What Teachers Believe : Mental Models about Accountability, Absenteeism, and Student Learning
The time teachers spend teaching is low in several developing countries. However, improving teacher effort has proven difficult. Why is it so difficult to increase teacher effort? One possibility is that teachers are resistant to increasing effort...
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2018
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/804301527601436747/What-teachers-believe-mental-models-about-accountability-absenteeism-and-student-learning http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29883 |
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okr-10986-298832022-09-13T12:18:54Z What Teachers Believe : Mental Models about Accountability, Absenteeism, and Student Learning Sabarwal, Shwetlena Abu-Jawdeh, Malek EDUCATION TEACHER ABSENTEEISM TEACHER MOTIVATION TEACHER PERFORMANCE CORRUPTION STUDENT LEARNING ACCOUNTABILITY TEACHER EFFECTIVENESS The time teachers spend teaching is low in several developing countries. However, improving teacher effort has proven difficult. Why is it so difficult to increase teacher effort? One possibility is that teachers are resistant to increasing effort because they do not believe their effort is suboptimal. Such beliefs may be based on their mental models on absenteeism, accountability, and student learning. This paper explores this idea using data from 16,000 teachers across eight developing countries, spanning five regions. It finds that, on average, teachers support test-based accountability and believe that they are in fact held accountable for student learning. In several countries, many teachers tend to normalize two types of suboptimal behaviors. These are (i) certain types of absenteeism, and (ii) paying extra attention to well-performing and well-resourced students. Finally, the paper shows that ideas of accountability and absenteeism are strongly framed by context in two direct ways. The first is whether teachers favor exclusively reward-based forms of accountability. The second is the degree to which they support absenteeism linked to community tasks. These results provide actionable insights on how changing teacher behavior sustainably might require reshaping underlying mental models. 2018-06-18T19:54:26Z 2018-06-18T19:54:26Z 2018-05 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/804301527601436747/What-teachers-believe-mental-models-about-accountability-absenteeism-and-student-learning http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29883 English Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8454 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Policy Research Working Paper |
| repository_type |
Digital Repository |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
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Digital Repositories |
| building |
World Bank Open Knowledge Repository |
| collection |
World Bank |
| language |
English |
| topic |
EDUCATION TEACHER ABSENTEEISM TEACHER MOTIVATION TEACHER PERFORMANCE CORRUPTION STUDENT LEARNING ACCOUNTABILITY TEACHER EFFECTIVENESS |
| spellingShingle |
EDUCATION TEACHER ABSENTEEISM TEACHER MOTIVATION TEACHER PERFORMANCE CORRUPTION STUDENT LEARNING ACCOUNTABILITY TEACHER EFFECTIVENESS Sabarwal, Shwetlena Abu-Jawdeh, Malek What Teachers Believe : Mental Models about Accountability, Absenteeism, and Student Learning |
| relation |
Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8454 |
| description |
The time teachers spend teaching is low
in several developing countries. However, improving teacher
effort has proven difficult. Why is it so difficult to
increase teacher effort? One possibility is that teachers
are resistant to increasing effort because they do not
believe their effort is suboptimal. Such beliefs may be
based on their mental models on absenteeism, accountability,
and student learning. This paper explores this idea using
data from 16,000 teachers across eight developing countries,
spanning five regions. It finds that, on average, teachers
support test-based accountability and believe that they are
in fact held accountable for student learning. In several
countries, many teachers tend to normalize two types of
suboptimal behaviors. These are (i) certain types of
absenteeism, and (ii) paying extra attention to
well-performing and well-resourced students. Finally, the
paper shows that ideas of accountability and absenteeism are
strongly framed by context in two direct ways. The first is
whether teachers favor exclusively reward-based forms of
accountability. The second is the degree to which they
support absenteeism linked to community tasks. These results
provide actionable insights on how changing teacher behavior
sustainably might require reshaping underlying mental models. |
| format |
Working Paper |
| author |
Sabarwal, Shwetlena Abu-Jawdeh, Malek |
| author_facet |
Sabarwal, Shwetlena Abu-Jawdeh, Malek |
| author_sort |
Sabarwal, Shwetlena |
| title |
What Teachers Believe : Mental Models about Accountability, Absenteeism, and Student Learning |
| title_short |
What Teachers Believe : Mental Models about Accountability, Absenteeism, and Student Learning |
| title_full |
What Teachers Believe : Mental Models about Accountability, Absenteeism, and Student Learning |
| title_fullStr |
What Teachers Believe : Mental Models about Accountability, Absenteeism, and Student Learning |
| title_full_unstemmed |
What Teachers Believe : Mental Models about Accountability, Absenteeism, and Student Learning |
| title_sort |
what teachers believe : mental models about accountability, absenteeism, and student learning |
| publisher |
World Bank, Washington, DC |
| publishDate |
2018 |
| url |
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/804301527601436747/What-teachers-believe-mental-models-about-accountability-absenteeism-and-student-learning http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29883 |
| _version_ |
1764470624318652416 |