Achievement

• For example, teachers might point out how good grades can lead to access to college courses, apprenticeships, and the workplace.
• And in dwelling on the importance of GCSEs, teachers may also use messages that focus on the possible negative effects of failure.
• Fear appeals
  Messages from teachers that focus on failure are known as “fear appeals”: they can create a strong fear of failure in students.
• One way to do this is to give students a greater feeling of control over their learning and exams.

• Education was only accessible to children of women married to western traders, and it focused on teaching them how to read and write.
• The primary aim was to create an educated class to support and run colonial activities.
• We observed that assessment has primarily served accountability purposes, obscuring its function of improving students’ learning.

Influence of colonisation

• The West African Examinations Council, responsible for mandated tests in anglophone west African countries, including Ghana, was established by the British in 1950.
• Ghana’s assessment system still relies largely on this framework, as western universities require excellent scores on these tests for undergraduate admissions.

Political accountability

• Student assessments are used as political performance indicators and tools for public policy and political accountabiltiy.
• For example, over the past five years, the government has invested about US$5.8 million to buy past exam questions to assist students.
• As a result, they end up teaching with the primary motive of preparing students for these tests.

Free schooling

• To support inclusive and equitable access to education and increase enrolment rates, Ghana introduced a free senior high school policy in 2017.
• Yet disparities in access to and enrolment in secondary education persist between children from different socioeconomic backgrounds.
• Critics argue that the policy was hastily implemented for political reasons, lacking proper consideration of its long-term implications and costs.

Influence of high-stakes exam

The high-stakes nature of large-scale assessments in Ghana’s education system fosters disengagement among poor students and teachers. The focus on exams overshadows the intended learning goals of teaching and many other forms of assessment. Evaluation of teachers and schools is linked to student performance in tests. Teachers therefore tend to narrow their curriculum to what’s tested. This means:
Students from low socio-economic backgrounds and those with special learning needs often find themselves marginalised by these assessments. Ultimately, the results of large-scale assessments segregate students into categories of secondary schools, based on limited resources.

Future directions and policy implications

• To meet the country’s equity goals, the system should consider diverse indicators and assessments of student learning.
• Transforming Ghana’s testing culture to one that supports meaningful learning and equitable educational outcomes is a considerable challenge.

• India’s recent success in landing the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft on the Moon was technically demanding and occurred in a previously unexplored part of the Moon.
• As well as the scientific benefits, India has already enjoyed the significant attention that still accompanies high profile space missions, gaining news coverage across the globe.
• And does this type of success produce tangible national and international benefits beyond a few days in the media spotlight?

Jobs and development

• The success of Chandrayaan-3 will bring more of the high-skilled jobs that every economy – developed and developing – depends on for further growth.
• The development of a space industry within a country can have significant benefits to growing the economy, beyond the money initially invested.

Building international ties

• Working as a member of the global scientific community enables countries to use space exploration as a way to foster closer ties.
• It is possible for deeper diplomatic and economic relations to emerge from these bespoke scientific and technical arrangements.
• India already has close collaborative ties with the US.
• The success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission will not only help develop these ties but will help illustrate the value of India signing the Artemis Accords, an agreement fostering international cooperation to expand space exploration to Mars, and becoming a fully-fledged partner in the US programme to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon.

Modi’s global image

• The perception that under his leadership India is standing on the world stage because of its scientific and technical prowess will also play well domestically.
• Nonetheless, the international prestige that a successful lunar programme can bring is still a very attractive option for governments who are looking to boost their image both domestically and internationally, as well as providing an economic lift.

• Between 2019 and 2022, the Institute of Educational Sciences, the research and evaluation arm of the U.S. Education Department, distributed US$473 million in 255 grants to improve educational outcomes.
• In 2021, colleges and universities spent approximately $1.6 billion on educational research.
• The Educational Research Information Center, a federally run repository, houses 1.6 million educational research sources in over 1,000 scholarly journals.
• Each year, for instance, more than 15,000 educators and researchers gather to present or discuss educational research findings at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.

Growing gaps

• During the same period, NAEP outcomes show stagnated growth in reading achievement among fourth graders.
• By eighth grade, there is a greater gap in reading achievement between the highest- and lowest-achieving students.
• Some education experts have even suggested that the chances for progress get dimmer for students as they get older.
• Here are four things I believe can be done in order to make sure that educational research is actually being applied.

1. Build better relationships with school leaders

Educational researchers can reach out to school leaders before doing their research in order to design research based on the needs of schools and schoolchildren. If school leaders can see how educational research can specifically benefit their school community, they may be more likely to implement findings and recommendations from the research.

2. Make policy and practice part of the research process

• By implementing new policies and practices based on research findings, researchers can work with school leaders to do further research to see if the new policies and practices actually work.
• Through the fund, $679 million was distributed through 67 grants – and 12 of those 67 funded projects improved student outcomes.

3. Rethink how research impact is measured

As part of the national rankings for colleges of education – that is, the schools that prepare schoolteachers for their careers – engagement with public schools could be made a factor in the rankings. The rankings could also include measurable educational impact.

4. Rethink and redefine how research is distributed

• Research findings written in everyday language could be distributed at conferences frequented by public school teachers and in the periodicals that they read.
• If research findings are to make a difference, I believe there has to be a stronger focus on using research to bring about real-world change in public schools.