Can remote and hybrid approaches for ECD promote equity and further protest and progress? Perspectives from communities and practitioners

• In Event: Roundtable Group 9
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Parent-teacher engagment in rural contexts

Proposal

The COVID-19 pandemic forced many organizations to shut down in-person Early Childhood Development (ECD) activities and shift to remote service delivery. This was done suddenly and without a strong evidence base about what worked well in terms of implementation and impact. To better understand remote service delivery for ECD, in 2020, a university in the United States and a set of Global North and Global South implementing organizations with activities in diverse humanitarian contexts examined the available evidence on remotely delivered ECD services aimed at improving outcomes for young children and caregivers in crisis and non-crisis contexts (Author, 2023). The review found that in many cases access and engagement increased, but sometimes existing inequalities were exacerbated. The review also identified lessons about promising implementation characteristics, such as interactivity and personalization, and noted the potential for positive outcomes for both participating children and caregivers.

Since COVID has abated, practitioners have been able to resume in-person services and are now faced with the challenge of determining how to best combine in-person and remote approaches to best meet the needs of young children and caretakers. This will not be a one-time decision as climate change, conflict, and migration continue to shift the landscape and context for families with young children and the communities and organizations that are supporting them. Furthermore, movements like decoloniality, localization, and community-based programming bring in additional participants and voices in determining what approaches are best suited to support young children and caregivers. Can digital technologies and remote modalities be vehicles for empowering communities, building equity, and furthering a culture of protest and progress?

To better understand this new landscape and how communities and practitioners are making decisions about remote, in-person, and hybrid approaches – and to update the evidence base – the same university and (both previous and new) partners have undertaken a second phase review. In that review, the team reviews evidence on remote and hybrid modalities for ECD programming that has emerged since 2020, updating lessons learned and promising approaches. It also includes several case studies that look in depth at practitioner decision-making about remote and hybrid approaches, sharing nuanced perspectives on local-level choices and implementation. The review – and roundtable presentation – will include actual practitioner voices and recommendations.

This review fills an important gap in the field of ECD and ECD in emergencies. Most reviews of education technology and remote approaches have focused on primary school or higher and do not bring in perspectives of communities and practitioners. Most reviews of effective early childhood interventions often do not discuss the use of technology and remote approaches in detail, especially related to decision-making and trade-offs between scalable approaches and localization or contextualization Rodriguez-Segura (2021). And most of these studies do not purposefully seek to build evidence applicable for humanitarian actors. This roundtable presentation will share findings from the updated evidence review and the case studies.

Author

• Amin Ashraf Marei, GSE, University of Pennsylvania