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Sharon Wolf, PhD
Associate Professor
CURRENT PROJECTS
Côte d’Ivoire:
Promoting Learning and Reducing Child Labor Through Family- and School-based Interventions
In Cote d’Ivoire, educational quality and learning outcomes are very low, especially in rural cocoa-growing regions. Both poverty and the lack of quality and relevant education can push children out of school and into family farming. Partnering with the Ivorian Ministry of Education, Teacher at the Right Level (TaRL) Africa, and 100WEEKS, we are testing a two-pronged approach to improve children’s schooling outcomes, testing individually and in combination two interventions: unconditional cash transfers and educational-quality improvement through Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) paired with e-coaching. We will use a cluster-randomized design to assign villages to (i) cash transfers, (ii) TaRL, (iii) cash transfers and TaRL, and (iv) controls.
Working with Innovations for Poverty Action and Ghana's Ministry of Education, this project developed and evaluated a teacher in-service and coaching program, with and without parental awareness meetings, to evaluate the effectiveness of these approaches in improving kindergarten quality and children's school readiness in Ghana. We found the teacher-training and coaching model improved classroom quality and children's literacy, numeracy, and social-emotional skills. We have been following the children throughout their primary school years, and this longitudinal study is continuing through 2027 with the LEAD project.
This study builds on the Quality Preschool for Ghana project. With Dr. Elisabetta Aurino at the University of Barcelona School of Economics, and funded by a Starting Grant from the European Research Council, this project focuses on the critical developmental stage of early adolescence in which strategic interventions can dramatically impact future well-being in terms of health and economic risks. Using the QP4G sample, this study will re-randomize the QP4G sample as they are now in early adolescence, with the aim to fill the research gap in this area by testing an innovative, digital parenting program to support adolescents and their parents. The study will build evidence on the complementarities between quality early childhood education and intervention support during early adolescence, and examine whether support in adolescence alone can compensate for a lack of access to quality early childhood education.
To improve parental engagement and gender disparity during the Covid-19 pandemic in Ghana, the Parental Nudges Project partnered with IPA and Movva Technologies to evaluate the impact of a text-message-based behavioral change intervention. The intervention aimed to improve parental engagement in educational activities, parental beliefs about returns to education, and children’s learning, enrollment, attendance, and gender disparity as schools re-opened. Data collection of children's school records over the previous two years is ongoing.
The focus of this project is to test the impacts of providing preschool spaces to impact early childhood development for girls within vulnerable communities in Nigeria. The curriculum for CI GABA is cased on the Montessori method, found to be ideal for girls facing unique challenges. The method uses mixed-age learning circles and encourages discover through work with materials made of natural, aesthetic Nigerian materials rather than by direct instruction. Using a matched-paired randomized trial, this study will test impacts of the CI GABA program on school readiness outcomes, parental perceptions of girls' education, and on future primary school enrollment and progression.
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