Fórum de Discussão: o retorno a uma utopia realizável - a Universidade do Minho como projecto aberto, participado, ao serviço do engrandecimento dos seus agentes e do desenvolvimento da sua região

sexta-feira, janeiro 19, 2007

“Student Achievement and University Classes: Effects of Attendance, Size, Peers, and Teachers”

”We examine the empirical determinants of student achievement in higher education, focusing our attention on its small-group teaching component (classes or seminars) and on the role of attendance, number of students per class, peers, and tutors. The empirical analysis is based on longitudinal administrative data from a major undergraduate program where students are allocated to class groups in a systematic way, but one which is plausibly uncorrelated with ability. Although, in simple specifications, we find positive returns to attendance and sizeable differences in the effectiveness of teaching assistants, most effects are not significant in specifications that include student fixed effects. We conclude that unobserved heterogeneity amongst students, even in an institution that imposes rigorous admission criteria and so has little observable heterogeneity, is apparently much more important than observable variation in inputs in explaining student outcomes.”

Pedro Martins (Queen Mary, University of London, CEG-IST Lisbon and IZA Bonn)
Ian Walker (University of Warwick, Princeton University and IZA Bonn)
Keywords: education production functions, attendance, class size, peer effects
Date: 2006-12 URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2490&r=edu

(resumo de “paper”, disponível no sítio referenciado)

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