Educational Planning and Teaching-Learning Strategies--The Notes of a Skeptic. IIEP Seminar Paper: 32.

The purpose of the teacher-learner strategy (TLS) project is ostensibly to test different instructional arrangements in different national contexts to see which ones obtain the best results. The logic of this approach is compelling. Yet it is the orderly appearance of the TLS project that might be its greatest problem. The doctrine of external appearances refers to an intellectual and reductionist treatment of a problem such that once a systematic set of procedures that appear to address a problem is adopted, it is assumed that the problem disappears. That is, the systematic set of procedures becomes the focus rather than the problem itself. Looking at the past, there is no evidence to support the view that programs such as the TLS have made any difference in measurable outcomes or in processes of schooling. Even if the TLS experiments are designed in ways that are technically acceptable with respect to sampling and data analysis, the pitfalls of cross-national experiments are overwhelming in four areas: specification and identification of treatments, the determination of appropriate criteria of effectiveness, the conduct of the experiment, and the interpretation and generalization of results. (Author/IRT)