The More, the Better? The Impact of Instructional Time on Student Performance

Maria Alejandra Cattaneo (), Chantal Oggenfuss () and Stefan Wolter
Additional contact information
Maria Alejandra Cattaneo: Swiss Co-ordination Center for Research in Education
Chantal Oggenfuss: Swiss Co-ordination Center for Research in Education

No 9797, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Although instruction time is an important and costly resource in education production, there is a remarkable scarcity of research examining the effectiveness of its use. We build on the work of Lavy (2015) using the variance of subject-specific instruction time within Switzerland to determine the causal impact of instruction time on student test scores, as measured by the international PISA test (2009). We extend the analyses in two ways and find that students must differ considerably in the time needed to learn. This difference is supported by our findings that the effectiveness of instructional time varies substantially between different school (ability) tracks and that additional instruction time significantly increases the within-school variance of subject-specific test scores.

Keywords: instruction time; PISA; fixed-effect models; tracking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 I21 I25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2016-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Published - published in: Education Economics, 2017, 25(5), 433-445

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Related works:
Journal Article: The more, the better? The impact of instructional time on student performance (2017)
Working Paper: The More, the Better? The Impact of Instructional Time on Student Performance (2016)
Working Paper: The more, the better? The impact of instructional time on student performance (2016)
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