heterogeneity in student preparation in the same grade (Muralidharan et al. 2017, Muralidharan and Zieleniak 2013). This suggests that teachers have to make difficult choices about how they divide their time between students. Our third mental model relates to how teachers view the way they divide their attention across students in the classroom.

Our findings can be summarized in three points. First, we find that teachers support test‐based accountability and believe they are already subject to it. Second, teachers normalize two types of behaviors that might be considered ‘sub‐optimal’. These are: (i) non‐trivial support for certain types of absenteeism; and (ii) paying extra attention to well‐performing and well‐resourced students (dividing effort among students in a way that reinforces rather than compensates for baseline ability). Third, we show that ideas of ‘accountability’ and ‘absenteeism’ are quite strongly framed by context. This is most clearly seen in: (i) whether teachers favor exclusively reward‐based forms of accountability (non‐zero‐sum accountability) or not; and (ii) the degree to which they support absenteeism linked to community‐tasks.

By illuminating teachers’ mental models about their own effort, this paper contributes to research on teacher behavior in developing countries. This might help in the search for more effective solutions to the problem of low teacher effort. Teachers will respond to incentive or accountability policies or interventions based on what they believe about their own effort. Until their mental models are understood and factored into solution design, externally imposed ideas of ‘incentives’ and ‘accountability’ might not work.

The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 provides an overview of the data and approach used in the paper; Section 3 discusses the three teacher mental models investigated in this paper (absenteeism, accountability, and ownership of student learning); Section 4 presents important caveats; and Section 5 concludes.

# 2. Data and Approach

Data for this study comes from a short, multi‐country survey targeted at public school teachers teaching basic education grades (primary and lower secondary). Survey questions were designed and structured to illuminate mental models while minimizing social desirability bias in responses. All 25 questions in the survey are structured around a five‐point Likert scale that ranges from _strongly agree_ to _strongly disagree_ .

Survey countries include: Senegal and Tanzania (Zanzibar) from Sub‐Saharan Africa; Afghanistan and Pakistan from South Asia; Argentina (Salta Province) from Latin America; Indonesia and Myanmar from East Asia and Pacific; and Tajikistan from Central Asia. Data on select questions were also collected from Nepal. For comparison, both private and public‐school teachers were also interviewed in Senegal and private school teachers were interviewed in Uganda.

A total of 16,028 teachers were interviewed with sample sizes ranging from 193 (Zanzibar) to 9,647 (Pakistan) teachers across countries (see Table 1). In addition, around 379 teachers from Nepal were interviewed on select questions. In all countries except Nepal, the survey was delivered as part of ongoing World Bank led/supported data collection efforts. This explains the difference in observed 4