Examining Effective Teaching in Rural Honduran Secondary Schools

洪都拉斯是中美洲最贫穷和最暴力的国家之一。在这种情况下，教育应该提供一种逃避；一条通往更美好未来的道路。然而，洪都拉斯的教育质量非常糟糕，很少有年轻人能够在中学学习。尽管存在这些挑战，但在我们之前的研究中，我们发现了洪都拉斯教育当局所描述的“道路上的光”，这是一种来自弱势社区的农村青年获得高质量教育的方式。这盏“灯”就是Sistema de Aprendizaje Tutorial program （Tutorial Learning System，简称SAT）。在拟议的研究中，我们将以我们最近完成的影响评估的积极发现为基础（见McEwan等人，2014），研究一些关于支持贫困、农村、地理上孤立的社区有效教学的要素的剩余问题。此外，通过收集我们从2008年开始跟踪的来自94个村庄的青年队列的后续数据，我们将能够检查学习成果是否会随着时间的推移而消退，以及提高质量教育与成功过渡到成年之间是否存在联系（例如，高等教育入学率、劳动力市场结果、延迟结婚和怀孕）。在这样做的过程中，这项研究还将提供一个独特的机会，以制定改善低收入国家教育质量和少女赋权的措施。根据我们之前的研究和对文献的回顾，我们将有效的教学概念化为SAT教育系统的三个特征：1)教师招聘和准备；2)教学有效性资源的提供；3)专业支持、问责、激励和奖励制度。考虑到这个框架，我们设计了一个研究项目，通过混合方法案例研究来检验以下核心研究问题：1)洪都拉斯农村中学的“有效教学”中，哪些系统范围的支持做出了关键贡献？2)有效教学的哪些要素有助于持续的学习收益，并对青少年过渡到成年期相关和有用？为了本提案的目的，我们将“有效教学”定义为能够在与成功成年相关的一系列能力的学习中获得即时和持续收益的教学。我们将采用案例研究方法，研究洪都拉斯农村中学教育的两个“嵌套”案例，SAT计划和更传统的Educación Básicos中心（CEB）。我们早期比较SAT和CEB的研究结果表明，SAT的学习效果明显高于CEB（）。2个标准差；居住在SAT村庄的学生的学习率提高了45%)。尽管有这些显著的学习进步，我们估计SAT的成本比ceb低18%。这种比较（SAT/CEB）使我们能够获得有关支持有效教学和改善学习成果的要素的宝贵见解。对我们的青年队列进行的后续数据收集也将解决学习成果是否会随着时间的推移而消退的问题，并使我们能够更好地了解优质教育影响向成年过渡的方式。我们的研究方法将包括定量工具（调查和评估）的应用，以及定性的深入访谈，广泛的课堂观察，以及对教师专业发展课程的观察。除了本研究将产生的定性和定量数据集之外，本研究的产出还包括教育质量的衡量标准（评估和量表），可以为未来在其他发展中国家的研究提供信息。我们将通过传统的（如学术期刊、会议）和新的（如Prezi、YouTube）渠道传播我们的发现。

Honduras is one of the poorest and most violent countries in Central America. In this context, education should offer an escape; a path to a better future. However, the quality of Honduran schooling is abysmal, and few youth are able to study in secondary schools.. Despite these challenges, in our previous research we have discovered what one Honduran educational authority described as a "light in the path," a way for rural youth from disadvantaged communities to have access to high quality education. This "light" is the Sistema de Aprendizaje Tutorial program (Tutorial Learning System or SAT). In the proposed research we will build upon the positive findings of our recently completed impact evaluation (see McEwan et al., 2014) to examine a number of remaining questions regarding the elements that support effective teaching in poor, rural, geographically isolated communities. Furthermore, by collecting follow-up data collection with a cohort of youth from 94 villages that we began tracking in 2008, we will be able to examine whether learning gains fade over time as well as whether there are linkages between improved quality education and successful transition to adulthood (e.g. enrollment in tertiary education, labor market outcomes, delayed marriage and pregnancy). In doing so, this research will also provide a unique opportunity to develop improved measures of educational quality and adolescent girls' empowerment in low-income countries. Informed by our earlier research and a review of the literature, we conceptualize effective teaching to be supported by three features of the SAT system of education: 1) Teacher recruitment and preparation; 2) The provision of resources for teaching effectiveness; 3) A system of professional support, accountability, incentives and rewards. With this framework in mind, we have designed a research project that examines the following core research questions through a mixed-methods case study: 1) What system-wide supports make a critical contribution to "effective teaching" in rural Honduran secondary schools? 2) Which elements of effective teaching contribute to sustained learning gains that are relevant and useful for youth as they transition to adulthood? For the purposes of this proposal, we define "effective teaching" as teaching that leads to both immediate and sustained gains in learning across a range of competencies relevant to successful adulthood. We will employ case study methodology, examining two "nested" cases of secondary schooling in rural Honduras, the SAT program and more traditional Centros de Educación Básicos (CEB). Results of our earlier research comparing SAT and CEB suggest that learning outcomes for SAT are considerably higher than CEBs (.2 standard deviations; stated differently residing in a SAT village increased the rate of learning by 45 percent). Despite these striking learning improvements, we estimate the cost of SAT to be 18 percent lower than CEBs. This comparison (SAT/CEB) allows us to gain valuable insights regarding the elements that support effective teaching and improved learning outcomes. A follow-up round of data collection with our cohort of youth will also address the question of whether learning gains fade over time and allow us to better understand the ways in which quality education influences the transition to adulthood. Our research methods will include the application of quantitative instruments (surveys and assessments) as well as qualitative in-depth interviews, extensive classroom observation, and the observation of teacher professional development sessions. Beyond the qualitative and quantitative datasets that this study will generate, the outputs of this research include measures of educational quality (assessments and scales) that can inform future research in other developing country contexts. We will disseminate our findings via traditional (e.g. academic journals, conferences) and new (e.g. Prezi, YouTube) venues.