However, there are reasons to be cautious about the promise of digital technology in education. Technology adoption is prohibitively costly especially in resource-constrained education systems.<sup>5</sup> The costs can be even higher if complementary investments in infrastructure and teacher competence are required for digital technologies to have impact (Butler 2007).<sup>6</sup> They may also be difficult to implement in low-capacity environments. One review finds that many technology interventions fail even before implementation (World Bank 2017).

The promise of technology for education has been almost as dazzling as measured impacts have been generally disappointing. Among the subset of education technology interventions that are successfully implemented and evaluated, impacts vary greatly. One summary is that the impact of technology interventions in education is mixed, with a pattern of ‘null results’ (Bulman and Fairlie 2016).<sup>7</sup> Even expensive large-scale interventions like the One Laptop Per Child programs in Peru and Uruguay, showed no impacts on learning (Cristia et. al 2017; de Melo, Machado, and Miranda 2014). At the same time, there are interventions showing significantly positive or significantly negative effects. At the positive end of the spectrum is the dynamic computer-assisted learning program for secondary school students in India that increased math and language scores sharply over a 4.5-month period (Muralidharan, Sing and Ganimian , forthcoming). On the other extreme are studies that show negative impacts on learning (Fuchs and Woessmann 2004; Angrist and Lavy 2002; Vigdor and Ladd 2010; Malamud and Pop-Eleches 2011).

High costs, implementation challenges, and mixed, often disappointing, impacts might be why technology has not been particularly disruptive in education so far.<sup>8</sup> Given the mixed evidence, can a pattern be detected in terms of when such interventions succeed and when they fail? Some have argued that technologies that complement teachers work better than technologies that substitute for them (World Bank 2017; Snilstveit et al. 2015). Another important determining factor is context-relevance and suitability. For technology interventions to succeed, it is crucial to focus on technologies that are truly feasible in existing systems (World Bank 2017).

One other hypothesis is proposed by Muralidharan et al. (forthcoming) who argue that hardwarefocused technology interventions such as the provision of computers/laptops to students or schools, have no positive impact on learning outcomes; while pedagogy-focused technology interventions that enable students to access content at their own pace or allow for personalized instruction, have positive impacts on learning outcomes.<sup>9</sup> The relatively strong effectiveness of well-

> 5 - <u>http://blogs.worldbank.org/edutech/worst practice</u>

> 6 There are also concerns about potential exposure to non-academic and adult content (Subrahmanyam et al. 2000; Wartella and Jennings 2000).

> 7 A partial list includes studies that have shown a positive association between computer access and education outcomes in developed countries (Attewell and Battle 1999; Fairlie 2005; Fairlie and London 2012; Fairlie, Beltran, and Das 2010; Machin, McNally, and Silva 2007) and developing countries (Banerjee et al. 2007; Beuermann et al. 2015; Muralidharan, Singh and Ganimian forthcoming). Others find little effect (Barrera and Linden 2009) or even negative impacts (Fuchs and Woessmann 2004; Angrist and Lavy 2002; Vigdor and Ladd 2010; Malamud and PopEleches 2011). For a detailed discussion, see: Bulman and Fairlie (2016) and Annex B of Muralidharan et al. (forthcoming).

> 8 Pritchett (2013) argues that technology does not show up in a big way in the way education is delivered. The processes of the school day, and the interactions between teachers and students are very similar to those of a century ago.

> 9 Pedagogy-focused interventions include computer-assisted learning interventions (Banerjee et al. 2016; Lai et al. 2015) or web or app-enabled applications like the Khan Academy.

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