Large Class Sizes in the Developing World

This paper details the factors that contribute to overcrowded classrooms in the developing world, documents how these affect teaching and learning and suggests methods to cope with overcrowding. We do so in three steps: 1) by placing the large classroom in context, looking at the reasons for growing enrollments in the developing world; 2) discussing the research on large classrooms, specifically examining its impact on learning outcomes; and 3) suggesting methods that can be used to teach in large classrooms, and propose areas for future investigation around these methods.