Data Must Speak: Brazil
Positive deviance reports and project briefs
Highlights
In recent decades, Brazil has made progress in terms of school enrolment figures and the level of schooling of its population. Improvements have also been seen in student learning outcomes, especially in primary education, but remains relatively low compared to other countries.
The state of Maranhão, in the Northeast region, faces similar challenges to the rest of Brazil, exacerbated by the fact that it is one of the poorest states in the country. The Secretaria de Educação do Governo do Estado do Maranhão (SEDUC-MA) has been implementing several policies and initiative to improve the quality of education in the state.
By merging and analyzing existing administrative datasets in Brazil, the Data Must Speak (DMS) research helps to identify important associations between school inputs and school performance that can inform public policies and investments in the education sector. The DMS research leverages this administrative data to identify positive deviant schools – or those schools outperforming other schools operating in the same contexts and with equivalent resources. It then identifies the practices and behaviours that may be contributing to positive deviant schools’ success and explores how to scale these to more schools in the country.
Data Must Speak (DMS) is a global initiative launched in 2014 to address evidence gaps and mitigate the learning crisis using existing data. The DMS Positive Deviance research is co-created and co-implemented with Ministries of Education and key partners. It employs mixed methods and innovative approaches, including positive deviance, behavioral sciences, implementation research, and scaling science, to generate knowledge and practical lessons. The research focuses on understanding 'what works,' 'why,' and 'how' to scale grassroots solutions for national policymakers and the international education community.
On this webpage, you will find all the DMS Positive Deviance research outputs related to Brazil:
DMS Stage 1: Understanding what resources and contextual factors are associated with good school performance
Stage 1 Report: Unpacking Factors Influencing School Performance in Maranhão (Portuguese and English)
DMS Stage 3: Discovering locally-led behaviours and practices to improve quality education
- Stage 3 Report: Escolas que Inspiram Mudanças: Pesquisa sobre as práticas ecomportamentos de desvio positivonas escolas do estado do Maranhão (Portuguese)
- Executive Summary Stage 3 of the DMS research in Brazil (Portuguese)
