)
Abstract Background The recent discussion of introducing artificial intelligence (AI) knowledge to K–12 students, like many engineering and technology education topics, has attracted a wide range of stakeholders and resources for school curriculum development. While teachers often have to directly interact with external stakeholders out of the public schooling system, few studies have scrutinized their negotiation process, especially teachers' responses to external influences, in such complex environments. Purpose Guided by an integrated theoretical framework of social constructionism, this research examined the process of how a teacher‐initiated AI curriculum was constructed with external influences. The research focused on teachers' perspectives and responses in mediating external influences into local schools and classrooms. Methods A 3‐year ethnographic study was conducted in relation to an AI curriculum project among 23 Computer Science (CS) teachers from primary schools. Data collected from ethnographic observation, teacher interviews, and artifacts, were analyzed using open coding and triangulation rooted in the ethnographic, interpretivist approach. Results Three sets of external influences were found salient for teachers' curriculum decisions, including the orientation of state‐level educational policies, AI faculty at a partner university, and students' media and technology environments. The teachers' situational logics and strategic actions were reconstructed with thick descriptions to uncover how they navigated and negotiated the external influences to fulfill local challenges and expectations in classrooms and schools. Conclusions The ethnographic study uncovered the dynamic and multifaceted negotiation involved in the collaborative curriculum development, and offers insights to inform policymaking, teacher education, and student support in engineering education.

Response Surface Regression Model for Predicting Clay Composition and it Relationship with selected Soil Properties at Kano River Irrigation Project, Nigeria - Dahiru, M.; Maina, M.M.; Audu, I.; Tudunwada, I.Y.; Nasiru, N.K.; Umar, S.E. (Dutse Journal of Pure and Applied Sciences (DUJOPAS, 2021)
Keywords: ⛔ No DOI found

Remote Sensing Techniques in Mapping Spatial Variability of Salinity in Kano River Irrigation Project (KRIP - Dahiru, M.; Maina, M.M.; Audu, I.; Tudunwada, I.Y.; Nasiru, N.K. (Nigeria. Nigerian Journal of Technology (NIJOTECH, 2021)

Structured information extraction from scientific text with large language models - Dagdelen, John; Dunn, Alexander; Lee, Sanghoon; Walker, Nicholas; Rosen, Andrew S.; Ceder, Gerbrand; Persson, Kristin A.; Jain, Anubhav (Nature Communications, 2024)
Abstract Extracting structured knowledge from scientific text remains a challenging task for machine learning models. Here, we present a simple approach to joint named entity recognition and relation extraction and demonstrate how pretrained large language models (GPT-3, Llama-2) can be fine-tuned to extract useful records of complex scientific knowledge. We test three representative tasks in materials chemistry: linking dopants and host materials, cataloging metal-organic frameworks, and general composition/phase/morphology/application information extraction. Records are extracted from single sentences or entire paragraphs, and the output can be returned as simple English sentences or a more structured format such as a list of JSON objects. This approach represents a simple, accessible, and highly flexible route to obtaining large databases of structured specialized scientific knowledge extracted from research papers.

Support for teachers in challenging situations as a factor of change: reflections from a continuing professional development programme in Guinea-Bissau - da Silva, Rui; Oliveira, Joana (2020)
Keywords: _C:Angola AGO; _C:Canada CAN; _C:Cape Verde CPV; _C:Guinea-Bissau GNB; _C:Kenya KEN; _C:Namibia NAM; _C:Netherlands NLD; _C:Portugal PRT; _C:South Africa ZAF; _C:South Sudan SSD; _C:Sweden SWE; _C:Tanzania TZA; _C:Uganda UGA; _C:Zambia ZMB; __C:filed:1; __C:scheme:1

LAC Reads Capacity Program: Curriculum coding schemes - D’Angelo, Sophia; Regis, Callista; Megha-Bongnkar, Ghislaine; McBurnie, Chris; Haßler, Björn (Open Development & Education, 2021)
Keywords: Author:OpenDevEd

Technology Use for Teacher Professional Development in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Recommendations for policy from a systematic review - D'Angelo, Sophia; Hennessy, Sara; Kreimeia, Adam; Koomar, Saalim; Cao, Lydia; McIntyre, Nora; Brugha, Meaghan; Zubairi, Asma (EdTech Hub, 2022)
An output of the EdTech Hub, https://edtechhub.org
Keywords: _r:AddedByZotZen

Supporting Teaching to Improve Teaching and Learning: A GPE KIX Scoping Study Working Paper - D'Angelo, Sophia; Cameron, L; Assane Igodoe, A; Sheria Nfundiko, J (Global Partnership for Education Knowledge and Innovation Exchange, 2023)

Week 2 - Laura Czerniewicz - Equity and Care in Moving Online (2020)
Laura Czerniewicz shares experiences this past year in South Africa and offers insight and guidance for educators now confronting a forced move online #PivotOnline Course - https://www.edx.org/course/pivoting-t... - https://linkresearchlab.org/pivot/

Implementation science made too simple: a teaching tool - Curran, Geoffrey M. (Implementation Science Communications, 2020)

Calculating the Educational Impact of COVID-19 (Part II): Using Data from Successive Grades to Estimate Learning Loss | SharEd - Cummiskey, Chris (2020)
Keywords: _COVID_DEAA-List

COVID-19 and Social Mobility Impact Brief #1: School Shutdown - Cullinane, Carl; Montacute, Rebecca (2020)
Keywords: __C:filed:1; ⛔ No DOI found

The disconnected: COVID-19 and disparities in access to quality broadband for higher education students - Cullinan, John; Flannery, Darragh; Harold, Jason; Lyons, Seán; Palcic, Dónal (International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 2021)
Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic forced many higher education institutions (HEIs) across the world to cancel face-to-face teaching, close campus facilities, and displace staff and students to work and learn from home. Given the persistent nature of the pandemic, many HEIs have continued to deliver courses online and/or use a blended learning approach. However, there are concerns around differences in student access to digital learning resources while at home, including high quality broadband connectivity. This is important, since variation in connectivity may impact the type of online/blended model that faculty can deliver or constrain student engagement with online content. In this context, this paper combines national data on the domiciles of students enrolled in Irish HEIs with detailed spatial data on broadband coverage to estimate the number of higher education students ‘at risk’ of poor access to high quality internet connectivity. Overall it finds that one-in-six students come from areas with poor broadband coverage, with large disparities by geography and by HEI. It also finds that students from the poorest broadband coverage areas are more likely to be socioeconomically disadvantaged. As a result, this paper recommends that HEIs use their detailed registration data to help identify and support at-risk students. In particular, the results suggest that some HEIs may need to prioritise access to campus facilities and services to less well-off students living in poor broadband coverage areas.
Keywords: Final_citation

Reference Coverage Analysis of OpenAlex compared to Web of Science and Scopus - Culbert, Jack; Hobert, Anne; Jahn, Najko; Haupka, Nick; Schmidt, Marion; Donner, Paul; Mayr, Philipp (arXiv, 2024)
OpenAlex is a promising open source of scholarly metadata, and competitor to the established proprietary sources, the Web of Science and Scopus. As OpenAlex provides its data freely and openly, it permits researchers to perform bibliometric studies that can be reproduced in the community without licensing barriers. However, as OpenAlex is a rapidly evolving source and the data contained within is expanding and also quickly changing, the question naturally arises as to the trustworthiness of its data. In this empirical paper, we will study the reference and metadata coverage within each database and compare them with each other to help address this open question in bibliometrics. In our large-scale study, we demonstrate that, when restricted to a cleaned dataset of 16,788,282 recent publications shared by all three databases, OpenAlex has average reference numbers comparable to both Web of Science and Scopus. We also demonstrate that the comparison of other core metadata covered by OpenAlex shows mixed results, with OpenAlex capturing more ORCID identifiers, fewer abstracts and a similar number of Open Access information per article when compared to both Web of Science and Scopus.
Keywords: Computer Science - Digital Libraries

Digital Literacy and Skills Toolkit Implementation in Indonesia: Experience and Lessons Learned from a Small Survey - CSIS Indonesia (2022)

Eliminating global learning poverty: The importance of equalities and equity - Crouch, Luis; Rolleston, Caine; Gustafsson, Martin (International Journal of Educational Development, 2021)
This paper explores the quantitative relationships between average levels of learning achievement across countries, changes in average levels of learning achievement, the inequality of distribution of achievement (akin to income or wealth inequality in general development analysis), and the proportion of students learning at or below an absolute minimum (akin to poverty in general development analysis). The paper uses a variety of data from cross-national and national assessments: aggregate data, micro (student-level) data, school-level data, and time-series data. The paper shows how various factors such as gender or wealth impact learning levels, but also shows that ‘systems-related’ inequality, not directly related to such factors, is typically much larger than inequality associated with any of those factors. The paper shows that countries progress from very low average levels of achievement to middle levels more by reducing the percentage of students with very low scores (that is, by paying attention to the ‘bulging’ left-hand tail of the distribution) than by increasing the percentage of high performing students. The availability of micro data from a particular case allows exploration of the relationship between inequality measures and measures of the percentage of students below a low level of achievement and shows that, at least in that case, the reduction in inequality that accompanies improvements in the average levels takes place mostly through a reduction in the percentage below a low level. Unlike in the case of income, where vast reductions in income poverty seem possible without reducing income inequality, the evidence presented here suggests that this typically does not happen with learning levels: inequality reduction, reductions in percentages below a low level, and improvements in the averages are all empirically connected. More work is needed to show whether that connection is also causal.
Keywords: Learning crisis; Learning equity; Learning inequality; Learning poverty; SDGs

Systems Implications for Core Instructional Support Lessons from Sobral (Brazil), Puebla (Mexico), and Kenya - Crouch, Luis (Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE), 2020)

The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process - Crotty, Michael J. (SAGE Publications Ltd, 2020)