School Effectiveness in Developing Countries - A Summary of the Research Evidence

It is true that there is relatively little research evidence on the effects of process variables
on schools in developing countries, and it could be argued that school effectiveness
research findings from industrialized countries are invalid in a Third World context. The
opposing view is that there are enough similarities among schools worldwide to suggest
that researchers, planners and policy-makers in developing countries should at the very
least be aware of these findings. The meta-analysis is particularly useful for this purpose,
and there is an increasing volume of published work at this level (see Kulik & Kulik,
1989).

It is not the purpose of this report to review this research but it is worth giving an
example of the type of findings which might have applications in developing countries
as well as in developed countries. This example is from research on the effectiveness of
mastery learning strategies.

A meta-analysis of findings from 108 controlled evaluations showed that
mastery learning programs have positive effects on the examination
performance of students in colleges, high schools and the upper grades in
elementary schools. The effects appear to be stronger on the weaker
students in a class.....Mastery programs have positive effects on student

attitudes toward course content and instruction but may increase student
time on instructional tasks. (Kulik et al, 1990, p265)

The meta-analysis found that, on the average, such programs raise final examination
scores by about 0.5 standard deviations, which compares very favourably with effects
from other innovatory learning strategies. For example, peer and cross-age tutoring
programs give average improvements of 0.4 standard deviations.

The effects reported here are so large that there is a strong case for further projects in
these areas. However, the introduction of a mastery learning program in a developing
country would be likely to require significant material inputs in addition to in-service
training for the teachers. As with many promising innovations, a necessary first step
would be small scale experimentation.

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