Scaling for Success

The Problem

Governments and philanthropies around the world invest billions of dollars in education innovation pilots to improve teaching and learning, but even the most successful interventions struggle to scale and persist. Mandating something happen in the classroom does not ensure it happens, much less that it happens with fidelity, and little is known about what enable education innovations to successfully spread and persist across classrooms.  

Working with their long-time collaborators, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Elementary and Secondary Education Department (KPE&SED) and the Centre for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP), the research team has recently concluded a successful education pilot, Targeted Instruction in Pakistan (TIP). TIP helped teachers improve learning by 0.12-0.15 standard deviations for over 25,000 students in 1,000+ schools in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.  

Now that they know TIP works, the province is facing a real-time policy question: what can they do to maximize the chances of TIP being adopted in a cost effective and sustainable way? 

The Solution

By working with teachers and district leaders, the research team will identify the conditions that enable TIP to endure and spread widely across classrooms and schools – what the researchers call “organic scaling.” Specifically, the team will be co-designing multiple low-cost interventions with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa educators and CERP, including classroom-level supports, such as printed lesson plans for teachers, and school- or district-level interventions, such as revising teacher training or incentives to drive adoption.   

The Research

The team is taking a two-phased approach: step one is to use observational and qualitative methods to identify and co-design at least two promising low-cost interventions that could help proven practices from the TIP pilot to stay in use and spread among educators. Step two is to implement these interventions with teachers and headteachers and study the impact and student learning through a randomized, quantitative assessment.  

The Impact

This research is an important contribution to the emerging field of implementation science, examining how best to implement evidence-based policies to create positive change at scale. TIP has the potential to reach 4 million students in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa alone, and millions more elsewhere in Pakistan where educators have expressed interest in or are already piloting versions of TIP. The findings will also be relevant outside of Pakistan, particularly in South Asia, Africa, and other regions where the teachers, school leaders, and government officials may experience similar dynamics.  

The team will share findings globally, engaging policymakers across Pakistan, national education ministries, and international NGOs. They will produce easy-to-understand materials and practical tools and present their work at major international convenings of policymakers and practitioners.  

This research is beginning a new line of work within Harvard’s Center for International Development focused on implementation science and the scaling of effective educational innovations.