What’s at Play? Unpacking the Relationship between Teaching and Learning

Using unique nationally representative school and system survey data from 13 education systems in low-and middle-income countries collected through the World Bank’s Global Education Policy Dashboard (GEPD), we examine how the pedagogical practices, including practices to foster student engagement, and subject content knowledge of primary-school teachers correlate with their students’ learning
outcomes. We find that student performance on literacy (and to a lesser extent math) assessments is correlated with receiving instruction from teachers with better measured pedagogical skills. While the better-pedagogy effect is modest for the full sample, it is statistically robust and quite substantial for the upper-middle-income countries in the sample. Based on a sub-sample of those education systems, we
also find that the use of learning strategies that support greater student engagement appears to be highly predictive of student learning outcomes in literacy. Better pedagogical practices are correlated with teachers’ exposure to more practical, school-based pedagogical support—for example through induction or mentoring and feedback on lesson plans—and also with better teacher evaluation at the school level. The findings confirm the important role of interventions providing direct pedagogical support and feedback to teachers through training, instructional leadership, and evaluation, and they highlight the potential for interventions to foster student engagement and improve learning outcomes.