Post-migration risks, developmental processes, and learning among Syrian refugee children in Lebanon

Kim, Ha Yeon; Brown, Lindsay; Dolan, Carly Tubbs; Sheridan, Margaret A.; Aber, J. Lawrence

doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2020.101142

Cited by 26 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…More research is needed to deepen the evidence base related to the ways in which risk operates and influences child development in LMICs. For example, Kim et al (2020) found that EF explained the negative association for only two of the seven individual risk factors—age-for-grade and perceived community safety—on children’s literacy and numeracy skills. Further, similar to the direct effects between EF and math, studies drawing on samples of children from high-income countries have found a stronger mediating relation between risk, EF, and math than for literacy or language abilities (Lawson & Farah, 2017; Nesbitt et al, 2013; Waters et al, 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To create the risk index, each risk is dichotomized so that exposure equals one and no exposure equals zero, and the binary risk indicators are summed into a single risk index. Cumulative risk indices have largely been used in high-income countries; the majority of global research to date has studied how individual risk factors affect children's development (e.g., Kim et al, 2020). Yet, given the widespread nature of risk exposure in SSA, an additive approach may be useful to apply to child development.…”

Section: Children's Exposure To Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Executive function mediates the association between cumulative risk and learning in Ghanaian schoolchildren.

Suntheimer¹,

Wolf²,

Sulik³

et al. 2022

Developmental Psychology

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Research on the associations among adversity, executive function (EF), and academic outcomes in lowand middle-income countries, where developmental risk factors are more prevalent and impoverished environments are more widespread than in high income countries, is sparse. This study examines the relations among cumulative risk, EF, and learning outcomes measured 2-years later in Ghanaian third-and fourth-graders (N = 371; 49% female), shedding light on underlying mechanisms of how risk can undermine learning. A cumulative risk index was created based on a set of four child-reported risk factors: home aggression, unsafe home neighborhood, hunger, and having worked for pay. Cumulative risk and EF were negatively correlated. Learning outcomes (literacy and math test scores) were negatively correlated with earlier measures of cumulative risk and positively correlated with earlier measures of EF. EF mediated the association between cumulative risk and later learning outcomes, accounting for 65.3% of the total effect for literacy and 100% for math. This mediated pathway was robust to controls for child and household sociodemographic characteristics. The findings contribute to a small evidence base on the mediating role of EF in linking adversity and learning outcomes in a global context.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Children's Exposure To Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Executive function mediates the association between cumulative risk and learning in Ghanaian schoolchildren.

Suntheimer¹,

Wolf²,

Sulik³

et al. 2022

Developmental Psychology

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show abstract

“…PSRA-AR was designed to assess self-regulation of emotion, attention, and behavior of children during direct assessments. The instrument was shortened and adapted for the Zambian con-text (McCoy, Zuilkowski, & Fink, 2015) and used in other LMIC samples (Kim, Brown, Tubbs Dolan, Sheridan, & Aber, 2018). The shortened version consisted of 13 items focused on the child's attention and behavior.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Year 3 follow-up of the ‘Quality Preschool for Ghana’ interventions on child development.

Wolf¹

2019

Developmental Psychology

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Governments around the world are increasing investments in early childhood education as a way to promote children’s learning and development. As research grows on the longer-term effects of early educational programs, some have hypothesized that sustained impacts may depend on the quality of children’s subsequent classroom environments and may be more likely to occur in certain nonacademic domains. This study is the first to examine these questions in sub-Saharan Africa, using longitudinal data from a school-randomized trial in Ghana. A 1-year teacher-training and coaching program, delivered with (TTPA) and without (TT) parental-awareness meetings, was implemented when children were enrolled in 1 of 2 grades of preprimary school. Previous studies showed that in Year 1, the implementation year, the TT treatment had positive impacts on children’s literacy, numeracy, and social-emotional development, while the TTPA treatment yielded no positive impacts for children in both grades. In this study, I examine impacts in Year 3, at the end of children’s 1st or 2nd year of primary school. I find persistent positive impacts of TT on literacy, and new negative impacts of TTPA on numeracy, but these depend on levels of classroom emotional support and teacher burnout in primary school. In addition, there were small persistent impacts of both treatments on children’s executive function, and these were not conditional on subsequent classroom environments.

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“…In the first developmental study to result from the 3EA data (Kim, Brown et al, 2020), we found that Syrian refugee children face many pre-, peri-, and post-migration risks, some of which are especially salient among refugee populations (e.g., being assigned to a lower grade than is normative for their age) and some of which are nearly universal risk factors (e.g., poor health). These risks are associated with decrements in children's ability to regulate themselves cognitively and behaviorally, and to achieve literacy and numeracy skills (Kim, Brown et al, 2020). We also found that children's regulatory skills, including cognitive (executive function) skills and behavioral regulation skills, are key predictors of children's academic learning.…”

Section: Child Development In Crisis-affected Settingsmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…In this paper, we explore these questions by highlighting findings from our research examining associations among risks faced by Syrian refugee children in Lebanon, their developmental processes, and academic outcomes (Kim, Brown, Tubbs Dolan, Sheridan, & Aber, 2020). While we found some similarities with educational and child developmental research in western contexts, we also identified areas of divergence.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children's learning and development in conflict- and crisis-affected countries: Building a science for action

et al. 2021

Self Cite

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This paper critically reviews the opportunities and challenges in designing and conducting actionable research on the learning and development of children in conflict- and crisis-affected countries. We approached our review through two perspectives championed by Edward Zigler: (a) child development and social policy and (b) developmental psychopathology in context. The aim of the work was to answer the following questions: What works to enhance children's learning and development in such contexts? By what mechanisms? For whom? Under what conditions? How do experiences and conditions of crisis affect the basic processes of children's typical development? The review is based on a research–practice partnership started in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2010 and expanded to research in Niger and Lebanon in 2016. The focus of the research is on the impact of Healing Classrooms (a set of classroom practices) and Healing Classrooms Plus (an additional set of targeted social and emotional learning activities), developed by the International Rescue Committee, on children's academic outcomes and social and emotional learning. We sought to extract lessons from this decade of research for building a global developmental science for action. Special attention is paid to the importance of research–practice partnerships, conceptual frameworks, measurement and methodology. We conclude by highlighting several essential features of a global developmental science for action.

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Post-migration risks, developmental processes, and learning among Syrian refugee children in Lebanon

Cited by 26 publications

References 59 publications

Executive function mediates the association between cumulative risk and learning in Ghanaian schoolchildren.

Executive function mediates the association between cumulative risk and learning in Ghanaian schoolchildren.

Year 3 follow-up of the ‘Quality Preschool for Ghana’ interventions on child development.

Children's learning and development in conflict- and crisis-affected countries: Building a science for action

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