Governments and educators are digging more deeply into the question of how to make Third World classrooms more stimulating settings in which to learn. Interventions emphasize making more complex the skills of teachers and the social organization of classrooms. But are fragile political institutions and education agencies equipped to move teachers toward more complex, more invigorating forms of instruction?
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References
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1. I do not assume that primary schooling is the only way of raising literacy levels. But at least we have a great amount of empirical knowledge about literacy acquisition in formal classrooms in Third World countries. For review, see Bruce Fuller and Stephen Heyneman, “Third World School Quality: Current Collapse, Future Potential,”Educational Researcher, 18:12-19 (Mar. 1989).
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World Conference on Education for All, World Declaration on Education for All (Jomtien, Thailand: World Conference Secretariat, 1990); United States Agency for International Development, “U.S. Assistance for Africa: The Development Fund for Africa,” 1989.
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3. International agencies may be catching up with Third World governments. Since independence, many developing countries have debated which language of instruction should dominate schools. Many education ministry officials decry pedagogical remnants of colonial or mission schooling. From Eastern Europe to East Asia to southern Africa, new governments debate how schooling can pursue authoritarian, democratic-individualistic, or more collective social rules—in the classroom. For instance, see Patrick Molutsi, “The School System: Is It Teaching Democracy?” in Democracy in Botswana, ed. John Holm and Patrick Molutsi (London: Macmillan, 1989), pp. 89-92.
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4. Due to its small size and its tradition of democratic openness, these limitations are present less in Botswana than in most developing countries.
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5. For more detailed description of the fragile state and implications for education, see Bruce Fuller, Growing-Up Modern: The Western State Builds Third World Schools (New York: Routledge, 1991).
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6. On the idea of “backward mapping,” see Richard Elmore, ed., Restructuring Schools: The Next Generation of Educational Reform (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990).
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7. The classroom-observation instrument contains six segments, completed consecutively by the researcher. During the first segment, which is 10 minutes long, the researcher records basic information about the classroom: the number of children in attendance, when instruction actually starts, and availability of textbooks, exercise books, and other basic materials. Segments 2 and 3 involve checklists of actions by the teacher and a target group of four pupils, respectively. Each segment contains a matrix defined by type of action and type of instructional material utilized with this action. A teacher, for instance, may be lecturing to the entire class while using the chalkboard; the appropriate cell in the matrix is simply checked if this combination occurs. Segments 2 and 3 each run for 7 minutes. This matrix structure was adapted from Jane Stallings's observation instrument, extensively pilottested, and further adjusted. See Jane Stallings and H. Jerome Freiberg, “Observation for the Improvement of Teaching,” in Effective Teaching: Current Research, ed. Hersholt Waxman and Herbert Walberg (Berkeley, CA: McCutchan, 1991), pp. 107-131. Segment 4 focuses on the frequency and type of questions asked by the teacher. This includes queries directed to the entire class and to individual pupils over the 10-minute duration of this segment. Segment 5 includes the researcher's estimate of how the teacher spent class time, percentage of teacher talk in English or Setswana, and additional summary items. This segment is completed during the final 5 minutes of the 40-minute period.
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Measurement information and other details regarding our observation instrument appear in Bruce Fuller and Conrad W. Snyder, Jr., “Teacher Productivity in Sticky Institutions: Curricular and Gender Variations,” in Strategies for Enhancing Educational Productivity, ed. David Chapman and Herbert Walberg (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1992).
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9. John Goodlad, A Place Called School (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984).
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10. Susan Stodolsky, The Subject Matters (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).
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11. For a conceptual overview, see John W. Meyer and Brian Rowan, “Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony,”American Journal of Sociology, 83:340-363 (1977).
