Educational Productivity Research in the Contexts of Developed and Developing Countries

Abstract

Educational productivity research has been a powerful tool to determine what affects students' academic and to suggest effective educational investment for policy makers in both developed and developing countries. This research method has attempted to identify which influence educational achievement, treating school (e.g. teacher-pupil ratio, availability of educational resources, school management) as independent variables and treating educational as a dependent variable. There has been small, but constantly reported, numbers of studies which identify significant difference between findings of educational productivity research from developed and developing countries. In this paper, first, I review some of research on differences and then argue why differences occur between two types of countries. 1 School inputs vs. pupils' social status Educational productivity research has been a powerful tool to determine what affects students' academic and to suggest effective educational investment for policy makers in both developed and developing countries. Two reports had a great impact on investigation of educational productivity in beginning of educational productivity research. The first is Equality of Educational Opportunity (Coleman et al., 1966). This is commonly called the Coleman Report. The second is the Plowden Report (Peaker, 1971.) Both of them reported an astonishing finding that students' academic is determined not by school but by preschool factors such as students' family background. Since then, many researchers have tried to counterargue these discouraging findings for educators. Although many of these attempts have failed and recomfirmed earlier conclusion, a few researchers found some counter evidence in context of developing countries. Heyneman and Loxley (1983) challenged conclusion of small school effects on academic from perspective of comparative education. They reviewed studies which were conducted in twenty nine countries including both developed and developing countries and found that tendency which Coleman report and many others suggested is not universal. The key findings of their research are the lower income of country, weaker influence of pupils' social status on achievement and conversely, in low income countries, effect of school and teacher quality on academic in primary school is comparatively greater. Fuller (1987), reviewing about 60 studies of educational productivity, pointed out several problems in research on effect of schools vs. students' family background. First, he argued that students' background may not have been specified adequately in Educational Productivity Research in Contexts of Developed and Developing Countries research. He suggested that social class structures in developing countries are not as stratified as in developed countries, he suggests, Western measures of class may not vary substantially. because of lack of variation (of social class), traditional constructs of class would simply not be strongly associated with variation in around mean. Second, he pointed out that very few studies control for pupil or regressed posttest scores in pretest scores. Third, he found that almost no studies in developing countries have focused on levels of early cognitive development although many sudies have found that parents likely influence them. He did not deny Heyneman and Loxley's conclusion, but he suggested these specification problems of student family background might distort research, thus overstating school's aggregate influence. Riddell (1989) challenged Heyneman and Loxley's conclusion more directly. He criticized the misapplication of a single-level model educational reality is clearly hierarchical. The grouping of students in previous studies were not random but reflected residential patterns of communities, admissions policies of schools and selection of particular classes. This non random grouping, he asserted, may have violated assumptions of regression analysis. He concluded that are strong grounds for skepticism concerning differences between developed and developing countries, which Heyneman emphasizes, related to effect of background on educational ... his theory remains unsubstantiated due to extreme methodological weaknesses exposed above. Is there difference suggested by Heyneman in effects of school and students' backgrounds between developed and developing countries? Although there were several criticisms of his research methods, no one challenged his conclusion itself. Heyneman's research took inductive approaches to find difference. Here I would like to approach this problem deductively. First, treating school as just one factor, I suggest only two elements, which consist of effect of family's socio-economic status factor on students' academic to simplify argument. One is students' natural ability. This is a given factor for students when they were born. Natural ability is assumed to have high correlation with students' parents educational background. Second is students' educational environment at home. This factor is also related to family's social and economic status assuming that parents with more income and more education can prepare a better educational environment for students. This simplification is attempted to distinguish which are already built into students (inside factor) and which surround students (outside factor.) Then, adding school factor (also Chart 1 Chart 2 Chart 3 natural ability home environment school factor A ca de m ic a ch ie ve m en t