Global Education Lab

Diversity in Education

The Global Education Lab flagship at UGlobe partners with societal partners from around the world to address inequalities in education globally. We collaborate closely with Utrecht University’s Dynamics of Youth strategic theme.

Sub-projects

It currently has four transdisciplinary sub-projects:

  1. Early Childhood Development: Measurement for Change initiative
  2. Primary and Secondary Education: Global Learning Community in Whole Child Development initiative
  3. Higher Education: Contextualizing Impact Evaluation Pedagogy in Africa
  4. Field experiments in schools and kindergartens in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Bulgaria, and Romania

Early Childhood Development (ECD): Measurement for Change

The goal of this initiative is to support ECD implementing organisations globally use monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) to design more effective programmes for children in adversity, leading to sustained impacts at scale and system level change. We work together with more than twenty ECD organisations and universities worldwide.

The first lessons were captured in an Open Access Research Topic called: Effective Delivery of Integrated Interventions in Early Childhood: Innovations in Evidence Use, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (2021). It includes 32 articles by 157 authors, and has been viewed more than 80,000 times since its launch.  A new research topic “Achieving Impacts at Scale in Early Childhood Interventions: Innovations in Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning” will accept submissions through November 2022.

Primary and Secondary Education: Global Learning Community in Whole Child Development

UGlobe, in partnership with the Utrecht University strategic theme Dynamics of Youth, is facilitating a Global Learning Community (GLC) on Whole Child Development. Supported by Porticus, an international philanthropy, the GLC brings together over 70 education organisations from around the world, from grassroots to international organisations. GLC member organisations contribute to improving basic education (primary, secondary, and TVET) systems for children in adversity globally, working with communities, teachers, and school leaders, and taking a whole child development perspective. The GLC is a space for organisations to share, learn and connect, and is based on a shared belief that strengthened collaboration has the potential to increase collective impact.

Higher Education: CIPA Project (Contextualizing Impact Evaluation Pedagogy in Africa)

The Contextualizing IE Pedagogy in Africa - CIPA project is a joint initiative between UGlobe and the Network of Impact Evaluation Researchers in Africa (NIERA). Supported by SAS-P, a Dutch philanthropy, the CIPA project aims to equip the next generation of African researchers and policy makers with solid knowledge of rigorous IE methods and their use for policy. CIPA’s objective is to develop and implement a scalable model that embeds rigorous training of IE methods in the curricula of selected EA universities.

To achieve this, the project has partnered with 11 fellows selected from seven universities and two research institutions across Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Ethiopia to design impact evaluation curriculum materials and embed these into course curricula at these institutions.

Ongoing A/B experiments in schools and kindergartens in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Bulgaria, and Romania

UGlobe is partnering with societal partners in Africa, including NewGlobe Education, and in Eastern Europe, the Trust for Social Achievement, and with an interdisciplinary team of (international) academics on experimental A/B tests to improve education outcomes.

Questions being asked through this research include:

  • Does long term goal setting training support boys and girls transition to secondary?
  • Does mobilizing parental engagement support disadvantaged children improve learning outcomes?
  • Can teaching to the right level (TaRL) be effectively delivered inside regular classrooms in low resource environments?
  • How can structured pedagogy improve learning outcomes?
  • Can interleaving improve learning outcomes?

Meet our Utrecht University team:

Project leader

Team members