Promoting Children's Learning Outcomes in Conflict-Affected Countries: Evidence for Action in Niger

受冲突影响国家(CACs)的儿童在学术学习和社会情感健康方面受到严重限制。遭受暴力和贫困的儿童进入“学校”(正规或非正规教育环境)时，执行功能技能(如工作记忆、抑制、注意力)、情绪/行为调节技能和社会信息处理技能较差。他们就读的正规和非正规“学校”很少使用有效的策略来提高他们的学业和社会情感技能。我们能做些什么呢？该项目旨在发展关于如何解除尼日尔等社区儿童的这些限制的科学和实用知识。首先，我们建议调整和测试新颖、低成本、有针对性的干预措施(LCT)，如正念(MI)和大脑游戏(BG)，旨在改善儿童的执行功能、情绪/行为调节和社交信息处理技能，并随后改善他们的识字和算术技能以及社交情绪幸福感。第二，即使像MI和BG这样的干预措施奏效，它们对一些儿童、在一些教室和学校，以及在某些条件下往往比对其他儿童更有效。因此，这项研究将检验MI和BG实施质量(如剂量、保真度)的差异是否会导致它们对尼日利亚儿童学习和发展影响的差异。第三，也是最后，学生、教师、学校和项目干预(如补救性支持计划)之间的这些类型的复杂互动嵌入到更大的系统和更广泛的背景中，可能限制或支持项目战略(如MI和BG)的高质量实施。但在CAC中，很少有基于社会和系统理论的高质量、严谨的研究，来了解这些更高级别的系统如何影响学校、课程、教室、教师和学生之间的动态互动。因此，我们将进行一项嵌入学校集群的理论建构性定性研究--MI和BG的随机实地测试及其实施。通过这一项目，我们希望：(A)动态、多层次地了解为改善尼日尔和其他社区难民、境内流离失所者和当地儿童的学习过程和成果所作的努力；(B)从理论和方法上促进发展、教育、预防和社会科学的综合；(C)通过确定改善儿童学习和发展的有效、可扩展的战略，对紧急情况部门的教育起到促进作用。

Children in conflict-affected countries (CACs) experience profound constraints on their academic learning and socioemotional well-being. Children exposed to violence and poverty come to "school" (formal or non-formal education settings) with poor executive function skills (e.g. working memory, inhibition, attention), emotional/behavioral regulation skills and social-information-processing skills. And the formal and non-formal "schools" they attend rarely use effective strategies to advance their academic and socioemotional skills.What can be done? This project aims to develop both scientific and practical knowledge about how to lift these constraints on children in CACs like Niger. First, we propose to adapt and test novel, low-cost, targeted interventions (LCTs) like Mindfulness (MI) and Brain Games (BG) designed to improve children's executive function, emotional/behavioral regulation and social information-processing skills and, subsequently, their literacy and numeracy skills and socioemotional well-being.Second, even when interventions like MI and BG work, they often work better for some children, in some classrooms and schools, and under some conditions than for others. So this study will examine whether variability in the quality of implementation (e.g. dosage, fidelity) of MI and BG results in the variability in their impacts on children's learning and development in Niger.Third and finally, these types of complex interactions among students, teachers, "schools" and program interventions (like remedial support programs) are embedded in larger systems and broader contexts that may constrain or enable quality implementation of program strategies (such as MI and BG). But there is very little high-quality, rigorous research, grounded in social and systems theories, available in CACs to understand how these higher-level systems influence the dynamic interactions of schools, programs, classrooms, teachers and students. So we will conduct a theory-building qualitative study embedded in the school cluster-randomized field test of MI and BG and their implementation. Through this project, we hope to (a) achieve a dynamic, multi-level understanding of efforts to improve learning processes and outcomes for refugee, IDP, and local children in Niger and other CACs; (b) contribute to the synthesis of the developmental, educational, prevention and social sciences in theory and method; and (c) have a catalytic effect on the education in emergencies sector by identifying effective, scalable strategies that improve children's learning and development.