Teacher Labor Markets in Developing Countries

Crawfurd, Lee; Pugatch, Todd

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3542654

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…In a broader scope, findings in this present study coincide with new evidence that demographic transition in many countries is spurring increased demand for teachers (Crawfurd and Pugatch 2020), and illustrate the immense value of improving teacher education and bolstering a teacher's own level of human capital development in order to achieve quality and equitable education. For one, the cognitive returns from investing in teachers, either through training, recruiting, or retaining more qualified individuals to teach, can be considerable for students.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 80%

Cognitive Returns to Having Better Educated Teachers: Evidence from the China Education Panel Survey

Liu¹

2021

J. Intell.

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Teachers’ own level of human capital development is commonly believed to be deterministic for the quality and effectiveness of their instruction and management in the classroom. Yet, there still exists an international debate on whether better educated teachers contribute to students’ cognitive development. Leveraging a random class-assignment subsample (N = 3436) from a nationally representative teacher-student linked dataset in China, this study reassesses the ongoing contention regarding the value of teacher education. By linking differences in teachers’ own educational attainment levels across different subjects of instruction to variation in seventh grade students’ Chinese, Math and English test scores using student fixed-effect models, this study quantifies the cognitive returns attributable to better educated teachers, in student learning terms. Findings show that teachers with at least a bachelor’s degree contribute substantially to student learning compared to those who are less qualified, by as much as 0.069 SDs or about two additional months of learning over a typical academic year. Additional sensitivity analyses suggest that this observed effect is robust to model specifications, and is consistent for students from different backgrounds.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 80%

Cognitive Returns to Having Better Educated Teachers: Evidence from the China Education Panel Survey

Liu¹

2021

J. Intell.

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“…In most developing countries, the entry into teacher education programmes lacks selectivity and teacher qualifications tend to be set lower compared to other professional jobs (Béteille and Evans, 2019). Across all developing countries, a larger number of teachers are employed and account for most of the education spending, but their effect on student outcomes is small (ADB, 2021; Crawfurd and Pugatch, 2021). This suggests the need for more attention to policies such as the selection of teachers and criteria used to identify those best suited to teach in the classroom.…”

Section: Insightsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can the Teacher Professional Education Admission Criteria in Indonesia Predict Teacher Performance?

Yusrina¹,

Berkhout²,

Suryadarma³

et al. 2023

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Studies find that effective teachers raise student test achievement and lead to higher future earnings for the students (Chetty et.al, 2014; Hanushek, 2011). Teacher selection and the criteria used in making the selection are important because they aim to identify such effective teachers. Identifying teachers with such potential is relatively more cost-effective than other policies applied after the teachers have teaching jobs (Klassen and Kim, 2019; Hobson et al., 2010). Many studies focus on selecting teachers based on the information collected at the time of hire to predict student outcomes (Jacob et al., 2018; Hill et al., 2012; Staiger and Rockoff, 2010). Other studies identify potentially effective teachers even before they become teachers. Those studies use information from teacher education programme admission criteria to predict teacher candidates’ success in the programme (Heinz, 2013; Casey and Child, 2011; Caskey et al., 2001). Among teacher selection criteria, studies identified predictors of subsequent performance including undergraduate grades, written tests, interviews, and teaching practice. In developing countries, studies on teacher selection are virtually non-existent. We found two studies that focus on the selection of teachers during hiring. Both use candidates’ screening tests results to predict student learning outcomes (Araujo et al., 2020; Cruz-Aguayo et al., 2017). However, we did not find studies in developing country contexts that focus on selection of teachers into education programmes or how the admission criteria relate to student learning outcomes. Whether focusing on selecting teachers during their education programme or as they go through the recruitment process, studies on teacher selection across countries have the same underlying question: Will the criteria be able to identify effective teachers? The idea of teacher selection to improve the quality of the teaching force is appealing. For instance, in high performing countries in PISA, like Japan and Korea, where there are many teacher colleges (Ingersoll, 2007) and the most prevalent teacher employment is civil-service, great attention is paid to the quality of selection into teacher education programmes (OECD, 2018). Teacher selection is arguably more critical in developing countries. In most developing countries, the entry into teacher education programmes lacks selectivity and teacher qualifications tend to be set lower compared to other professional jobs (Béteille and Evans, 2019). Across all developing countries, a larger number of teachers are employed and account for most of the education spending, but their effect on student outcomes is small (ADB, 2021; Crawfurd and Pugatch, 2021). This suggests the need for more attention to policies such as the selection of teachers and criteria used to identify those best suited to teach in the classroom. In Indonesia, where the teacher recruitment system lacks a strong mechanism to ensure quality (Huang et al., 2020) and the teacher in-service training has not been effective (Revina et al., 2020), a potential way to improve the pool of teachers is through enhanced selection of individuals who will become teachers. We specifically question whether we can predict a teacher’s performance using information available when they were a teacher candidate. Admission criteria for teacher education are presumably intended to identify candidates who have the greatest likelihood of being able to do well in the academic programme and ultimately in the classroom as a professional. The identification of criteria that predict teacher subsequent performance would give policy makers a stronger understanding of where programme improvement may be needed.

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“…This paper takes an exploratory approach to questions around teacher pay in Sub-Saharan Africa. Rather than establishing a theoretical framework—which has been done for teachers ( Crawfurd & Pugatch, 2020 ) and for public sector workers more broadly ( Finan et al, 2017 )—we interrogate the data with the aim of establishing a series of stylized facts and exploring where there are empirical regularities across countries (and where there are not). Specifically, we structure our analysis around five main questions that we hope will help to motivate future work on teachers.…”

Section: Data Analytical Strategy and Empirical Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%