4 - Effective Teaching in Low-Income Contexts

Summary

This chapter begins by describing the circumstances and challenges faced by teachers working in the global South, including challenges the learner faces, challenges the teacher faces, challenges within the school environment and challenges of the wider education system, to provide a rounded account of the characteristics that often typify educational systems in low-income countries. It also defines ‘effective teaching’ for this book. The chapter then provides a second detailed literature review, in this case documenting the findings of prior research into effective teaching in low-income contexts worldwide in an attempt to make sense of what research to date seems to tell us about appropriate good teaching practices in the South. It offers observations on aspects of teacher knowledge and beliefs, teacher professionalism and a number of areas of pedagogic practice reported from this body of literature. This review is then briefly compared with the expertise review in Chapter 3. The chapter closes with a critical conclusion, observing that the majority of research into teacher effectiveness in low-income countries either reports on the introduction of exogenous innovations and reforms or focuses on problems and inefficacies in existing provision, rather than attempting to seek out endogenous effective practice.