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TOPIC AREAS: Early CHildhood
Our interventions and capacity building initiatives related to early childhood include strengthening early language skills, literacy, and health teaching practices in preschool education and providing evaluation technical assistance for early childhood programs and evaluators.
Examples of Projects
- Consulting Services for Harvard Graduate School of Education to Evaluate Un Buen Comienzo (UBC), a Pre-School Program in Chile. Mathematica provided evaluation consultation to the Harvard Graduate School of Education for the evaluation of the Fundación Educacional Oportunidad's early childhood education and health program, Un Buen Comienzo. This intervention was a two-year intensive professional development program, based on a coaching model. The goals of the program were to improve three domains of preschool quality—oral language and early literacy development, socio-emotional development, and coordination of early childhood education with health services—through an intensive professional development program for teachers and aides at the prekindergarten and kindergarten levels in municipal schools in Santiago. Mathematica's work included study design, instrument design, data collection plans, implementation monitoring and presentation of findings.
- Evaluation of the Children and Youth Programmes Initiative Supported by the Atlantic Philanthropies (Ireland and Northern Ireland). The Atlantic Philanthropies requires research and evaluation support for its initiative to invest in and study the effects of programs for disadvantaged children and youth (DCY) in Ireland and Northern Ireland. We conducted on-site consultation, participated in 20 expert advisory committees, and valuated strategy. In 2011, Mathematica, serving as a subcontractor on this grant, collected information from grantees about their evaluations and conducted a review of the program. Read more.
- Beyond Child Indicators: A Framework to Assess and Evaluate the Quality of Early Childhood Services and Programs in Global Contexts. Mathematica partnered with researchers from Yale University, Harvard University, and New York University to plan and facilitate the first meeting of a group of 40 international experts in early childhood focused on developing a conceptual framework and set of guidelines for the measurement and assessment of early childhood program quality in global contexts. The conceptual framework served as the basis of the first Society for Research in Child Development social policy report and brief focused on international early childhood development. The meeting was held in Abu Dhabi.