Methodological Approaches to Measuring Equity in Education

Abstract

This chapter gives an overview of the approaches used to measure the contribution of teachers, schools and educational systems in promoting equity within the field of EER. The following five approaches are discussed. We firstly refer to the use of a Gini-Type index to measure equity in schools and present a study which made use of this approach. We then refer to experimental studies examining the impact of student background factors on student achievement to evaluate interventions designed to promote equity. Based on this approach, the importance of analysing longitudinal data and identifying the reduction of the impact of student background factors on student achievement is treated as another method of measuring the contribution of schools in promoting equity. The fourth approach proposed in this chapter has emerged from research on differential teacher and school effectiveness. It is argued that random slope multilevel models used to investigate differential teacher/school effectiveness in relation to student background characteristics can help us identify the relationship between quality and equity in education. We finally argue for the importance of measuring changes in the effectiveness status of teachers/schools in promoting quality and equity and identifying factors that can predict changes in the effectiveness status of teachers/schools in terms of equity. A study which made use of this approach is presented and suggestions for further research are provided. In the last part of the chapter, we refer to the conditions under which each approach can be used and the type of research questions that each approach can address. It is stressed that random slope multilevel regression models can help us not only search for differential teacher and school effectiveness, but also investigate the relationship between the two dimensions of effectiveness.