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Journal Article Karolina Lajch Journal Article Karolina Lajch

Evaluating Program Enhancement Strategies for Remedial Tutoring: A Cluster-Randomized Control Trial With Syrian Refugee Students in Lebanon

Despite widespread enthusiasm for remedial education programming with refugee populations, there is little rigorous evidence on how to design and implement such programs. We employ a cluster-randomized design of non-equivalent treatment groups to test the impact of access to two types of program enhancement: longer program duration and the addition of skilltargeted social and emotional learning (SEL) activities for Syrian refugees enrolled in Lebanese public schools. We find that, compared to 10 weeks of programming, 26 weeks marginally increases students’ literacy skills (ES = 0.04) and significantly improves behavioral regulation (ES = 0.31), but students reported less positive perceptions of their public school environment (ES= −0.83 to −0.89) and remedial tutoring site (ES= −0.15 to −0.24). We also find that the addition of skill-targeted SEL activities to 26 weeks of programming results in higher student reports of school-related stress compared to programming without skill-targeted activities (ES = 0.21). Implications for program and policy are discussed.

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Journal Article Karolina Lajch Journal Article Karolina Lajch

Teachers’ Observations of Learners’ Social and Emotional Learning: Psychometric Evidence for Program Evaluation in Education in Emergencies

Rigorous evaluation of social and emotional learning programs requires the use of measures that provide reliable and valid information on the meaningful differences in children’s social emotional skills across treatment and control groups, as well as changes over time. In contexts affected by conflict and crisis, few measures can provide the evidence required to support their use in program evaluations, which limits stakeholders’ ability to determine whether a program is working, how well it is working, and for whom.

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Blog Post Southpoint Collective Blog Post Southpoint Collective

Research & Innovation for Refugee Education: Gamified Learning Measurement Tool | NYU Steinhardt

While nearly 1 billion children were out of school worldwide in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the lack of access to education was most pronounced among children in low- and middle-income countries. A new research-practice partnership is working to develop a tool to measure holistic learning outcomes across distance education and digital learning interventions in humanitarian settings.

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Report Karolina Lajch Report Karolina Lajch

Response to Stress Questionnaire (RSQ) - Lebanon

The original Response to Stress Questionnaire (RSQ: Connor-Smith et al., 2000) was designed to capture the ways that individuals react to and cope with specific sources of stress, including parental depression, family conflict, and academic stressors. In order to assess refugee children’s stress experiences and stress responses in Lebanese public school settings, researchers adapted the child self-report version of the RSQ-Academic Problems (RSQ-AP). It includes two subscales intended to assess: (a) academic problems stress and (b) involuntary engagement response to stress.

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Report Karolina Lajch Report Karolina Lajch

Self-Regulation Assessment-Assessor Report (SRA-AR) - Lebanon

The Self-Regulation Assessment-Assessor Report (SRA-AR) is a measurement tool used to capture assessors’ perceptions of children’s skills at regulating their behavior during an assessment. The SRA-AR was developed based on the Preschool Self-Regulation Assessment-Assessor Report (PSRA-AR) (Smith-Donald et al., 2007). The developers tested this measurement tool in Lebanon.

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