LATEST PROJECTS

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 two ministries in the Ivorian government, 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 are currently following the children three years after the program in their first years of primary school.  This longitudinal study is continuing in 2020, following children for a fourth and fifth follow-up 4 and 5 years after the intervention.

This project is the first to test in the Ivorian context if phone-based messages to parents increase engagement in children's schooling and support children's schooling outcomes. We are also testing whether audio messages are more effective than text messages, and for whom, as well as under what conditions. We are working in two regions in Cote d'Ivoire, a setting where children tend to learn little despite being enrolled in school.

This project uses U.S. nationally representative data to explore how cumulative exposure to different types of early adversity -- namely threat and deprivation -- are associated with various domains of children's school readiness skills, as well as how children's relationship with their teachers moderates or exacerbates these associations.  

COMPLETED PROJECTS

This study sought to evaluate a teacher-training and in-classroom coaching program delivered to student-teachers during their pre-service certification. The intensive program was implemented through the student-teaching year, and these individuals were followed as newly-qualified teachers one and two years later. This study is completed, and the published article can be read here.​