Anna Popova is a doctoral student studying educational policy at Stanford University. Her interests include researching how teacher training and education technology interventions can be designed to improve student learning in developing countries. Prior to beginning her PhD, Anna worked as a consultant for the World Bank, designing, implementing, and evaluating education projects across Latin America and Africa, as well as conducting research on human development more broadly. Previously, she worked on labor market issues at the Inter-American Development Bank, for the UNDP’s Chernobyl Recovery and Development Programme, and on social entrepreneurship in South Asia. Anna holds a BA in Economics and management from the University of Oxford and a MSc in international development from the London School of Economics.

Fellowship research abstract

Education Technology in Developing Countries: Does Replacing Teachers with Computers Really Improve Student Learning?

Technology promises to revolutionize education across the world. In developing countries, technology is seen as a solution to problems of education access and – by adapting instruction to individual students’ ability levels – learning. However, the consequences of relying on such technology on children’s learning and socio-emotional development, as well as on the role of teachers, are yet unknown. This proposal involves working with the Ministry of Education in the Dominican Republic to explore the possibility of evaluating the relative impacts of computer-assisted and teacher-led individualized instruction on children and teachers using a randomized control trial.