Inter-American Development Bank
facebook
twitter
youtube
linkedin
instagram
Abierto al públicoBeyond BordersCaribbean Development TrendsCiudades SosteniblesEnergía para el FuturoEnfoque EducaciónFactor TrabajoGente SaludableGestión fiscalGobernarteIdeas MatterIdeas que CuentanIdeaçãoImpactoIndustrias CreativasLa Maleta AbiertaMoviliblogMás Allá de las FronterasNegocios SosteniblesPrimeros PasosPuntos sobre la iSeguridad CiudadanaSostenibilidadVolvamos a la fuente¿Y si hablamos de igualdad?Home
Citizen Security and Justice Creative Industries Development Effectiveness Early Childhood Development Education Energy Envirnment. Climate Change and Safeguards Fiscal policy and management Gender and Diversity Health Labor and pensions Open Knowledge Public management Science, Technology and Innovation  Trade and Regional Integration Urban Development and Housing Water and Sanitation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Ideas Matter

  • HOME
  • CATEGORIES
    • Behavioral Economics
    • Environment and Climate Change
    • Macroeconomics and Finance
    • Microeconomics and Competitiveness
    • Politics and Institutions
    • Social Issues
  • Authors
  • Spanish

Wielding the Scientific Method For a More Skilled Population

April 26, 2017 by Julián Messina Leave a Comment


From the 554-foot high Washington Monument down Constitution Avenue towards the United States Congress in Washington, D.C., they marched by the thousands:  physicists, biologists, chemists, zoologists, economists, and scientists from virtually every other discipline. The first ever March for Science April 22, along with its teach-ins, and its companion events in hundreds of other cities around the world from Sydney to Seoul, was a celebration of science and evidence-based policy. And it resounded in a world where objectivity and facts have come under assault.

But the March was also a reminder. For certain disciplines, like education, where subjective opinion and fads customarily take precedence over evidence, it served notice that the scientific method matters. It matters deeply for policymakers deciding basic questions of national development.

Consider some of the basic interventions for boosting skills at the primary school level in Latin America and the Caribbean. Should governments reduce class size? Or should they expand the school day from four to seven hours? Few questions could be more important for building young minds. And few could be more in need of the scientific method to determine if they really work. Yet only a handful of evaluations ―none in Latin America and the Caribbean― have been conducted on the efficacy of reducing class size, and none on extending the school day. This makes no sense. For a region that might spend at least 50% more per student extending the school day alone, adopting such polices with no more than theoretical backing is shooting in the dark.

In mid-2017, the Research Department of the IDB will launch its upcoming flagship report Learning Better: Public Policy for Skills Development with an emphasis on  evidence-based solutions. The report will review all the stages of skills development. These include early childhood in the home; daycare; primary, secondary and university education and job training for adults. It will help guide policymakers through the steps for effectively evaluating interventions and review existing evidence to provide recommendations as to how governments can boost the abilities and productivity of their populations.

Cost-effectiveness is always a principal focus in this application of the scientific method. For example, parenting programs, which teach parents how to stimulate cognitive development in their young children using talk and play, are examined in numerous different contexts to provide a sense of what works best and at what price. So are cheap but successful interventions at the primary school level. This includes an extremely inexpensive program in Peru, which provides intrinsic motivation to students with a short lecture on how the brain, like a muscle, can always become stronger and better with practice. It has been shown to improve learning by 10-15% in the course of a year. An inexpensive program that provides detailed and standardized lesson plans to teachers, combatting disorganized schooling in the process, also has been shown to be highly effective.

Then there are the challenges of secondary education. Why is it that the region has become increasingly good at getting kids to school, using stimuli like conditional cash transfers, but still has so much trouble getting them to stay in school and graduate?  And if kids don’t stay in school how can we facilitate their transition to the labor market? What kind of inexpensive training programs in Latin America have been shown to help both high school graduates and dropouts access the formal sector? And how do these compare to more intensive apprenticeships in places like Austria, Germany, Australia and New Zealand?  The evidence for many different programs is presented. And so is the need for more study in areas where evidence is lacking.

Between 2000-2013 alone, the global health sector conducted 22,000 experimental evaluations. Billions of dollars were invested in empirically-oriented research to develop diagnostics and drugs that help cure disease and extend lifetimes. By contrast, only 900 evaluations were carried out around the world on potential skills-related interventions, according to research compiled in the upcoming flagship.

The new study seeks to combat that trend in the interests of Latin America and the Caribbean. “I need to advocate for the use of real, unbiased scientific facts in any policy decisions,” Michele Millham, a researcher in personalized medicine, told The New York Times before participating in the March on Science. In a similar spirit, the upcoming flagship, Learning Better: Public Policy for Skills Development, will advocate for the scientific method. It will provide guidance as to how to better employ it in the service of policymaking and lay out the case for the interventions that evidence shows to be most effective in nurturing minds from the beginning of life through schooling and beyond.


Filed Under: #Skills, Social Issues Tagged With: #education, #evidence, #publicpolicy, #science, #skills

Julián Messina

Julián Messina is a Lead Research Economist at the research department of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Prior to joining the IDB, he worked at the World Bank and the European Central Bank, and he has taught at the Universities of Barcelona GSE, Georgetown, Girona, Frankfurt and Mainz. His research interests include labor economics, applied macroeconomics and the economics of education. He is author of three books, including two World Bank Latin American Flagship Reports. His work has been published in academic journals including the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Economic Journal, Journal of the European Economic Association and Labour Economics, and he is often featured in popular blogs and media outlets including The Economist. He has extensive experience advising governments in Latin America, Europe and Asia. Dr. Messina obtained his PhD. in Economics at the European University Institute in 2002.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Follow Us

Subscribe

Search

Related posts

  • Curing Education’s Ills With Lessons From Medicine
  • When the Scientific Method Goes to School
  • For Latin American Learning, Money Isn’t the Problem
  • SkillsBank: The Sweeping New Website on Skills Development
  • When Children’s Skills Predict Their Adult Earnings

About this blog

The blog of the IDB's Research Department shares ideas that matter on public policy and development in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Footer

Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo
facebook
twitter
youtube
youtube
youtube

    Blog posts written by Bank employees:

    Copyright © Inter-American Development Bank ("IDB"). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons IGO 3.0 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives. (CC-IGO 3.0 BY-NC-ND) license and may be reproduced with attribution to the IDB and for any non-commercial purpose. No derivative work is allowed. Any dispute related to the use of the works of the IDB that cannot be settled amicably shall be submitted to arbitration pursuant to the UNCITRAL rules. The use of the IDB's name for any purpose other than for attribution, and the use of IDB's logo shall be subject to a separate written license agreement between the IDB and the user and is not authorized as part of this CC- IGO license. Note that link provided above includes additional terms and conditions of the license.


    For blogs written by external parties:

    For questions concerning copyright for authors that are not IADB employees please complete the contact form for this blog.

    The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDB, its Board of Directors, or the countries they represent.

    Attribution: in addition to giving attribution to the respective author and copyright owner, as appropriate, we would appreciate if you could include a link that remits back the IDB Blogs website.



    Privacy Policy

    Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

    Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo

    Aviso Legal

    Las opiniones expresadas en estos blogs son las de los autores y no necesariamente reflejan las opiniones del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, sus directivas, la Asamblea de Gobernadores o sus países miembros.

    facebook
    twitter
    youtube
    This site uses cookies to optimize functionality and give you the best possible experience. If you continue to navigate this website beyond this page, cookies will be placed on your browser.
    To learn more about cookies, click here
    X
    Manage consent

    Privacy Overview

    This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
    Necessary
    Always Enabled
    Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
    Non-necessary
    Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
    SAVE & ACCEPT