research on education system

Global education trends and research to follow in 2022

Subscribe to the center for universal education bulletin, emily gustafsson-wright , emily gustafsson-wright senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education helen shwe hadani , helen shwe hadani former brookings expert kathy hirsh-pasek , kathy hirsh-pasek senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education maysa jalbout , maysa jalbout nonresident fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education elizabeth m. king , elizabeth m. king nonresident senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education jennifer l. o’donoghue , jennifer l. o’donoghue deputy director - center for universal education , senior fellow - global economy and development brad olsen , brad olsen senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education jordan shapiro , jordan shapiro nonresident fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education emiliana vegas , and emiliana vegas former co-director - center for universal education , former senior fellow - global economy and development rebecca winthrop rebecca winthrop director - center for universal education , senior fellow - global economy and development.

January 24, 2022

• 12 min read

As the third calendar year of the pandemic begins, 2022 promises to be an important one—especially for education. Around the world, education systems have had to contend with sporadic closures, inequitable access to education technology and other distance learning tools, and deep challenges in maintaining both students’ and teachers’ physical and emotional health. At the same time, not all of the sudden changes precipitated by the pandemic have been bad—with some promising new innovations, allies, and increased attention on the field of global education emerging over the past three years. The key question is whether 2022 and the years ahead will lead to education transformation or will students, teachers, and families suffer long-lasting setbacks?

In the Center for Universal Education, our scholars take stock of the trends, policies, practices, and research that they’ll be closely keeping an eye on this year and likely in the many to come.

More than ever, in 2022 it will be critical to focus on strengthening the fabric of our global education system in order to achieve positive outcomes—particularly through an increased focus on data-informed decisionmaking. We have seen a renewed focus on different forms of data that are critical to enhanced education outcomes, such as real-time performance data, which allow teachers and other decisionmakers to course-adjust to the needs of learners to better support their educational journeys. Additionally, high-quality program cost data are needed for decisionmakers to plan, budget, and choose the most cost-effective interventions.

One way we are seeing these areas strengthened is through innovative financing for education, such as impact bonds , which require data to operate at full potential. This year, pooled funding through outcomes funds—a scaled version of impact bonds—should make a particularly big splash. The Education Outcomes Fund organization is slated to launch programs in Ghana and Sierra Leone, and we also expect to see the launch of country-specific outcomes funds for education such as OFFER (Outcome Fund For Education Results) in Colombia, the Back-to-School Outcomes Fund in India, and another fund in Chile. At the Center for Universal Education, we will be following these innovations closely and look forward to the insights that they will bring to the education sector.

As we look ahead to 2022, one continued challenge for many families is navigating the uncharted territory of supporting children’s learning with a growing number of school closures . But while the pandemic forced an abrupt slowdown in modern life, it also provided an opportunity to reexamine how we can prioritize learning and healthy development both in and out of school. Moreover, the cascading effects of the pandemic are disproportionally affecting families living in communities challenged by decades of discrimination and disinvestment—and are very likely to widen already existing educational inequities in worrisome ways.

One innovative approach to providing enriching learning opportunities beyond school walls that address the inequities in our current systems is Playful Learning Landscapes (PLL) —installations and programming that promote children and families’ learning through play in the public realm. A current focus for PLL at Brookings is measuring the impact of these spaces to show that PLL works and to garner greater investment in them. To that end, Brookings and its partners developed a framework and an initial set of indicators from both the learning science and placemaking perspectives to help assess the positive effects of PLL on learning outcomes , as well as its potential to enhance social interaction and public life in revitalized spaces. The framework will continue to evolve as we learn from communities that are testing the expansion and adaptation of PLL—this important work is just beginning.

The pandemic highlighted several trends in education that promise to be the focus of future policy and practice in 2022 and beyond: the importance of skills that supplement the learning of content, systemic inequities in education systems, and the role of digital technology in the education of the future. It has become increasingly clear that the memorization of content alone will not prepare children for the jobs and society of the future. As noted in a Brookings report “ A new path for education reform, ” in an automated world, manufacturing jobs and even preliminary medical diagnoses or legal contracts can be performed by computers and robots. Students who can work collaboratively—with strong communication skills, critical thinking, and creative innovation—will be highly valued. Mission statements from around the globe are starting to promote a “whole child” approach to education that will encourage the learning of a breadth of skills better aligning the education sector with needs from the business sector.

The past year also demonstrated weaknesses and inequalities inherent in remote learning that I’ll be closely tracking in the years to come. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that virtual learning presents risks to social-emotional learning . Further, research suggests that academic progress during the pandemic slowed such that students demonstrated only 35 to 50 percent of the gains they normally achieve in mathematics and 60 to 68 percent in reading. The losses are not experienced uniformly , with children from underresourced environments falling behind their more resourced peers.

The failure of remote learning also raises questions about the place of digital learning in the classroom. Learning will become more and more hybrid over time, and keeping an eye on advances in technology—especially regarding augmented reality and the metaverse—will be particularly important, as both have real consequences for the classrooms.

In 2022, I’ll be focusing on one group of children in particular–refugees–who are among those children who have historically had the least access to preprimary education. The pandemic has affected them disproportionally , as it pushed them and their families into poverty and deprived them from most forms of education during the school closures.

While much more investment in early childhood education research and evaluation is needed to improve evidence and channel scarce resources effectively, there are a few important efforts to watch. A report commissioned by Theirworld last year provided an overview of the sector and focused on a critical gap and opportunity to address the inequity of access to early childhood education in refugee settings by better supporting teachers and community workers. This year, Theirworld and partners will pursue two of the report’s recommendations–making the science of early childhood brain development widely accessible in refugee communities and building the evidence base on what works in supporting early childhood education teachers and the young refugee children they teach.

The report was informed by existing initiatives including Ahlan Simsim, which in 2017 received the largest known grant to early education in a humanitarian context. While the evaluation of Ahlan Simsim will not be complete until two more years, the Global Ties for Children research center, Sesame Workshop, and the International Rescue Committee will share critical insights into their learning to date in a forthcoming episode of the podcast the Impact Room .

This coming year I’ll be focused on how education systems can prepare for future disruptions, whatever the cause, with more deliberateness. The past two years of the COVID pandemic have seen education systems throughout the globe struggle to find ways to continue schooling. Additionally, there have been other public health crises, natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and severe storms, and wars and terrorism in different parts of the world that have gravely tested school systems’ ability to minimize the cost of catastrophes on students and teachers. Finding safer temporary learning places outside the school and using technologies such as radio, TV broadcasts, and online learning tools have helped, but quick fixes with little preparation are not effective approaches for sustaining and advancing learning gains.

In the age of broadcast and digital technologies, there are many more ways to meet the challenges of future emergency situations, but life- and education-saving solutions must be part of the way school systems operate—built into their structures, their staffing, their budgets, and their curricula. By preparing for the emergencies that are likely to happen, we can persevere to reach learning goals for all children.

By the close of 2021, a number of studies began to document the impact of COVID-19 on girls’ educational trajectories across the Global South. These studies point to promising trends –lower than expected dropout rates and reenrollment rates similar to (if not greater than) those of boys–while still highlighting the particular challenges faced by adolescent girls and girls living in poverty , conflict, and crisis .

In 2022, it will be critical to continue to generate more nuanced evidence—carefully considering questions such as “for which girls,” “where,” “when,” and “why.” And then we must put this knowledge to use to protect and promote girls’ and young women’s rights not just to education, but to participate and thrive in the world around them. Ensuring that marginalized girls and young women become transformative agents in improving their lives and livelihoods—as well as those of their families and communities—requires us to develop new strategies for learning and acting together.

At the Center for Universal Education, this means strengthening our work with local leaders in girls’ education: promoting gender-transformative research through the Echidna Global Scholars Program ; expanding the collective impact of our 33 Echidna alumni; and co-constructing a learning and action community to explore together how to improve beliefs, practices, programs, and policies so that marginalized adolescent girls’ can develop and exercise agency in pursuing their own pathways.

Going into year three of COVID-19, in 2022 I’m interested to see whether countries will transform their education systems or largely leave them the way they are. Will leaders of education systems tinker around the edges of change but mostly attempt a return to a prepandemic “normal,” or will they take advantage of this global rupture in the status quo to replace antiquated educational institutions and approaches with significant structural improvement?

In relation to this, one topic I’ll be watching in particular is how countries treat their teachers. How will policymakers, the media, parent councils, and others frame teachers’ work in 2022? In which locations will teachers be diminished versus where will they be defended as invaluable assets? How will countries learn from implications of out-of-school children (including social isolation and child care needs)? Will teachers remain appreciated in their communities but treated poorly in the material and political conditions of their work? Or will countries hold them dear—demanding accountability while supporting and rewarding them for quality work?

I’m interested in learning more about how pandemic lockdowns have impacted students. So far, we’ve only gotten very general data dealing with questions that are, in my opinion, too simple to be worthwhile. It’s all been about good and bad, positive and negative, learning loss and achievement. But I’ll be watching for more nuanced studies, which ask about specific ways increased time away from school has impacted social-emotional development. How do those results differ between gender, race, socioeconomic status, and geographic location? I suspect we’re going to learn some things about the relationship between home environment and school environment that will challenge a lot of our taken-for-granted assumptions.

In 2022, I’ll be tracking emerging evidence on the impact of the COVID-19 school closures on children and youth. Several researchers, including my co-authors and me , have provided estimates of the school closures’ impact on student learning losses, unemployment, future earnings, and productivity globally. But only recently are researchers analyzing actual evidence of learning losses , and an early systematic review finds that “Although robust and empirical research on COVID-19-related student learning loss is limited, learning loss itself may not be.”

Likewise, there is little rigorous reviews of remote learning tools’ and platforms’ impact on student learning during the school closures. After the pandemic, it is almost certain that remote and hybrid learning will continue—at a minimum occasionally and often periodically—in primary, secondary, and post-secondary education. It is urgent that we build the evidence base to help education decisionmakers and practitioners provide effective, tailored learning experiences for all students.

Finally, a key issue for education is how to redesign curricula so that this generation (and future generations) of students gain a key set of skills and competencies required for technologically-advancing labor markets and societies. While foundational literacy and numeracy skills continue to be essential for learning, a strong foundational knowledge of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics is ever more important in the 21st century, and I look forward to contributing research this year to help make the case for curricula redesign efforts.

I will be interested to see how parent-teacher relationships progress after the pandemic has (hopefully) faded into the background. COVID-19 has had an inescapable impact on the way we deliver education globally, but none more so than on how education leaders and teachers interact with students and their families.

For the past three years, I have been studying family-school collaboration. Together with my colleagues and partners, we have surveyed nearly 25,000 parents and 6,000 teachers in 10 countries around the world and found that the vast majority of teachers, parents, and caregivers want to work together more closely. Quality family-school collaboration has the potential to significantly improve educational outcomes, spur important discussions on the overall purpose of school, and smooth the path for schools and families to navigate change together. From community schools in New Mexico  to text message updates from teachers in India , new innovations are popping up every day—in every corner of the world. I’m excited to see what the future holds for family-school collaboration!

Education Technology Global Education

Global Economy and Development

Center for Universal Education

Mary Burns, Rebecca Winthrop, Michael Trucano, Natasha Luther

October 15, 2024

Anusha Bharadwaj

October 14, 2024

Rachel Dyl, Ghulam Omar Qargha

October 4, 2024

The 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2022

In our annual ritual, we pored over hundreds of educational studies and pulled out the most impactful—from a new study on the sneaky power of sketchnotes to research that linked relationships and rigor.

Your content has been saved!

This past year didn’t feel normal, exactly, but compared with the last few trips around the sun, well—it sufficed. In 2021, when we sat down to write our annual edition of the research highlights, we were in the throes of postpandemic recovery and wrote about the impact of a grueling year in which burnout and issues of mental and physical health affected educators everywhere.

This year, we crossed our fingers and turned to best practices once again, reviewing hundreds of studies to identify the most impactful and insightful educational strategies we could find.

What turned up?

We found evidence that sheds new light on the misunderstood power of brain breaks, took a close look at research that finds a surprising—even counterintuitive—rationale for teachers to focus on relationships, and located both the humor and the merit in asking kids to slither like a snake as they learn about the “sss” sound of the letter S .

All that, and a lot more too, in our once-a-year roundup that follows.

1. There’s No Conflict Between Relationships and Rigor

Observers sometimes assume that teachers who radiate empathy, kindness, and openness are “soft” and can be taken advantage of by students. But new research shows that when you signal that you care about kids, they’re willing to go the extra mile, giving you the flexibility to assign more challenging school work.

That’s the main takeaway from a 2022 study that examined teaching practices in 285 districts, comparing relationship-building strategies with the flexibility that teachers had in assigning challenging and complex work. The researchers found that the most effective teachers build their classrooms by getting to know their students, being approachable, and showing that they enjoy the work—and then deftly translate emotional capital into academic capital.

“When students feel teachers care about them, they work harder, engage in more challenging academic activities, behave more appropriately for the school environment, are genuinely happy to see their teacher, and meet or exceed their teacher’s expectations,” the researchers conclude.

2. Highlighting Isn’t Very Effective Until Teachers Step In

Students often highlight the wrong information and may rely on their deficient highlighting skills as a primary study strategy, leading to poor learning outcomes, a new analysis of 36 studies suggests. As little as two hours of tutoring, however, can dramatically improve their capabilities.

The researchers determined that “learner-generated highlighting” tended to improve retention of material, but not comprehension. When students were taught proper highlighting techniques by teachers, however—for example, how to distinguish main ideas from supporting ideas—they dramatically improved their academic performance. Crucially, “when highlighting is used in conjunction with another learning strategy” like “graphic organizers or post-questions,” its effectiveness soars, the researchers said.

The need for explicit teaching may be linked to changing reading habits as students graduate from stories and fables to expository texts, which require them to navigate unfamiliar text formats, the researchers note. To bring kids up to speed, show them “examples of appropriate and inappropriate highlighting,” teach them to “highlight content relatively sparingly,” and provide examples of follow-on tactics like summarizing their insights to drive deeper comprehension.

3. A Landmark Study Strikes a Resounding Note for Inclusion

When the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act called for greater inclusion—mandating that students with disabilities receive support in the “least restrictive environment”—one goal was to ensure that educational accommodations didn’t interfere with the students’ social and emotional development in classrooms full of their peers. The law also confronted age-old prejudices and established a binding legal obligation in favor of inclusion.

But thus far, rigorous evidence of the academic benefits has been thin.

Now a new large-scale study appears to put the matter beyond dispute. When researchers tracked nearly 24,000 adolescents who qualified for special education, they discovered that spending a majority of the day—at least 80 percent—in general education classes improved reading scores by a whopping 24 points and math scores by 18 points, compared with scores of their more isolated peers with similar disabilities.

“Treat the general education classroom as the default classroom,” the researchers firmly state, and push for separate accommodations only when all other options have been exhausted.

4. Sketchnotes and Concept Maps Work—Even Better Than You Might Think

Simple concept maps, sketchnotes, and other annotated jottings—akin to doodling with a purpose—can facilitate deeper comprehension of materials than more polished drawings, a new study finds.

Representational drawings, such as a simple diagram of a cell, may help students remember factual information, the researchers explain, but they “lack features to make generalizations or inferences based on that information.” Organizational drawings that link concepts with arrows, annotations, and other relational markings give students a clearer sense of the big picture, allow them to visualize how ideas are connected, and provide a method for spotting obvious gaps in their understanding. On tests of higher-order thinking, fifth graders who made organizational drawings outperformed their peers who tried representational drawings by 300 percent.

To reap the benefits in class, have students start with simple diagrams to help remember the material, and then move them up to sketchnotes and concept maps as they tease out connections to prior knowledge.

5. Brain Breaks Are Misunderstood (and Underutilized)

Conventional wisdom holds that the development of a skill comes from active, repeated practice: It’s the act of dribbling a basketball that ultimately teaches the basketball star.

But recent studies reveal that the intervals between practice sessions are at least as crucial. In 2021, researchers used brain scans to observe neural networks as young adults learned how to type. During breaks, the brains of the participants appeared to head back to the keyboards, unconsciously replaying the typing sequences over and over again at high rates of speed as they flipped the material between processing and memory centers dozens of times in the span of 10 seconds. The researchers concluded that brain breaks play “just as important a role as practice in learning a new skill.”

In 2022, we learned that the kinds of breaks make a difference, too. One study compared in-classroom breaks like drawing or building puzzles with outdoor breaks like running or playing in sandboxes. In a nod to the power of movement—and free time—it was the kids playing outside who returned to class ready to learn, probably because indoor games, like indoor voices, required children to engage in more self-regulation, the researchers speculated. Meanwhile, an analysis examining “green breaks” —brief strolls in a park or visits to a school garden—concluded that students who partook in the activities performed better on tests of attention and working memory.

Depriving kids of regular breaks, it turns out, is a threat to the whole proposition of learning. To commit lessons to memory, the brain demands its own time—which it sets aside to clean up and consolidate new material.

6. On Classroom Design, an Argument for Caution—and Common Sense

When it comes time to decorate their classrooms, teachers often find themselves on the horns of a dilemma: Should they aim for Pinterest-worthy interior design or opt for blank walls on the strength of research that emphasizes the risks of distracting students?

A study published in February this year argues for minimalism. Researchers tracked the on-task behavior of K–2 students and concluded that visually ”streamlined” classrooms produced more focused students than “decorated” ones. During short read-alouds about topics like rainbows and plate tectonics, for example, young kids in classrooms free of “charts, posters, and manipulatives” were paying attention at significantly higher rates.

But it might not be a simple question of more or less. A 2014 study confirmed that posters of women scientists or diverse historical figures, for example, can improve students’ sense of belonging. And a recent study that observed 3,766 children in 153 schools concluded that classrooms that occupied a visual middle ground—neither too cluttered nor too austere—produced the best academic outcomes. A 2022 study reached similar conclusions.

Classroom decoration can alter academic trajectories, the research suggests, but the task shouldn’t stress teachers out. The rules appear to be relatively straightforward: Hang academically relevant, supportive work on the walls, and avoid the extremes—working within the broad constraints suggested by common sense and moderation.

7. For Young Children, the Power of Play-Based Learning

Children aren’t miniature adults, but a bias toward adult perspectives of childhood, with its attendant schedules and routines, has gradually exerted a stranglehold on our educational system nonetheless, suggests the author and early childhood educator Erika Christakis.

How can we let little kids be little while meeting the academic expectations of typical schools? A new analysis of 39 studies spanning several decades plots a middle path for educators, highlighting the way that play gently guided by adults, often called play-based learning, can satisfy both objectives.

Teachers of young students can have a “learning goal” in mind, but true play-based learning should incorporate wonder and exploration, be child-led when possible, and give students “freedom and choice over their actions and play behavior,” the researchers assert. Interrupt the flow of learning only when necessary: gently nudge students who might find activities too hard or too easy, for example. The playful approach improved early math and task-switching skills, compared with more traditional tactics that emphasize the explicit acquisition of skills, researchers concluded.

To get the pedagogy right, focus on relationships and ask questions that prompt wonder. “Rich, open-ended conversation is critical,” Christakis told Edutopia in a 2019 interview —children need time "to converse with each other playfully, to tell a rambling story to an adult, to listen to high-quality literature and ask meaningful questions.”

8. A Better Way to Learn Your ABCs

Getting young kids to match a letter to its corresponding sound is a first-order reading skill. To help students grasp that the letter c makes the plosive “cuh” sound in car , teachers often use pictures as scaffolds or have children write the letter repeatedly while making its sound.

A new study suggests that sound-letter pairs are learned much more effectively when whole-body movements are integrated into lessons. Five- and 6-year-olds in the study spent eight weeks practicing movements for each letter of the alphabet, slithering like a snake as they hissed the sibilant “sss” sound, for example. The researchers found that whole-body movement improved students’ ability to recall letter-sound pairings and doubled their ability to recognize hard-to-learn sounds—such as the difference between the sounds that c makes in cat and sauce —when compared with students who simply wrote and spoke letter-sound pairings at their desks.

The approach can make a big difference in the acquisition of a life-changing skill. Educators should “incorporate movement-based teaching” into their curricula, giving special consideration to “whole-body movement,” the researchers conclude.

9. Why Learners Push the Pause Button

Some of the benefits of videotaped lessons are so self-evident that they hide in plain sight.

When teaching students foundational concepts, a video lesson equipped with a simple pause button, for example, may allow students to reset cognitively as they reach their attentional limits, a 2022 study concluded. Pause buttons, like rewind buttons, are also crucial for learners who encounter “complex learning materials,” have “low prior knowledge,” or exhibit “low working memory capacities.”

Increasingly, the intrinsic value of targeted video lessons is borne out in research. In a feature on Edutopia , we looked at research suggesting that video learning supported self-pacing and flexible, 24/7 access to lessons; that questions embedded in videos improved academic performance, increased note-taking, and reduced stress (see these 2015 and 2020 studies); and that video versions of lectures tended to “make content more coherent ” to students.

To modernize their classrooms, teachers might record their most important lessons and make them available to students as study aids so they can pause, rewind, and review to their hearts’ content.

10. An Authoritative Study of Two High-Impact Learning Strategies

Spacing and retrieval practices are two of the most effective ways to drive long-term retention, confirms an authoritative 2022 review spanning hundreds of studies on the topic—and students should know how and why the strategies are effective.

In the review, researchers explain that students who prefer techniques like reading and rereading material in intense cram sessions are bound to fail. Instead, students should think of learning as a kind of “fitness routine” during which they practice recalling the material from memory and space out their learning sessions over time. Teaching kids to self-quiz or summarize from memory—and then try it again—is the crucial first step in disabusing students of their “false beliefs about learning.”

The effect sizes are hard to ignore. In a 2015 study , for example, third-grade students who studied a lesson about the sun and then reread the same material scored 53 percent on a follow-up test, the equivalent of a failing grade, while their peers who studied it once and then answered practice questions breezed by with an 87 percent score. And in a 2021 study , middle school students who solved a dozen math problems spread out across three weeks scored 21 percentage points higher on a follow-up math test than students who solved all 12 problems on the same day.

Advertisement

How can education systems improve? A systematic literature review

• Published: 07 April 2022
• Volume 24 , pages 479–499, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

• Ignacio Barrenechea   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4673-3862 1 ,
• Jason Beech 2 &
• Axel Rivas 1  

2667 Accesses

13 Citations

11 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

Understanding what contributes to improving a system will help us tackle the problems in education systems that usually fail disproportionately in providing quality education for all, especially for the most disadvantage sectors of the population. This paper presents the results of a qualitative systematic literature review aimed at providing a comprehensive overview of what education research can say about the factors that promote education systems’ improvement. This literature is emerging as a topic of empirical research that merges comparative education and school effectiveness studies as standardized assessments make it possible to compare results across systems and time. To examine and synthesize the papers included in this review we followed a thematic analysis approach. We identify, analyze, and report patterns in the papers included in this systematic review. From the coding process, four drivers for system improvement emerged: (1) system-wide approaches; (2) human capital; (3) governance and macro–micro level bridges; and (4) availability of resources.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save.

• Get 10 units per month
• Download Article/Chapter or eBook
• 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
• Cancel anytime

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Background, Aims, and Theories of the Comparative Large-Scale Studies in Education

Background, Aims and Theories of the Comparative Large-Scale Studies in Education

Comparing Systems

For example, Improving schools https://journals.sagepub.com/aims-scope/IMP .

School effectiveness and school improvement https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=nses20 .

For example, International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement https://www.icsei.net/about-icsei/ .

Our search countries were Albania, Qatar, Estonia, Portugal, Poland, Peru, Ireland, Russia, Israel, and Slovenia.

Addey, C., Sellar, S., Steiner-Khamsi, G., Lingard, B., & Verger, A. (2017). The rise of international large-scale assessments and rationales for participation.  Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education ,  47 (3), 434–452.

Alves, F. (2008). Educational policies and school performance in the Brazilian capitals of states. Cadernos De Pesquisa, 38 (34), 413–440.

Article   Google Scholar  

Arnove, R. F. (2015). Comparative education: Dimensions and trends: A contribution to the 50th anniversary celebration of the Japan comparative education society. Comparative Education, 2015 (50), 168–177.

Auld, E., & Morris, P. (2016). PISA, policy and persuasion: Translating complex conditions into education' best practice'. Comparative Education , 52 (2), 202–229. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2016.1143278 .

Barber, M., Kihn, P., & Moffit, A. (2011). Deliverology 101: A field guide for educational leaders . Corwin Press.

Barber, M., & Mourshed, M. (2007). How the world’s best-performing school systems come out on top . McKinsey & Company.

Becker, G. S. (1976). The economic approach to human behavior . University of Chicago Press.

Beech, J., & Lista, E. (2012). Flowing Discourses and Border Crossing: The Slogan of ‘Respect for Diversity’in Latin America. In World Yearbook of Education 2012 (pp. 391–410). Routledge.

Beech, J., & Rizvi, F. (2017). Revisiting Jullien in an era of globalisation. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education , 47 (3), 374–387.

Betts, J. R., Zau, A., & King, K. (2005). From blueprint to reality: San Diego’s education reforms . Public Policy Institute of California.

Bin Mahfooz, S., & Hovde, K. (2010). Successful education reform: lessons from Poland.  ECA Knowledge Brief ,  34 (11).

Boman, B. (2020). What makes Estonia and Singapore so good? Globalisation, Societies and Education, 18 (2), 181–193.

Booth, A., Papaioannou, D., & Sutton, A. (2012). Systematic approaches to a successful literature review . Sage Publications.

Campbell, C. (2020). Educational equity in Canada: The case of Ontario’s strategies and actions to advance excellence and equity for students. School Leadership & Management , 1–20.

Carvalho, L. M., Costa, E., & Gonçalves, C. (2017). Fifteen years looking at the mirror: On the presence of PISA in education policy processes (Portugal, 2000–2016). European Journal of Education, 52 (2), 154–166.

Coffield, F. (2012). Why the McKinsey reports will not improve school systems. Journal of Education Policy, 27 (1), 131–149.

Coffield, F., & Williamson, B. (2011). From Exam Factories to Communities of Discovery. Adults Learning, 23 (2), 24–25.

Cogan, L. S., Schmidt, W. H., & Wiley, D. E. (2001). Who takes what math and in which track? Using TIMSS to characterize US students’ eighth-grade mathematics learning opportunities. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 23 (4), 323–341.

Cohen, D. K., & Spillane, J. P. (1992). Chapter 1: Policy and practice: The relations between governance and instruction. Review of research in education , 18 (1), 3–49. American Educational Research Association.

Cox, C. (2004). Innovation and reform to improve the quality of primary education: Chile. Unpublished manuscript, Ministry of Education, Santiago .

Crato, N. (2021). Setting up the Scene: Lessons Learned from PISA 2018 Statistics and Other International Student Assessments. In  Improving a Country’s Education  (pp. 1–24). Springer, Cham.

Cueto, S., Miranda, A., León, J., & Vásquez, M. C. (2016b). Education trajectories: From early childhood to early adulthood in Peru.

Cueto, S., León, J., & Muñoz, I. G. (2016a). Conductas, estrategias y rendimiento en lectura en PISA: análisis para el Perú. REICE: Revista Iberoamericana sobre Calidad, Eficacia y Cambio en Educación , 14 (3), 5–31.

David, J. L., & Talbert, J. E. (2012). Turning around a high-poverty school district: Learning from Sanger Unified’s success. SH Cowell Foundation .

Deaton, A. (2020). Randomization in the tropics revisited: A theme and eleven variations . Working Paper No. 27600. National Bureau Of Economic Research.

Dhaliwal, I., Duflo, E., Glennerster, R., & Tulloch, C. (2013). Comparative costeffectiveness analysis to inform policy in developing countries: a general framework with applications for education. Education policy in developing countries, 17 , 285–338.

Dinham, S., Crowther, F., Robinson, V. M., McNaughton, S., & Timperley, H. (2011). Building capacity in a self‐managing schooling system: The New Zealand experience. Journal of Educational Administration .

Dykstra, T. (2006). High performance and success in education in Flemish Belgium and the Netherlands . National Center on Education and the Economy.

Edwards, D. B., Jr. (2018). Global education policy, impact evaluations, and alternatives: The political economy of knowledge production . Springer.

Elmore, R. (2007). Educational improvement in Victoria. Unpublished internal communication.

Elmore, R. F., & Burney, D. (1998). Continuous improvement in community district# 2 . University of Pittsburgh, HPLC Project, Learning Research, and Development Center.

Fazlagić, J., & Erkol, A. (2015). Knowledge mobilisation in the Polish education system. Journal of Education for Teaching, 41 (5), 541–554.

Feniger, Y., & Lefstein, A. (2014). How not to reason with PISA data: An ironic investigation. Journal of Education Policy, 29 (6), 845–855.

Fernandez Cano, A. (2016). A methodological critique of the PISA evaluations. Relieve, 22 (1), 1–16. Disponible en: https://www.uv.es/RELIEVE/v22n1/RELIEVEv22n1_M15eng.pdf .

Fleisch, B. (2016). System-wide improvement at the instructional core: Changing reading teaching in South Africa. Journal of Educational Change, 17 (4), 437–451.

Fuhrman, S. (1993). Designing coherent education policy: Improving the system . Jossey-Bass.

Fullan, M., & Rincon-Gallardo, S. (2016). Developing high-quality public education in Canada: The case of Ontario. In Global Education Reform (pp. 169–193). Routledge.

Fullan, M. (2016). The elusive nature of whole system improvement in education. Journal of Educational Change, 17 (4), 539–544.

Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory . Aldine.

Gómez, R. L., & Suárez, A. M. (2020). Do inquiry-based teaching and school climate influence science achievement and critical thinking? Evidence from PISA 2015. International Journal of STEM Education, 7 (1), 1–11.

Graczewski, C., Knudson, J., & Holtzman, D. J. (2009). Instructional leadership in practice: What does it look like, and what influence does it have? Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, 14 (1), 72–96.

Hallinger, P., & Heck, R. H. (2011). Collaborative leadership and school improvement: Understanding the impact on school capacity and student learning. In International handbook of leadership for learning (pp. 469–485). Springer.

Hanushek, E. A. & Woessmann, L. (2007). Calidad de la educación y crecimiento económico . En Documento N° 39. PREAL.

Harris, A. (2010). Leading system transformation. School Leadership and Management, 30 (3), 197–207.

Harris, A., & Jones, M. S. (2017). Professional learning communities: A strategy for school and system improvement? Wales Journal of Education, 19 (1), 16–38.

Hood, C. (1991). A public management for all seasons? Public Administration, 69 (1), 3–19.

Hopfenbeck, T. N., Lenkeit, J., El Masri, Y., Cantrell, K., Ryan, J., & Baird, J. A. (2018). Lessons learned from PISA: A systematic review of peer-reviewed articles on the programme for international student assessment. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 62 (3), 333–353.

Hopkins, D. (2007). Every school a great school: Realizing the potential of system leadership . McGraw-Hill Education.

Hopkins, D., Ahtaridou, E., Matthews, P., Posner, C., & Toledo, F. D. (2007). An analysis of the Mexican school system in light of PISA 2006 . London Centre for Leadership in Learning, University of London.

Hussen, T. (1994). Problems of Educational Reforms in a Changing Society. En A. Yogev y V. Rust (Eds.), International perspectives on education and society . Jai Press.

Jakubowski, M. (2015). Opening up opportunities: Education reforms in Poland. IBS Policy Paper, 1 , 2015.

Google Scholar  

Jessop, B. (1998). The narrative of enterprise and the enterprise of narrative: Place marketing and the entrepreneurial city. En The entrepreneurial city: Geographies of politics, regime and representation . John Wiley.

Lapping, M. B. (2004). Education in a restoration democracy: The case of Estonia. Citizenship, Social and Economics Education, 6 (2), 101–115.

Levin, B. (2012). System-wide improvement in education. Education Policy Series, 13 , 1–38.

Lindblad, S., Pettersson, D., & Popkewitz, T. S. (2015). International comparisons of school results: A systematic review of research on large-scale assessments in education . Swedish Research Council.

LLECE-UNESCO. (2013). Análisis del clima escolar: ¿Poderoso factor que explica el aprendizaje en América Latina y el Caribe? OREALC-UNESCO Santiago.

Masino, S., & Niño-Zarazúa, M. (2016). What works to improve the quality of student learning in developing countries? International Journal of Educational Development, 48 , 53–65.

McAleavy, T., & Elwick, A. (2016). School improvement in London: A global perspective . Education Development Trust. Highbridge House, 16–18 Duke Street, Reading Berkshire, England RG1 4RU, United Kingdom.

McEwan, P. J. (2015). Improving learning in primary schools of developing countries: A meta-analysis of randomized experiments. Review of Educational Research, 85 (3), 353–394.

Mikk, J. (2015). Explaining the difference between PISA 2009 reading scores in Finland and Estonia. Educational Research and Evaluation, 21 (4), 324–342.

Morris, P. (2015). Comparative education, PISA, politics and educational reform: A cautionary note. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education , 45 (3), 470–474.

Morris, P. (1996). Asia’s four little tigers: A comparison of the role of education in their development. Comparative Education, 32 (1), 95–110.

Mourshed, M., Chijioke, C., & Barber, M. (2010). How the world’s most improved school systems keep getting better. McKinsey & Company (En español: Mourshed, M., Chijioke, C. y Barber, M. (2012). Cómo continúan mejorando los sistemas educativos de mayor progreso en el mundo. Documento N° 61. PREAL).

Murnane, R. J., & Ganimian, A. (2014). Improving educational outcomes in developing countries: Lessons from rigorous impact evaluations . Working Paper No. 20284. NBER.

Murphy, J., & Hallinger, P. (1988). Characteristics of instructionally effective school districts. The Journal of Educational Research, 81 (3), 175–181.

Nguyen, X. T., Roemmele, D., & Peel, D. (2013). Education reform in Vietnam: A critical analysis of inclusion and management discourses. Journal of Asian Critical Education , 2 .

Noah, H. J., & Eckstein, M. A. (1969). Toward a science of comparative education . Macmillan.

Nóvoa, A., & Yariv-Mashal, T. (2014). Comparative research in education: A model of governance or a historical journey. En T. Fenwick, E. Mangez y J. Ozga (Eds.), World yearbook of education 2014: Governing knowledge comparison, knowledge-based technologies and expertise in the regulation of education. Routledge.

O’Day, J. A., & Smith, M. S. (2016). Quality and equality in American education: Systemic problems, systemic solutions. In The dynamics of opportunity in America (pp. 297–358). Springer.

O’Day, J., & Quick, H. E. (2009). Assessing instructional reform in San Diego: A theory-based approach. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, 14 (1), 1–16.

OECD. (2019).  PISA 2018 assessment and analytical framework . PISA, OECD Publishing.  https://doi.org/10.1787/b25efab8-en .

Osborne, D., & Gaebler, T. (1992). Reinventing government . Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Osmond-Johnson, P., & Campbell, C. (2018). Transforming an education system through professional learning: Developing educational change at scale in Ontario. Educational Research for Policy and Practice, 17 (3), 241–256.

Pang, N. S. K., & Miao, Z. (2017). The roles of teacher leadership in Shanghai education success. Bulgarian Comparative Education Society .

Paterson, G. D. (2019). Improving student learning through professional learning communities: Employing a system-wide approach. Canadian Journal for New Scholars in Education/Revue canadienne des jeunes chercheures et chercheurs en éducation , 10 (1).

Porter, C. (2002). Measuring the content of instruction: Uses in research and practice. In 2002 Presidential address . University of Wisconsin.

Quick, H. E., Holtzman, D. J., & Chaney, K. R. (2009). Professional development and instructional practice: Conceptions and evidence of effectiveness. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, 14 (1), 45–71.

Rindermann, H., & Ceci, S. J. (2009). Educational policy and country outcomes in international cognitive competence studies. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4 (6), 551–568.

Rivas, A. (2015). América Latina después de PISA: Lecciones aprendidas sobre la educación en siete países . CIPPEC, Natura e Instituto Natura.

Rivas, A. et al. (2020): Las llaves de la educación. Estudio comparado sobre la mejora de los sistemas educativos subnacionales en América Latina, Fundación Santillana, Madrid.

Rivas, A., & Scasso, M. G. (2021). Low stakes, high risks: The problem of intertemporal validity of PISA in Latin America. Journal of Education Policy, 36 (2), 279–302.

Rizvi, F., & Beech, J. (2017). Global mobilities and the possibilities of a cosmopolitan curriculum. Curriculum Inquiry, 47 (1), 125–134.

Sahlberg, P. (2011). The fourth way of Finland. Journal of Educational Change, 12 (2), 173–185.

Sam, C., & Riggan, M. (2013). Building district capacity for system-wide instructional improvement in Cincinnati public schools. Working Paper. GE Foundation" Developing Futures "™ in Education Evaluation Series. Consortium for Policy Research in Education .

Schleicher, A. (2012). Preparing teachers and developing school leaders for the 21st century: Lessons from around the world . OECD Publishing. 2, rue Andre Pascal, F-75775 Paris Cedex 16, France.

Schleicher, A. (2018). How to build a 21st-century school system . OECD Publishing.

Schmidt, W. H., & Prawat, R. S. (2006). Curriculum coherence and national control of education: Issue or non-issue? Journal of Curriculum Studies, 38 (6), 641–658.

Schmidt, W. H., Wang, H. C., & McKnight, C. C. (2005). Curriculum coherence: An examination of US mathematics and science content standards from an international perspective. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 37 , 525–559.

Schneider, B. R., Estarellas, P. C., & Bruns, B. (2019). The politics of transforming education in Ecuador: Confrontation and continuity, 2006–2017. Comparative Education Review, 63 (2), 259–280.

Sellar, S., & Lingard, B. (2013). The OECD and the expansion of PISA: New global modes of governance in education. British Educational Research Journal, 40 (6), 917–936.

Snilstveit, B., Stevenson, J., Menon, R., Phillips, D., Gallagher, E., Geleen, M., et al. (2016). The impact of education programmes on learning and school participation in low-and middle-income countries.

Snipes, J., Doolittle, F., & Herlihy, C. (2002). Foundations for success: Case studies of how urban school systems improve student achievement. Council of the Great City Schools.

Snyder, H. (2019). Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines. Journal of Business Research, 104 , 333–339.

Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2019a). Randomized controlled trials: League leader in the hierarchy of evidence?. En R. Gorur y S. Sellar (Eds.), World yearbook of education 2019a: Comparative methodology in the era of big data and global networks . Routledge.

Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2019b). Conclusions: What policy-makers do with PISA. Understanding PISA’s attractiveness: Critical analyses in comparative policy studies , 233.

Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2016). New directions in policy borrowing research. Asia Pacific Education Review, 17 (3), 381–390.

Tan, C. (2019). Parental responses to education reform in Singapore, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Asia Pacific Education Review, 20 (1), 91–99.

Trace, A. (1961) What Ivan knows that Johnny doesn’t: A comparison of Soviet and American school programs. Harper.

Tucker, M. (Ed.). (2011). Surpassing Shanghai. An agenda for American education built on the world’s leading systems . Harvard Education Press.

Tyack, D. B. and Cuban, L. (1995). Tinkering toward utopia . Harvard University Press.

Valverde, G. A. (2014). Educational quality: global politics, comparative inquiry, and opportunities to learn. Comparative Education Review, 58 (4), 575–589.

Verger, A., Novelli, M., & Altinyelken, H. K. (2012). Global education policy and international development: An introductory framework.  Global education policy and international development: New agendas, issues and policies , 3–32.

Wenger, E., McDermott, R. A., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice: A guide to managing knowledge . Harvard Business Press.

Zavadsky, H. (2016). Bringing effective instructional practice to scale in American schools: Lessons from the Long Beach Unified School District. Journal of Educational Change, 17 (4), 505–527.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Universidad de San Andrés, Victoria, Argentina

Ignacio Barrenechea & Axel Rivas

Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia

Jason Beech

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ignacio Barrenechea .

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Barrenechea, I., Beech, J. & Rivas, A. How can education systems improve? A systematic literature review. J Educ Change 24 , 479–499 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-022-09453-7

Download citation

Accepted : 03 March 2022

Published : 07 April 2022

Issue Date : September 2023

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-022-09453-7

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Educational change
• System-wide improvement
• Comparative education
• International education
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research