HUD Colloquium Presents: Leveraging Developmental Science to Inform Early Childhood Education Policy in Low and Middle-Income Countries: Longitudinal Evidence from Ghana

The Department of Human Development Colloquium Presents:

Dr. Sharon Wolf

Associate Professor

Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania

"Leveraging Developmental Science to Inform Early Childhood Education Policy in Low and Middle-Income Countries: Longitudinal Evidence from Ghana"

Abstract: 

Early educational experiences can shape development throughout childhood and into adulthood, but longitudinal evidence from low- and middle-income countries is extremely limited. In this study, I present impacts from a 7-year ongoing longitudinal study examining the impacts of a teacher professional development program for public and private kindergartens in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana aimed at improving early educational quality. Schools were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: teacher training (TT), teacher training plus parental-awareness meetings (TTPA), and control. Over seven years, children in the TT condition showed small persistent gains in higher-order cognitive skills into early adolescence. The addition of the parental awareness program to the teacher training led to counter-acting impacts and the TTPA treatment did not result in any improvements to child outcomes over the years. Qualitative data suggests that parents disapproved of the activity- and play-based learning and pushed back on teachers’ use of the new methods, leading to changes in parenting practices. Implications for global early childhood education policy, as well as building a globally representative developmental science through research-policy-practice partnerships, will be discussed.