Education

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In this Image A teacher with students in a classroom, photographed during an IPA study in Ghana. © 2019 IPA

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Research Findings

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A photo of children in Panama. This photo was used in a 2018 blog post about JADENKA, co-authored by Emma Naslund-Hadley, Carmen Albertos, and Cynthia Hobbs of the IADB. © 2018 IADB / Emma Naslund-Hadley

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The Impact of Bilingual Mathematics Education in Panama

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Ethnomathematics, an approach to teaching mathematics that incorporates local cultural understandings of mathematics, may improve student learning in indigenous communities. Researchers worked with IPA and the Inter-American Development Bank to conduct a randomized evaluation of an ethnomathematics program called JADENKÄ, developed by Panama’s government for preschool students in the country’s Ngäbe-Buglé region. The program improved students’ mathematical and ethnomathematical skills, with the most salient positive impacts for Ngäbe students, suggesting that well-designed ethnomathematics programs can reduce achievement gaps between indigenous and nonindigenous students without asking students to choose between their academic learning and their identity, culture, and language.

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A photo of a school in a village around Lake Bosomtwe, Ghana. © 2015 Chuck Chua

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The Impact of COVID-19 on Children’s Learning and Development in Ghana

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The COVID-19 pandemic and associated social and economic downturn are undermining children's educational and developmental outcomes, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Leveraging an on-going longitudinal study, researchers in Ghana conducted phone surveys and other research activities to measure the pandemic’s repercussions on children’s education and broader developmental outcomes. On average, private school students and students with high socioeconomic status had higher test scores at the end of the school closure period compared with their public school counterparts, even when controlling for their previous scores.

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A storybook for young Kenyan children. Questions that the parents can address with their child are written in italics.

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Parent-Child Book Sharing to Support Children’s Early Language Skills in Kenya

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Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, the vast majority of primary-school-aged children are not able to read. This study tested different versions of a scalable parent-child book-sharing intervention to determine which version might be the most cost-effective in improving early literacy skills. The intervention included culturally and linguistically appropriate books developed for a low-literacy population in rural Kenya, along with parent training on dialogic reading. Combining parent training with the provision of storybooks improved the quality of caregiver-child reading interactions and their frequency. Receiving the training program improved children’s expressive vocabulary. The children of illiterate caregivers benefited at least as much as the children of literate caregivers, and for some outcomes, effects were largest for the children of illiterate caregivers.

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Related Topics

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Early Childhood Care and Education

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IPA’s work in ECCE includes running communities of practice with practitioners, advising ministries of education on policy development and implementation, and conducting high-quality research projects on a range of different ECCE interventions, from parenting programs to teacher training for kindergarten teachers.

Education in Emergencies

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IPA has a growing portfolio of education projects in settings affected by conflict and/or crisis and is working to develop our expertise in how to conduct high-quality research and support actors working in these critically important settings.

Education System Strengthening

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IPA has over a decade of experience collaborating with ministries of education to co-create and conduct research projects, to use data and research to inform decision-making, and to understand education systems and their actors and what can be done to improve learning and other educational outcomes.

Social Emotional Learning

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From early childhood development to adolescents’ life skills, there is increasing interest in understanding a range of important skills and competencies for young people. IPA is working on improving measurement, intervention, and research in this area.

Foundational Skills

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Developing foundational skills in basic literacy and numeracy provides the building blocks for an education. IPA has a range of research projects on this topic.

School-Based Violence

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One billion children experience violence every year. Schools are increasingly recognized as an important setting in which to address violence, inspiring new research. IPA is working to build its expertise in this area, which presents many challenges for conducting quality and ethical research.

Assessment

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IPA has developed internal expertise in designing and conducting learning assessments. In response to high demand from many of our partnerships with education ministries, and after successfully supporting Liberia’s Ministry of Education to develop a national learning assessment policy, IPA is expanding our work in this area.

A Dual-Generation Approach to Early Childhood Development

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Dual-generation theory argues that to truly transform the lives of children facing severe adversity, it is necessary to support adult caregivers to transform their own lives. IPA has been exploring the application of dual-generation theory to international settings, across a range of policy, intervention design, and research projects.

Qualitative Research

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Improving IPA’s work in qualitative research is one of the methodological goals of IPA’s Education Sector. Projects in this area include responding to direct requests from ministries of education for targeted qualitative research, investigating the underlying mechanisms of effective intervention, and initial exploratory research on intervention design.

Education

Our Team

Education

Our Team

Applied Research & Methods (ARM) Group Affiliate | Program Director, Education

Sarah Kabay

Sarah is the Director for IPA's Education sector program. As an education researcher, she uses mixed methods and interdisciplinary research approaches and is particularly interested in the integration of qualitative research into randomized evaluations.

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Applied Research & Methods (ARM) Group Affiliate | Program Director, Education

Sarah Kabay

Sarah is the Director for IPA's Education sector program. As an education researcher, she uses mixed methods and interdisciplinary research approaches and is particularly interested in the integration of qualitative research into randomized evaluations.

Read Full Bio