Assessing Bias in Standards and Curricular Materials Toolkit
Category: Student Learning
We present experimental evidence on a civic education program in Liberia's public primary schools across 140 schools serving grades 3 and 4. The program provided new civic textbooks, teacher training, bi-weekly instruction, and regular classroom monitoring. After one school year, treatment students scored 0.31SDs higher on civic knowledge assessments. Gains were concentrated in factual knowledge (0.40 SDs) and were particularly pronounced among lower-performing and rural students. However, it had no impact on students' civic engagement. Classroom observation data reveal that instruction was heavily textbook-centered, in contrast to the participatory models common in high-income countries.
Keywords
civic education, curriculum, Liberia, Sub-Saharan Africa
Education level
Topics
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/bevm-rf49
