Exploring the effectiveness of educational media in promoting early learning in refugee settings: Evidence from Bangladesh and Kenya  

• In Event: Intersectoral Approaches to Education in Humanitarian Crises and Emergencies (II)

Proposal

Early childhood development (ECD) opportunities lay the foundation for nurturing children's well-being and lifelong learning. Yet millions of children in conflict and post-conflict settings have little access to ECD opportunities that support their learning and holistic development — one in six children worldwide lives in a conflict-affected area. Research shows that the prolonged adversity experienced by children in these settings during the critical early years of life can lead to adverse long-term effects on learning and well-being. As such, several scholars and practitioners engaging in these humanitarian spaces have called for the development of accessible, culturally sustaining early learning experiences to nurture children's development and abate the possible detrimental effects. To respond to this need, a leading early learning nonprofit based in the US (hereafter referred to as NGO) created a library of "globally tested educational media" content, the "Watch, Play, Learn: Early Learning Videos" (WPL). The NGO identified these videos as modular, play-based, globally relevant 5-minute animations focusing on four content areas: Math, Science, Social and Emotional Learning, Child Protection, Health, and Safety. The main objective of WPL is to offer contextually relevant media content that can be effectively integrated within existing humanitarian direct service programs to advance their programmatic outcomes of supporting children's learning needs.

This comparative case study draws on Paris's (2012) Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP) to explore the effectiveness of WPL's contextually relevant approach in promoting equity and learning in two different direct service programs supporting displaced learners in Bangladesh and Kenya. This includes examining WPL's approach through the lens of CSP's key features: a critical centering of dynamic communities, promotion of communal accountability, and offering structured opportunities to contend with and question the power structures influencing the learning experience. The study also explores how the unique sociohistorical, cultural, political, and economic factors in the two different contexts influence the effectiveness of the WPL experience. This is also one of the few studies that compare the effectiveness of technology-enabled education interventions in the relatively understudied Rohingya camps in Bangladesh and the more studied Dadaab camp in Kenya.

The first program included in this study targeted 490 Rohingya refugee children aged 3-8 years in the Refugee camps in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. In this program, which took place between October 2022-February 2023, children watched the Rohingya-dubbed videos through a projector in informal child protection centers. The second program targeted 391 Somali refugee children aged 3-6 years in the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya. This program took place between October 2022 and June 2023 and involved children watching videos through smart tablet devices at a school in the camp.

To further understand the effectiveness of WPL, this study draws on data collected from interviews with the designers of WPL, facilitators implementing the program, and caregivers of the children engaging with the WPL content. It also relies on classroom observations, field notes, and children's engagement data.

By employing an inductive thematic analysis, the results show how in both programs, there was an appreciation for the cultural appropriateness of the WPL content and the dubbing of the videos in the learners' relevant local language. This feedback may indicate the effectiveness of the NGO's approach in centering dynamic communities by recruiting "Global Advisors" to review the video curricula and animatics to ensure that the messages and visuals are culturally relevant and "comprehensible" for young children and their families. That said, there were instances when partners reported that some children belonging to linguistic minorities were less familiar with some of the words used in the dominant vernacular, which led to the teachers translating these words to the children to aid their learning. This observation might reflect the limitation of some NGOs' design process when operating with scarce resources and how they may prioritize reach and scalable design. To decide on the most appropriate technology-enabled distribution model for showcasing the videos, the NGO relied on its "Technology Decision Roadmap" to guide its discussions with partners. Even though both partners mentioned the value of following this "step-by-step process" for determining the relevant technology solution, in Kenya, partners expressed the need to use this tool for deciding the most appropriate hardware and software solutions rather than strictly focusing on hardware. The feedback from both partners also highlighted the importance of employing a flexible design that adapts to the changes in inherently dynamic humanitarian contexts.

The analysis also showed partners' appreciation of the NGO’s promotion of communal accountability and agency in the process of developing WPL through regular meetings with various stakeholders. This recognition was referenced by the partners as a reason for their interest in extending and scaling WPL integration.

The data did not show the presence of sufficient structured opportunities to contend with internalized oppressions, false choices, and inward gazes, which is a core pillar of CSP. The representatives of the NGO explained this omission as a limitation they faced due to time constraints that restricted the possibilities for such discussions. Still, to overcome this barrier, the NGO's representatives mentioned that they followed a reflexive approach during their internal team meetings, where they questioned the role of power structures influencing their relationship with their various partners and discussed possibilities for reducing the influence of these forces.

As for the effectiveness of WPL content in supporting programmatic learning outcomes, the data on children's engagement with the content, their peers, and their teachers showed an improvement after the deployment of WPL. Children's attendance data showed an increase in children's attendance of 10% in Kenya and 9% in Bangladesh when comparing the two months before with the five months of WPL integration. Moreover, according to teachers' feedback, the WPL videos seemed to have promoted children's curiosity about the content of the sessions by offering an alternative medium for domain knowledge.

In sum, this study offers in-depth insights into the affordances and limitations of designing culturally sustaining educational media for early learners in dynamic low-resource humanitarian settings. As such, the findings have important implications for practitioners and researchers aiming to deploy CSP's features to promote more equitable learning environments.

Authors

• Amin Ashraf Marei, GSE, University of Pennsylvania

• Anjuli Shivshanker

• Margi Bhatt, Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies

• Senait Solomon, Sesame Workshop