Promoting Children's Learning Outcomes in Conflict-Affected Countries: Generating, Communicating, and Incorporating Evidence for Impact

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Nowhere is access to and quality of education more urgent than in low-resourced states afflicted by ongoing conflict. Of the over 75 million children around the world who are currently out of school, over half live in conflict-affected countries (CACs). Of children in conflict-affected areas who are in school, children are not learning. For example, our own research in three eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) indicates that 91 percent of primary school children in grades 2-4 could not correctly respond to one reading comprehension question of the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA), a test designed specifically for use in low- and middle-income countries. We take the position that the provision of quality education can mitigate some of the most severe consequences of conflict for children - and potentially help break the intergenerational transmission of poverty and violence - through the effective provision of safe and supportive spaces that promote children's academic and socioemotional development. But as an international community, we are currently failing in our efforts to do so due to the "stunning lack of evidence" as to what works to promote children's learning in the context of conflict and crisis.The current project aims to generate, communicate, and incorporate into practice rigorous evidence as to how to promote effective teaching and improve children's academic and socioemotional learning in conflict-affected contexts. We will achieve these objectives using three primary strategies. First, we will generate evidence via original analyses of data from a large-scale, cluster-randomized, school-based intervention program ("Healing Classrooms") undertaken by the International Rescue Committee, New York University, and other partners in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) between 2011 and 2014. To our knowledge, this is the only experimental evaluation of an integrated teacher training/curricular development intervention to promote academic and socioemotional learning in a CAC that has ever been undertaken. We will use the rigorous evidence generated from these analyses to: (1) communicate with policymakers, practitioners, and the academic community cutting-edge social science approaches to the design and implementation of future education strategies in CACs; and (2) work with partner organizations to incorporate the evidence into school-based interventions around the world. In generating evidence, we will move beyond assessing whether a school-based intervention works to promote effective teaching and children's learning outcomes: We will use sophisticated statistical methods to consider both the mechanisms by and the contexts in which the intervention worked. Such evidence is essential for: (1) strengthening and replicating the mechanisms of the intervention that do work; (2) and tailoring the intervention to different school- and community-contexts. Given that Healing Classrooms intervention is currently being implemented by the IRC in 12 countries (including the DRC, Central African Republic, Afghanistan, and Chad), the evidence generated by the proposed project - in conjunction with our communication and incorporation activities - has the potential to improve the learning outcomes of millions of children around the world.