The COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative effect on children's mental health worldwide. Existing studies suggest that children with greater levels of hope are more likely to be resilient in the face of disaster. While social support at the family and community level is proposed as an important factor in sustaining and fostering hope, the children…

Background: Information and communication technology (ICT) reading interventions can help children with reading difficulties, especially those in resource-constrained environments who otherwise might not have support. Objectives: (1) Provide an overview of ICT reading interventions used globally with primary school children. (2) Provide further…

In the past decade, hundreds of impact evaluation studies have measured the learning outcomes of education interventions in developing countries. The impact magnitudes are often reported in terms of "standard deviations," making them difficult to communicate to policy makers beyond education specialists. This paper proposes two…

Education researchers working in sub-Saharan Africa have recently and rapidly expanded the availability of evidence related to the impact of educational interventions on learning outcomes, particularly in preprimary and lower primary education (Ganimian & Murnane, 2016; McEwan, 2015; Popova, Evans, & Arancibia, 2016). Awareness that…

Growing recognition of the harmful effects of child marriage has placed its elimination on the global and national agenda. To address this problem, the authors reviewed the global state of evidence on what works to prevent child marriage. Their research focuses exclusively on rigorously evaluated interventions, defined as interventions evaluated…

Despite enormous progress in expanding school enrollment globally, improvements in health have not always followed, raising important questions: Does education, in fact, enable women, men and their families to be healthier? And if so, how? To fill this gap in knowledge, the GIRL Center conducted a systematic review of the evidence for the effects…

This commentary discusses three articles (Jukes et al., 2017, McCoy et al., 2017, and Aber et al., 2017), which respectively focus on Kenya, Zambia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). They all cite poor educational outcomes as a key motivation for developing and implementing new programs, and all three articles provide helpful evidence…

Today, more than half of the world population is under the age of 25 years and one in four is under age 18. The urgency of expanding access to Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) notably for children and young people in Africa and Asia is greater than ever before. However, many challenges to the implementation and delivery of CSE in resource…

Research consistently demonstrates that children with developmental disabilities exhibit motor skill deficits, but motor skill interventions can positively affect motor abilities and other areas of development. These findings have particular relevance for children with disabilities in developing countries, where there is limited access to early…

Objective: This research identifies effective and ineffective interventions for reducing barriers to the uptake of eye care services in developing countries. Design: Systematic literature review. Setting: Only research studies done in developing countries were included. Method: The review is restricted to English-language articles published…

This article proposes a conceptual framework for how education can promote adolescent girls' empowerment and, by mapping the field, highlights promising examples of empowering education programs. We conclude by identifying both research and programmatic opportunities for the future that will harness the expertise of a range of specialists from the…

Tracking students into different classrooms according to their prior academic performance is controversial among both scholars and policymakers. If teachers find it easier to teach a homogeneous group of students, tracking could enhance school effectiveness and raise test scores of both low- and high-ability students. If students benefit from…

The first Innocenti Global Seminar, which was sponsored by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), investigated the topic of Early Child Development (ECD). This summary report focuses on the three objectives of the seminar, which were to: (1) review critical issues in the field of child development so as to provide a rationale for investing…