Highlighted Session: Evaluating a tool for school-based identification of children with functional difficulties: the Child Functioning Module – Teacher Version

Group Submission Type: Highlighted Paper Session

Proposal

Summary: The provision of equitable, disability-inclusive education requires the identification of children with functional difficulties, who may require additional support for full participation. Accurate data is also crucial to support advocacy, and protest when needs are not met. Currently, however, in many low and middle-income countries, the identification of children with functional difficulties in educational settings poses a substantial challenge. The Washington Group on Disability Statistics, in collaboration with UNICEF, has developed a tool to enable the identification of children with functional difficulties by teachers. This tool, the Child Functioning Module – Teacher Version (CFM-TV), now requires evaluation and validation across a range of contexts. This panel brings together three of the first evaluations of this tool, conducted by three different organisations, providing an opportunity to synthesise learnings, and generate discussion around future research priorities. An explicit methodological focus will additionally strengthen understanding of how to design studies to answer particular questions.

Background: Substantial progress has been made in recent years in the development of tools to enable the identification of children with functional difficulties in standardised and internationally comparable ways. However, these tools have been validated for very specific use cases. For example, while the Washington Group Short Set of questions has been validated for use on children aged 5 and above, it is designed for generation of statistical data (such as population prevalence of functional difficulty) when included in national censuses or large-scale population surveys, and administered to a child’s parent or caregiver. Additionally, due to its brevity, it is well understood to miss many developmental and behavioural difficulties experienced by children. The most reliable tool for collecting child disability data at scale is the Washington Group/UNICEF Child Functioning Module (CFM), which covers a broader range of domains of difficulties. Again, however, it is designed for generation of statistical data, and requires administration to a parent or caregiver.
The CFM-TV, designed to be administered to or completed by teachers at schools, offers a potential solution to two different data challenges. Firstly, if it can be completed by teachers, rather than parents or caregivers, this would greatly simplify the routine collection of functional difficulty data about children in schools, as it could be done without interviewing parents and caregivers. Secondly, if the tool can identify individual children with functional difficulties in schools, it could potentially support identification of additional needs and resourcing of inclusive education work. Potential use cases for the CFM-TV might include generation of routine estimates of functional difficulty prevalence in schools, and associated resourcing needs, as part of broader Educational Management Information System (EMIS); generation of functional difficulty indicators to allow for disaggregated data analysis and reporting in a range of educational interventions and programmes; or identification of children for referral for medical screening in relation to disability or other health concerns. Reliable data on functional difficulty may support advocacy and protest for appropriate resourcing of inclusive education data.
While the CFM-TV's potential is clear, rigorous evaluation is needed to establish whether and how it can appropriately be used. Areas for evaluation include validity in identification of functional difficulties, reliability, consistency across respondents and contexts, and acceptability and feasibility of use. A range of methods can contribute to building the required evidence base, including cognitive interviews, reliability testing, comparison of responses across respondents, comparison to medical evaluations, and comparisons to existing population data. There are also questions to explore around managing risks due to stigma and discrimination, training needs and storage and use of potentially sensitive information.

Panel purpose and objectives:
The panel aims to generate a critical synthesis of learning about the CFM-TV to date, support identification of priority areas for additional evaluation and research, and refine thinking about methodological approaches to generating the information that is needed.
To achieve these aims, the panel is structured around three presentations of recent CFM-TV evaluations, conducted by three different organisations. The three evaluations also differ in the purpose for which they evaluated the CFM-TV, the methodological approaches used, and the contexts in which they took place. To support learning across these different studies, the panel draws on a chair and two discussants, each with unique expertise on the topic, drawn from different backgrounds and perspective. The chair and discussants will work together to provide context, synthesise areas of similarity and difference across the studies, highlight gaps and limitations in existing work, and engage the audience in identification of research priorities.
This panel is structured as follows:
Chair: Introduction to the CFM-TV, and reflection on potential purposes of use
Paper 1: CFM-TV pilot study in Somalia
Paper 2: CFM-TV feasibility study in Sierra Leone
Paper 3: CFM-TV evaluation in Nepal
Discussant 1: Synthesise key learnings and remaining gaps, with emphasis on methodology.
Discussant 2: Engage panellists and audience members on learnings, gaps and relevance to advocacy and protest from the perspective of the disability community

Sub Unit

• Inclusive Education SIG

Chair

• Rebecca Povec Pagel, USAID Center for Education

Individual Presentations

• Child Functioning Module – Teacher Version: Pilot test in Somalia - Henok Tesfay Zeratsion, Save the Children Norway

• Findings from feasibility test of Child Functioning Module – Teacher Version in Sierra Leone - Julia de Kadt, Sightsavers; Steven Kaindaneh, Sightsavers; Elena Schmidt, Sightsavers

• Validity Study of the Child Functioning Module-Teacher Version in Nepal - Anne Laesecke, Zemitek; Aimee Reeves, School-To-School International; Eileen Dombrowski, School-to-School International (STS)

Discussant

• Padam Bahadur Pariyar, Inclusive Development Partners