Improving children's learning and development in conflict-affected countries is critically important for breaking the intergenerational transmission of violence and poverty. Yet there is currently a stunning lack of rigorous evidence as to whether and how programs to improve learning and development in conflict-affected countries actually work to bolster children's academic learning and socioemotional development. This study tests a theory of change derived from the fields of developmental psychopathology and social ecology about how a school-based universal socioemotional learning program, the International Rescue Committee's Learning to Read in a Healing Classroom (LRHC), impacts children's learning and development. The study was implemented in three conflict-affected provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and employed a cluster-randomized waitlist control design to estimate impact. Using multilevel structural equation modeling techniques, we found support for the central pathways in the LRHC theory of change. Specifically, we found that LRHC differentially impacted dimensions of the quality of the school and classroom environment at the end of the first year of the intervention, and that in turn these dimensions of quality were differentially associated with child academic and socioemotional outcomes. Future implications and directions are discussed.

This article examines the effects of one year of exposure to “Learning to Read in a Healing Classroom” (LRHC) on the reading and math skills of second- to fourth-grade children in the low-income and conflict-affected Democratic Republic of the Congo. LRHC consists of two primary components: teacher resource materials that infuse social-emotional learning principles into a reading curriculum and collaborative school-based teacher learning circles to exchange information about and solve problems in using the teacher resource materials. To test the impact of LRHC on children's reading and math skills, 40 school clusters containing 64 schools and 4,465 students were randomized to begin LRHC in 2011–2012 or to serve as wait-list controls. Hierarchical linear models (students nested in schools, nested in school clusters) were fitted. Results indicate marginally significant positive impacts on children's reading scores (dwt = .14) and geometry scores (dwt = .14) but not on their addition/subtraction scores. These results should be treated with caution given the reported significance level of p < .10. The intervention had the largest impacts on math scores for language minority children and in low-performing schools. Research, practice, and policy implications for education in low-income conflict-affected countries are discussed.

This study evaluates the relationships between aspects of Chilean teachers’ explicit vocabulary instruction and students’ vocabulary development in kindergarten. Classroom videotapes of whole-class instruction gathered during a randomized experimental evaluation of a coaching-based professional development program were analyzed. The amount of conceptual information about words made available during these discussions was the only significant predictor of students’ end-of-kindergarten vocabulary, when controlling for the density and diversity of teachers’ language and time spent in explicit vocabulary support, as well as child and teacher demographics. Each additional standard deviation of conceptual information about words provided predicted a 0.11 standard deviation increase in students’ vocabulary outcomes. Practice and policy implications of these findings are discussed.

An 8.8-magnitude earthquake occurred off the coast of Chile on 27 February 2010, displacing nearly 2,000 children aged less than five years to emergency housing camps. Nine months later, this study assessed the needs of 140 displaced 0–5-year-old children in six domains: caregiver stability and protection; health; housing; nutrition; psychosocial situation; and stimulation. Multivariate regression was applied to examine the degree to which emotional, physical, and social needs were associated with baseline characteristics and exposure to the earthquake, to stressful events, and to ongoing risks in the proximal post-earthquake context. In each domain, 20 per cent or fewer children had unmet needs. Of all children in the sample, 20 per cent had unmet needs in multiple domains. Children's emotional, physical, and social needs were associated with ongoing exposures amenable to intervention, more than with baseline characteristics or epicentre proximity. Relief efforts should address multiple interrelated domains of child well-being and ongoing risks in post-disaster settings.