The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a historic opportunity to implement at scale interventions to promote Early Childhood Development (ECD). While the evidence base for the importance of ECD has grown, the research is distributed across sectors, populations, and settings with diversity noted in the scope and focus. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive updated analyses of ECD interventions across five sectors: health; nutrition; education; child protection; and social protection. Our review concludes that to make interventions, successful, smarter and sustainable, they need to be implemented as multi-sectoral intervention packages anchored in "nurturing care". The recommendations emphasize that intervention packages should be applied at developmentally appropriate times during the life-course, target multiple risks, and build on existing delivery platforms for feasibility of scale-up. While interventions will continue to improve with the growth of developmental science, the evidence is now strong that parents, caregivers, and families need to be supported in providing nurturing care and protection for young children to achieve their developmental potential.

No abstract

A systematic review was conducted to gain a more nuanced understanding of similarities and distinctions across countries in the development of executive functions (EF). The review includes 26 studies, with child and adolescent participants, that were published between 2006 and 2018. Both similarities and differences within developmental patterns of EF are identified across different countries. Across countries, bilingual children are shown to outperform their monolingual peers. Task improvement with age is not consistently reported in all studies, with no linear effects apparent in children from developing countries or regions. Gender differences on EF measures also vary between countries. Girls perform better than boys on EF tasks and parent and teacher ratings of EF in both Western and East Asian samples. Yet, in Iran and Tanzania, boys receive higher EF scores. From preschool age through adolescence, East Asians outperform Western counterparts on direct assessment measures of EF. However, strong discrepancies can be found between measures of direct EF assessment and parent and teacher ratings of children's EF. Chinese parents rate their children's EF as lower compared with parents from other countries. The role of contextual factors explaining differences in EF development is discussed. Highlights This paper presents the first systematic review on the topic of cross‐national variation in children's EF development. A clearly defined conceptual framework regarding EF facets and analysis of a wide age span underpin this review. From preschool age through adolescence, East‐Asian children outperform their Western counterparts on direct assessment measures of EF.

No abstract