The Impact of Contract-teachers on Student Learning in Developing Countries: A Multi-level, Multi-country Analysis

Amita Chudgar

In developing countries, millions of new children are enrolling in schools, propelled by Education for All initiatives. This has led to a severe shortage of school resources, especially teachers. In response to this shortage, many developing countries are compromising the quality of their teacher labor force by hiring underpaid and underprepared teachers on a contract basis. But teacher quality is a crucial determinant of student learning; by compromising the quality of their teachers, these countries may be compromising the quality of their children’s learning. As this type of teacher hiring increasingly becomes a norm in developing countries, it becomes important to ask: How is this reliance on contract-teachers impacting student learning? What local or national responses may be available to mediate these implications? These questions are surprisingly under-researched despite their immediate relevance to education policy in developing countries. My study will address this gap in our knowledge using a unique dataset from eight francophone African countries where significant proportions of teachers are already hired on a contract basis. I will use propensity score matching and hierarchical linear models to analyze variations in policy and practices within and across countries to address these questions.

About Amita Chudgar

Amita Chudgar is an assistant professor in the department of educational administration at Michigan State University’s college of education and a core faculty member in the college's education policy program. At MSU, she greatly enjoys working closely with graduate students and teaching courses on international comparative education, economics of education and research methods in education. She is currently also serving as the founding chair of the South Asia Special Interest Group at the Comparative and International Education Society. Prior to joining Michigan State University, Chudgar received a PhD in Economics of Education from Stanford University, an M.Phil. in Development Studies from Cambridge University, and a Masters and a Bachelors in quantitative Economics from Mumbai University. As an economist of education, she is especially interested in education policy issues in developing countries. Chudgar uses large-scale national and multi-national datasets to identify the determinants of unequal access to education and unequal learning achievement within and across nations. Her current work aims to examine how educational systems in developing countries can best respond to the recent and massive surges in enrollments due to Education for All initiatives. Some of her recent research has been published in American Educational Research Journal and Comparative Education Review. With a colleague, she is now concluding a series of papers funded by an AERA research grant that examine the role and importance of school background and teacher characteristics in improving learning levels cross-nationally.