You probably already spotted this (but can you retrieve it?)

From Science magazine, January 20, the abstract of an article by Jeffrey Karpicke and Janell Blunt: 

Educators rely heavily on learning activities that encourage elaborative studying, while activities that require students to practice retrieving and reconstructing knowledge are used less frequently. Here, we show that practicing retrieval produces greater gains in meaningful learning than elaborative studying with concept mapping. The advantage of retrieval practice generalized across texts identical to those commonly found in science education. The advantage of retrieval practice was observed with test questions that assessed comprehension and required students to make inferences. The advantage of retrieval practice occurred even when the criterial test involved creating concept maps. Our findings support the theory that retrieval practice enhances learning by retrieval-specific mechanisms rather than by elaborative study processes. Retrieval practice is an effective tool to promote conceptual learning about science.

I'll be damned. But wait, do educators really "rely heavily" on elaborative studying? And are we basically comparing concept mapping with memorization, as if there are no other alternatives?

(But what about that "the advantage occurred" even when the kids were asked to create concept maps?)

If if I can find my way to  the full text of the article, perhaps I'll have more to say. Perhaps I'll make a concept map of it. 

Commercializing risks and rewards of microfinance

Yali woman in Papua highlands, Indonesia

No one will protest when I say that Muhammad Yunus knows more about microcredit than I know about, well, everything else combined. But he probably overstates his case in claiming that...

Commercialization has been a terrible wrong turn for microfinance, and it indicates a worrying “mission drift” in the motivation of those lending to the poor. Poverty should be eradicated, not seen as a money- making opportunity.

Since attention in the US turned to microcredit as a possible solution to poverty, there have been reported problems with loan distribution and loan repayment--women turning loan moneys over to their husbands, needing to borrow from "commercial" (e.g., gray market) lenders to repay NGO-based loans on time, and so on. The problems with repayment that are afflicting SKS and others are not new, they have higher profile and perhaps higher incidence as more loans are made and as micro-finance institutions have increasing pressure to perform as investments themselves.

BUT: there's only conflicting evidence that microfinance 'eradicates' poverty, especially as a structural economic problem. Loan recipients have increased cash, and on occasion start or expand businesses, but overall poverty rates don't drop in the presence of robust programs. As important, commercialization of microfinance is motivated at least in part, if not primarily, by the desire to increase the flow of capital to the poor.

Finally, when repayment rates are running at 97 to 99 percent, per Grameen Bank reports, while loans are flowing to the most at-risk members of society, it would seem that microfinance institutions aren't really shouldering much risk at all. A little more risk, a few more defaults, and perhaps poverty will be reduced a bit more as well. After all, once the funds arrive in poor communities, at least a percentage, and possibly a high percentage, stay there even when the loan goes into default.

No?

I used to think like that... I used to think like this... but now I dunno.

Over at First Monday, Siobhan Stephenson posts a long essay that "explores the increasingly important role a new corporate social responsibility movement is playing in international development." She focuses, however, on Microsoft's Unlimited Potential program -- which is basically an umbrella under which all somewhat-generous-things-Microsoft-that-don't-stem-from-BMGF are sheltered. Included in this beneficence is Partners in Learning, which combines lots of low-cost software licenses with training on Office products in one bundle that UP delivers to teachers, usually, in bunches of developing countries around the world. 

OK, I'm all over most of this--UP, PiL, and the integration of CSR and int'l development. The entrance of corporate dollars into development is a huge swing in the pendulum, one that most development-agency pros will acknowledge, with impetus coming from several facts: Multinational corporations have way more cash on hand these days than do, say, UNESCO or FAO; MNCs are also pretty highly motivated to move into emerging and developing markets by the "maturing" of OECD markets, and CSR is definitely part of that effort; and a lot of country governments find it way easier and more productive to work with MNCs than with donor agencies, for reasons both licit and not. 

But Stephenson's article is largely written from the POV of the Free (and Libre) and Open-source Software (FOSS or FLOSS) movement. There's some effort to argue that FOSS has benefits for developing-country economies and individuals, but the arguments given are 10 years old at this point, haven't borne fruit as far as I have seen, and are unsupported by evidence of any kind in the article in question. Plus, there are boatloads of questionable statements early on: 

.... FOSS' ability to function as an organizing vehicle for a global worker, particularly in less developed countries (LDCs), through its attempt to wrest control of software ownership away from the private sector...

and 

... perhaps the biggest argument in favor of FOSS was its suitability for developing local and indigenous software industries by providing individuals not only with the free access to software code but also to a global community of programmers, mentors and potential customers.

Leaving aside the improbability of "the global worker" and "indigenous software industries," these statements just blow, in combination. Most LDCs (which are not "less-developed countries" but "_Least_ developed countries, in UN parlance, so as to distinguish them by their crappy social and economic conditions from other developing countries such as, say, Indonesia, where in fact most people actually have pots to piss in) are at best a decade (Rwanda) and at worst an eternity (Burma) from developing a  knowledge-work sector that has any significant role in the economy. Hell, half of them have fewer than 10 mobile phones per 1,000 (that's a guess, actually, but not a ridiculous one). So the idea -- which really sums up Stephenson's argument -- that Microsoft's CSR efforts are hegemonic, and destructive of workers' rights and opportunities in developing countries, is frankly built on a profound misunderstanding of poverty in LDCs and in other countries (including, possibly, OECD countries). 

I'll come back to this if I have time. I object, frankly, to PiL on pedagogic grounds, and to UP because it swings policy decisions in odd directions, makes politicians seem effective when they are anything but, and so on. But in my experience development barely happens at all, and it certainly doesn't happen unless every group with a stake in development is actually contributing. So I try not to diss the increasingly strong influence of Christian churches in social-development activities in Africa, nor the economic efforts made by Chinese government-owned businesses, nor the blind embrace of micro-finance in the US, nor the establishment of Cisco Networking Academies (now, there's hegemonic CSR for ya), nor UP and PiL, despite the fact that they ALL bug me. 

Hell, didn't the FOSS movement lose the battle for the desktop, pretty much--partly as a result of UP and Window' ubiquity, I'll give you that, but also partly as a result of cloud computing, and just the fact that generally who gives a damn about their OS anyway? And didn't FOSS win a few battles too, based on Apache, MySQL, Ubuntu, Drupal and other tools not for end users? (See Microsoft on how happy they are to be fighting Droid with Windows Mobile 70000, and MySQL with SQLServer...) And hasn't there been a bunch written about WHY these kinds of software initiatives, essentially hitting where the tech industry is, rather than where its customers are, are better suited for FOSS development than end-user tools are?

In any case, in my opinion, the FOSS efforts that are really paying off today in developing countries are smaller-bore but higher impact than anything OS-related or productivity related: Frontline SMS is FOSS, and enables basically anyone to set up low-cost narrowcast text messaging; Ushahidi supports crowd-sourcing of information from crisis areas (using any format, basically); and OER Africa is doing what can be done to get free learning resources into African schools. (Note that OER Africa is partially funded by the Hewlett Foundation. Hmmm. Should we be worrie?) All of these groups have targeted real needs in real places and have developed stuff that they're giving away. (Note, however, that the first two are exogenous, their tools have been developed by groups outside of the countries where the tools will be used.)

It's _possible_ that having more free, customizable PC OS software would be of value. But there's so much going on already (including Open Office, which I'm not using just now, nor, I suspect, are you. And in my case, it's certainly NOT because Microsoft is limiting my choices!) And, frankly, when I see the dangers of overlooking the FOSS/Microsoft desktop wars couched in terms such as "failure to interrogate* the meaning of these benefits within the context of historic class struggle over the ownership....," as per Stephenson's article, I just  feel, well, as though there are other failures more worthy of our contemplation. 

*Also, I gotta say that I don't find any great distance between post-structuralists who "interrogate" meanings and San Francisco Giants baseball fans who say of their team's season, "Giants baseball, it's torture!" Casual uses of both terms should be swiftly retired out of respect for people who are actually interrogated and tortured.

Easterly whispers "uncle"

Look, I'm as impressed by Bill Easterly's clearsighted analysis as anybody else is. I'm also as put off by his failings, ranging from his jihad against Jeff Sachs (OK, Sachs is endemically wrong, but that doesn't mean that all attacks on him are right) to his fanboy support for the really whack Dambisa Moyo, to his general pissing on all forms of development assistance that aren't micro-entrepreneurially focused. 

But it seems to me that he's flailing around for a way to deal with the concrete and absolute cruelty of the shift away from funding of HIV/AIDs treatment. N'cest pas?

Easterly whimpers, a bit.

Update on Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at 11:06AM by Edmond Gaible

Prof. Easterly:

Getting more and more frustrated: Why does nobody care about AIDS prevention in Africa, when its failure disastrous? http://bit.ly/daUbfU

I can only agree. But funding for treatment and for prevention have been confounded for 15 years, at least. It doesn't take rocket science (or tenure at NYU) to predict that as you shift money away from HIV/AIDS treatment in favor of non-exotics such as maternal morbidity, you'll also be undercutting (amost wrote "gutting") prevention programs. 

Harsh. The costs of data-driven development

OK, here it is at last, the fruits of 1000s of hours of research, and argument, suggesting that money spent on HIV/AIDS is not the most effective use of donor funds: 

On the grounds of Uganda’s biggest AIDS clinic, Dinavance Kamukama sits under a tree and weeps.

Her disease is probably quite advanced: her kidneys are failing and she is so weak she can barely walk. Leaving her young daughter with family, she rode a bus four hours to the hospital where her cousin Allen Bamurekye, born infected, both works and gets the drugs that keep her alive.

But there are no drugs for Ms. Kamukama. As is happening in other clinics in Kampala, all new patients go on a waiting list. A slot opens when a patient dies.

The cause of course is the drop in donor funding for anti-retrovirals and for treatment programs in developing countries. Everyone from BMGF to the US government is reducing, or limiting increases, in their funding for HIV/AIDS programs. Meanwhile, in Uganda....

 500,000 need treatment, 200,000 are getting it, but each year, an additional 110,000 are infected.

“You cannot mop the floor when the tap is still running on it,” said Dr. David Kihumuro Apuuli, director-general of the Uganda AIDS Commission.

Believe me, I understand the benefits of adjusting policy and priorities, especially when each AIDS patient treated with anti-retrovirals costs US $11,000. There are a lot of simpler, cheaper and more effective healthcare efforts that can be funded with some of that money. 

And I don't want to harsh on the people who are pushing for more informed decision making, and particular for decision making informed by randomized field trials. However, I do think that _at this point_ groundbreakers such as Esther Duflo could present more balances and realistic pictures of the cost and benefits of development decisions driven by data: