Prof. dr. Hiro Yoshikawa
NYU Steinhardt, USA

Presentation title: Early childhood development and program implementation in refugee and COVID contexts: Lessons from the Syrian and Rohingya refugee response

Early childhood development in emergencies and displacement has particular challenges that distinguish it from ECD in other contexts.  First, there are are a variety of crisis situations and adversities, some of which are immediate and some of which are long-term.  Second, there are at least two cultural groups potentially interacting in situations that involve forced displacement and migration.  Third, from a research standpoint it can be difficult in rapidly shifting crisis settings to collect the multi-method data that are required to co-develop, implement, monitor and evaluate culturally and contextually grounded ECD interventions. Fourth, participation from displaced populations themselves can be challenging depending on the two sets of systems that may be involved (that of international humanitarian architecture, if it is involved; that of the host government, institutions, civil society, if those are involved). This presentation will outline these challenges and provide examples of results from partnered ECD research in the unique cultural, linguistic and humanitarian context of the Rohingya in the large camps of Cox’s Bazar district, Bangladesh.

Prof. dr. Dorthe Bleses
Aarhus Univeristy, Denmark

Presentation title: From impact studies to sustainable educational practices: implementation of evidence-based interventions at scale

I will present findings from a series of large-scale randomized control trials of a low-cost school readiness intervention We learn together targeting children aged 1 to 5 years. The intervention is designed to elevate the quality of instruction and thus opportunities for learning in early childhood education (ECE) programs. Notably, the intervention does not increase the amount of time children spent in childcare or teacher-child ratio, but provide teachers with tools —sequence and scope, scaffolding strategies, and materials—to be more explicit and intentional in their interactions with children. Besides main effects and effects for subgroups of children, I will present findings related to the intervention fidelity and factors predicting fidelity and the implications for scaling up of interventions we identified. Finally, I will present a new partnership, which makes the intervention available at-scale and–based on an implementation framework–offers support to municipalities to maintain high quality during real-life implementation of the intervention.