Research Project Paper 2
Steve Higgins, Emma Dobson, Jonathan Kay, Patrick Okwen
This project sought to recontextualise a popular evidence portal from the English education system to Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria. The Teaching and Learning Toolkit is a resource that summarises the global evidence for 30 different pedagogical approaches in plain language so that it can inform the decisions of school leaders in England.
In order to recontextualise the Toolkit, stakeholders were engaged to assess the applicability of each approach in the Toolkit to the context of the Chad Basin. Where strategies were considered unfeasible, they were removed from the portal. Strategies selected for inclusion were updated through local evidence searches and a review of wider development evidence. Three new systematic reviews were completed to add topic areas that were considered important in the Chad Basin, but currently not included in the portal (menstrual hygiene management, cash transfers, corporal punishment).
The recontexualisation process, described above, revealed disparities between the extent that pedagogical approaches have been evaluated in low and middle income countries. While messages from the global evidence base seem to resonate with stakeholders and are considered applicable and feasible in the context of the Chad Basin, very little research has sought to evaluate attainment outcomes or to examine pedagogical approaches such as feedback or metacognition.
Several topics were removed from the evidence portal on the basis of stakeholder engagement (one-to-one tuition, teaching assistants, learning styles, school uniform and setting and streaming). The new topics of menstrual hygiene and cash transfers were added to the portal, with reviews identifying a small positive effect on attainment from cash transfers, but being unable to identify enough studies to meta-analyse for an attainment outcome of menstrual hygiene interventions. The review of corporal punishment identified that no rigorous studies had been conducted. All of the results have been communicated in an accessible and transparent way for the benefit of policymakers and practitioners in the Chad Basin.
Suggested citation: Higgins, S. Dobson, E. Kay, J. Okwen, P. Kamga, E. Nsaikila, M. Hanny, R. Akofu, A. Tangang, A. Alvin, L. Zithem, M. (2021) Re-contextualising an evidence portal from the English education system to Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria and Niger, CEDIL Research Project Paper 2. Centre of Excellence for Development Impact and Learning (CEDIL), London and Oxford. Available from: https://doi.org/10.51744/CRPP2
