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

没有哪个地方比资源匮乏、饱受持续冲突困扰的国家更迫切地获得教育和提高教育质量。目前全世界有7500万失学儿童，其中一半以上生活在受冲突影响的国家。在受冲突影响地区上学的儿童中，儿童没有学习。例如，我们自己在刚果民主共和国东部三个省的研究表明，91%的2-4年级小学生无法正确回答早期年级阅读评估(ERRA)中的一个阅读理解问题，这是一项专门为低收入和中等收入国家设计的测试。我们的立场是，通过有效提供安全和支持性的空间，促进儿童的学业和社会情感发展，提供优质教育可以减轻冲突对儿童造成的一些最严重后果，并有可能有助于打破贫穷和暴力的代际传播。但作为一个国际社会，我们目前未能做到这一点，因为关于在冲突和危机背景下促进儿童学习的有效方法“令人震惊地缺乏证据”。目前的项目旨在产生、交流并将关于如何在受冲突影响的背景下促进有效教学和改善儿童的学术和社会情感学习的严格证据纳入实践。我们将使用三个主要战略来实现这些目标。首先，我们将通过对2011至2014年间由国际救援委员会、纽约大学和刚果民主共和国(DRC)的其他合作伙伴开展的大规模、集群随机、以学校为基础的干预计划(“治愈教室”)的数据进行原始分析来产生证据。据我们所知，这是有史以来对教师培训/课程发展综合干预措施进行的唯一一次实验性评估，以促进CAC的学术和社会情感学习。我们将使用这些分析产生的严格证据：(1)与政策制定者、从业人员和学术界沟通，以设计和实施CAC未来教育战略的尖端社会科学方法；(2)与合作伙伴组织合作，将证据纳入世界各地的学校干预措施。在生成证据时，我们将超越评估以学校为基础的干预是否能够促进有效的教学和儿童的学习成果：我们将使用复杂的统计方法来考虑干预有效的机制和背景。这些证据对于：(1)加强和复制确实有效的干预机制；(2)根据不同的学校和社区情况调整干预措施是必不可少的。鉴于IRC目前正在12个国家(包括刚果民主共和国、中非共和国、阿富汗和乍得)实施康复课堂干预，拟议项目产生的证据--连同我们的沟通和融入活动--有可能改善世界各地数百万儿童的学习成果。

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.