Despite substantial cross-national interest in remedial programming as a way to support low-achieving students, evidence of its effectiveness is rare, particularly in low-income and/or crisis-affected contexts. In this article, we present experimental evidence of the impact of a remedial tutoring program on academic outcomes from a two-level randomized trial of two treatments in Niger: school randomization testing the impact of skill-targeted SEL activities and within-school student-level randomization testing the impact of access to remedial tutoring.

diyddiCurator is a graphic user interface to the rddi package. It is a shiny app designed to streamline metadata generation for research data sharing. It allows the user to input project metadata and generate a valid Data Documentation Initiative Codebook (DDI 2.5) to describe the study and data collected.

DDI elements and their attributes are listed in various tabs and described using handsontable (https://handsontable.com/). By right clicking on the table users can add or delete rows. A human readable README, the DDI Codebook and the data is available for export in the Export navigation menu.

Relatively little research has addressed whether conceptual frameworks of early learning generalize across different national contexts. This article reports on a cross-country measurement invariance analysis of the International Development and Early Learning Assessment (IDELA). The IDELA is a direct assessment tool for 3- to 6-year-old children, intended to measure Early Literacy, Early Numeracy, Motor, and Social-Emotional development. Its generalizability is evaluated using samples from 5 countries: Afghanistan (N = 2,629); Bolivia (N = 480); Ethiopia (N = 682); Uganda (N = 504); and Vietnam (N = 675). The 4-domain model of the IDELA was supported in each country, although the domains were highly correlated. Measurement invariance analysis revealed that most IDELA items do not provide a basis for comparing children’s development over the 5 countries. This research supports the use of the IDELA for program evaluation and within-country monitoring purposes, but cautions against its use for international comparisons. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)

In this brief, NYU Global TIES for Children researchers describe a rapid iterative process of cultural, linguistic, and contextual adaptation and extension of child assessment tools for Rohingya Children in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. It includes three specific examples showcasing the rigorous, culturally responsive, equity-based approach to adaptation. This report also highlights some of the most critical findings from using this extended IDELA, known as IDELA-E, in our pilot study. Results suggest that IDELA-E is responsive to the environment in which the Rohingya children grow up and can capture their learning and development gains across multiple domains. Assessment using IDELA-E shows the age-based developmental progression of Rohingya children across these five domains: fine and gross motor, emergent literacy, emergent numeracy, socio-emotional, and executive function development. Overall, this brief highlights a rigorous process of cultural and contextual adaptation of tools for assessing children in a low-resourced context in the global south.

An accompanying interactive infographic to the working paper #1 from the Education Research in Conflict and Protracted Crisis (ERICC) Research Programme Consortium. This paper outlines the theoretical framework governing the studies to be deployed throughout the Consortium's lifetime.

Working paper #1 from the Education Research in Conflict and Protracted Crisis (ERICC) Research Programme Consortium. This paper outlines the theoretical framework governing the studies to be deployed throughout the Consortium's lifetime.

Why is it that some countries fluoridate their water? In the mid-20th century, fluoride became linked with reduced tooth decay, sparking a scientific revolution in the dentistry world, and causing cities to begin infusing their water supplies with fluoride. Today, countries add fluoride as a protective factor, as a way to promote healthy early childhood development (ECD). But there is still significant debate around the practice.

In this brief, the fourth in our series, Global TIES researchers show that through analyses of instruments measuring caregivers' perceptions of refugee camp environment, caregiver mental health, and children's social-emotional development, there are reasons for optimism in using these particular scales with the Rohingya community in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Results suggest that the measures examined show generally strong internal reliability and can be successfully adapted for use in this context and they were associated with each other in meaningful ways. In addition to highlighting promising results, this brief also provides a snapshot of the steps involved in selecting, adapting, and testing these scales to examine their suitability and prepare them for large-scale use.

a plugin to drake that adds automated steps for tabular dataset documentation and testing.

This brief is prepared to provide recommendations on promising and practical approaches to support education during the acute crises period in Ukraine and to mitigate the impacts of the Russian invasion on children’s learning and wellbeing. It is primarily designed to support multilateral and bilateral organizations, as well as other actors and stakeholders, to identify priorities and approaches to support education for children affected by the Ukraine crisis. In this brief, we provide:

1. An overview of the conditions of education for Ukrainian children thus far

2. Options and priorities for supporting the children affected by the Russian Invasion, both (a) for the children remaining in Ukraine and (b) for the Ukrainian refugee children in neighboring host countries.

3. State of evidence and implications of future responses and research

Check out how we used multimedia alongside Sesame Workshop to combat critical challenges to the informed consent process, resulting in more active participation from families in the research.

In this third brief in our series, we outline the process and strategies used as we piloted multiple data collection tools that were being considered for use in several large-scale research studies with the Rohingya in Cox's Bazar. This brief aims to provide context and a path forward for future researchers to deliver quality research in this, and other, complex research environments with the ultimate goal of informing the types, design, and delivery of services to support families and foster resilience in these contexts for generations to come.

Researchers at Global TIES for Children, an international research center based at NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU New York, examined a variety of post-migration risks faced by Syrian refugee children enrolled in Lebanese public schools and found that students being older than expected for the grade in which they were placed was most consistently and strongly associated with developmental and learning difficulties. As many schools around the world prepare to reopen in 2020 and beyond, the study provides critical insights that can help inform efforts to reintegrate children into schools after significant disruption and time away.

Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic we have seen a significant increase in the number of online tools and digital learning programmes being rolled out globally. With this increase comes a growing need to find adaptive ways of measuring the effectiveness of these interventions for children’s learning.

This video is a guide for those interested in assessing holistic child development outcomes through navigating the different resources we have available to find high-quality measurement tools that can provide us with meaningful data. A lot of the resources the video covers are what we, as researchers, look towards as we navigate the largely unknown waters of measure development for children in low-and-middle-income contexts (LMICs).

While many Governments have turned to connected education and tech-driven programmes to support continued learning during school closures, there is little available evidence on the impact of distance learning on learning outcomes, especially for children affected by crisis and conflict and regarding holistic learning outcomes. Understanding the impact of the growing number of digital interventions on learning outcomes for these children (both in and outside of the classroom) is crucial to ensuring that no child is left behind in the wake of COVID-19 disruptions. In order to be able to understand how to better support children’s learning, we first need to be able to understand what children know and are able to do. Armed with this information, teachers and educational programmes can then provide more tailored support. The assessment of learning outcomes is therefore key. In response to a clear gap in this area, a new partnership, brokered by Porticus, brought together War Child Holland, NYU Global TIES for Children, and the HEA to interrogate the need for an effective tool to assess learning outcomes across digital learning interventions.

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 local and refugee children’s stress experiences and stress responses in Nigerien 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.

The Self-Regulation Assessment-Assessor Report (SRA-AR) is a measurement tool used to capture assessors’ perceptions of of Nigerian refugee and Nigerien 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 Niger.

This first brief in the NYU Global TIES for Children (NYU-TIES) series presents preliminary findings collected as part of the pre-pilot and pilot phases of one of their Play to Learn impact evaluations and a longitudinal study. The impact evaluation, led by NYU-TIES, investigates BRAC's flexible, hybrid home-visiting program in Cox’s Bazar which seeks to engage fathers as well as mothers and the longitudinal study features three-cohorts from prenatal and birth which follow young Rohingya children through their first years of life. The data in this brief looks specifically at Rohingya fathers’ perceptions of play.

Global TIES for Children is excited to share some initial results from preliminary research concerning fathers’ involvement in children’s development in Rohingya refugee communities in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. The research was conducted as part of the LEGO foundation-funded Play to Learn project, a partnership between Sesame Workshop, BRAC, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), and TIES to provide and understand a range of early child development services for these communities. NYU’s research unearths.


Image credit: Ante Hamersmit (@ante_kante on Unsplash)