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Bruns, Barbara

Human Development Department, Latin America and the Caribbean Region, World Bank
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Education Economics; Brazil; Education for All
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Human Development Department, Latin America and the Caribbean Region, World Bank
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Last updated: February 1, 2023
Biography
Barbara Bruns is lead economist in the Education Global Practice at the World Bank, specializing in research on education quality in Latin America and the Caribbean. She is lead author of the books Great Teachers: How to raise student learning in Latin America and the Caribbean, with Javier Luque (October 2014) and Achieving World Class Education in Brazil: the Next Agenda (2012), with David Evans and Javier Luque. She also co-authored Making Schools Work: New Evidence on Accountability Reforms (with Deon Filmer and Harry Patrinos, 2011), a review of global evidence on interventions to improve school quality.   From 2007-2009, Barbara was the first manager of the $14 million Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund (SIEF) at the World Bank, launched to support rigorous research on education quality.  She also co-authored the World Bank/IMF MDG Global Monitoring Reports of 2005, 2006 and 2007, served on the Education Task force appointed by the UN Secretary General in 2003, co-authored the book A Chance for Every Child: Achieving Universal Primary Education by 2015, and headed the Secretariat of the global Education for All Fast Track Initiative (EFA FTI) from 2002 to 2004.   Prior to joining the World Bank, Barbara was a staff economist on the US Senate Banking Committee and legislative assistant to Senator Adlai Stevenson III.  She holds degrees from the London School of Economics and the University of Chicago.

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2015 - 20192
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Sustainable Development Goals: SDG 4: Quality Education × Document Type: Publications & Research ×

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Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
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    Great Teachers : How to Raise Student Learning in Latin America and the Caribbean
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2015) Bruns, Barbara; Yarrow, Noah; De Gregorio, Soledad; Evans, David; Fernández, Marco; Moreno, Martin; Rodriguez, Jessica; Toral, Guillermo; Yarrow, Noah
    The seven million teachers of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) are the critical actors in the region's efforts to improve education quality and raise student learning levels, which lag far behind those of OECD countries and East Asian countries such as China. This book documents the high economic stakes around teacher quality, benchmarks the current performance of LAC's teachers, and delineates the key issues. These include low standards for entry into teacher training, poor quality training programs that are detached from the realities of the classroom, unattractive career incentives, and weak support for teachers once they are on the job. New research conducted for this report in close to 15,000 classrooms in seven different LAC countries - the largest cross-country study of this kind to date - provides a first-ever insight into how the region's teachers perform inside the classroom. It documents that the average teacher in LAC loses the equivalent of one day of instructional time per week because of inadequate preparation, excessive time on administration (taking attendance, passing out papers) and a surprisingly high share of time physically absent from the classrooms where they should be teaching. Teachers also make limited use of available learning materials, espcially those using information and communications technology (ICT), and are unable to keep the majority of their students engaged. The book sets out the three priority lines of reform needed to produce great teachers in LAC: policies to recruit better teachers; programs to groom teachers and improve their skills once they are in service; and stronger incentives to motivate teachers to perform their best throughout their career. In every area, the book distills the latest evidence from inside and outside the region to provide practical guidance to policymakers in the design of effective programs and sustainable reforms. A final chapter analyzes the politics of recent major teacher reforms in Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Mexico, chronicling the prominent role of teachers' unions and the political and communications strategies that have underpinned successful reforms.
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    Through the Looking Glass: Can Classroom Observation and Coaching Improve Teacher Performance in Brazil?
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-07) Costa, Leandro; Bruns, Barbara; Cunha, Nina
    This study conducted a randomized evaluation of a program in the Brazilian state of Ceara. The program was designed to improve teachers’ effectiveness by increasing their professional interaction and sharing of classroom practice. In 175 of 350 secondary schools, teachers were provided with benchmarked feedback from classroom observations and access to expert coaching. Schools’ uptake of the coaching program was high (85 percent). Over a single school year, the program increased teachers’ time on instruction and student engagement and produced statistically significant gains in student learning on the Ceara state assessment and the national secondary school exit exam. Controlling for individual students’ prior-year learning outcomes, schools exposed to the program had 0.05-0.09 standard deviation higher performance on the state test and 0.04-0.06 standard deviation higher scores on the national test. Implementation fidelity strongly boosted program impacts. In the 49 schools where the pedagogical coordinators achieved the highest certification at the end of the program, student scores were 0.13-0.23 standard deviation higher on the state test and 0.13-0.17 standard deviation higher on the national test. Coaching delivered by Skype kept the costs of the program low, $2.40 per student, and produced cost-effective impacts on learning in comparison with other rigorously evaluated teacher training interventions. The combination of classroom observation feedback and expert coaching appears to be a promising strategy for whole-school efforts to raise teacher effectiveness.