Overview
Without scientific understanding of how children develop, practitioners and policy makers lack the tools to achieve breakthrough impacts. This is where Global TIES for Children comes in – we are one of the largest university-based research centers devoted to improving holistic learning and development for children in the most volatile areas of the world. Achieving scientific insight through partnership and network models, we address the 21st century challenges that policymakers, NGOs, and researchers face in ensuring that children everywhere have the supports they need to grow up to be healthy and productive citizens of the world. Our research demonstrates how quality improvements in education, health, social protection, poverty reduction and other areas can improve children’s outcomes.
Since our launch in 2014, Global TIES for Children’s work has leveraged the science of human development to address the most central global challenges affecting children. Our research is driven by a belief in the benefits of continued theory and conceptual development, the value of multi-method participatory research, and the need to invest in communication and engagement throughout the research process. Since our inception, our Center’s primary focus has been supporting children in their early and primary school years, and we therefore organize most of our projects into umbrella initiatives that focus on these specific developmental stages: early childhood and primary school-age (middle childhood). Regardless of the project, the age group, or the specific research question, all our research activities are designed to advance conceptual frameworks and generate actionable evidence to improve holistic development and learning outcomes. In pursuing this, we deploy three interdependent research strategies:
Use mixed-methods, participatory approaches that are responsive to cultural and community processes.
Co-design strategies and metrics with local, national, and regional stakeholders for policy reform and systems’ coherence
Disseminate global public goods to strengthen our mutual capacity for a science for action
Early Childhood
Despite growing evidence on the benefits of investing in quality Early Childhood Development (ECD), nearly 250 million children under the age of five are currently at risk of failing to reach their developmental potential. In addition, nearly 50 million children have been displaced by emergency or conflict. While many governments and development agencies have identified ECD as a priority, they often lack evidence to understand how best to respond to ECD needs. Supporting efforts to improve ECD policies and practice and reverse the troubling figures above is at the core of our early childhood research program.
Primary School-Aged
While over 90% of children worldwide now have access to primary education, commensurate gains have yet to reach children in crisis-affected countries. While children living in crisis-affected contexts make up 22% of primary school-aged children worldwide, they account for fully 50% of primary school-aged children without access to education. Our primary school-aged projects are part of a small (but growing) global effort to address the challenges of understanding, advocating and informing the practice of education and holistic learning - including both academic and social and emotional learning - for children in crisis-affected contexts.
Other Learning Initiatives
Our team works with governments and key players in the international arena on cost-effective policies and programs targeting improved child development in low-income and conflict-affected countries and contexts. At the same time, we engage scholars from the contexts where we work to lead research relevant to advances in child development. All of this is supported by additional measurement and methods initiatives that improve our ability to account for the multi-level nature of the systems we study and the contextual factors and processes at play in classrooms, communities, and families.