Childhood Education Innovations
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Childhood Education: Innovations is an education magazine that provides unique, stimulating information about educational programs around the world. Articles explore solutions to specific challenges affecting schools, teachers, and learners and showcase the most recent innovations being developed and implemented to address those challenges. Readers will find inspiration for transforming education to better serve children and society. Published 6 times a year, CE Innovations provides a window into the work being done to bring quality, equitable education to all children. It stands alongside the Journal of Research in Childhood Education as one of our signature publications.
CONTENTS
July/August 2022
“Love Teaching to Inspire Love of Learning”
Intrinsic motivation has a key role to play in addressing these challenges. It’s no longer enough for children to be able to read and write. To thrive in the 21st century, children must be able to continually seek, process, act on, and reflect about new information. Our radically uncertain future demands that we prepare children and education systems to adapt and be resilient to change. The development of a love of learning is essential for future success. To achieve this, teachers need the intrinsic motivation to create environments in which children can flourish. They need support to effectively, intentionally, and sustainably improve their classroom practice.
“Accelerated Learning to Reach Children Furthest Behind”
Zizi Afrique Foundation, Safaricom Foundation, CREADIS, Maridhiano, and the Diocese of Lodwar collaborated to adapt and implement the Accelerated Learning Program (ALP). The ALP works toward accelerating the acquisition of foundational literacy and numeracy among learners furthest behind in Kenya. It is inspired by principles of Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL), an initiative of Pratham and JPAL. The Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) approach applies principles of formative assessments and level-wise grouping and learning to ensure children lagging in the foundational literacy and numeracy competencies catch up within a relatively short period, usually 30-50 days.
“aeioTU: Building a World That Listens to Children Better”
With an understanding of the challenges and potential of early childhood education, aeioTU is committed to working tirelessly to ensure the full development of all children into empathic, responsible, and happy adults who can be leaders in their communities. aeioTU’s first early childhood curriculum, called the aeioTU Educational Experience, is inspired by the Reggio Emilia educational philosophy, considered by UNESCO as one of the best for early childhood. With this curriculum, children learn through exploration, art, and play; they are the protagonists of their learning using their own interests.
“Building a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence in Vulnerable Schools: Aulas de Paz in Venezuela”
As part of a structured program to reduce violence in schools, promoting a culture of peace and non-violence for children and adolescents that would be transferable to their families and communities, a multidisciplinary team of professionals from Aseinc created Aulas de Paz in 2019. Initially, all concepts were gathered in an activity booklet that provided socio-emotional skills to teachers and students from vulnerable and rural areas. Aulas de Paz evolved into an intersectoral program and, today, its strategies are included in all educational programs carried out by the organization. The goal is to increase the number of teachers, parents, caregivers, and community leaders who are trained with strategies, dynamics, and activities linked to positive personal and social core values.
“Transforming Education Requires Collaboration at Every Level”
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 calls on the education field to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” by 2030. Education advancements such as the ones required to achieve that goal are often the result of decades of hard work. We must act now to see even incremental changes by 2030. Furthermore, we’ll need everyone to play their part: parents and policymakers, researchers and institutions, educators and community leaders. This article shares a few ways we’re already seeing this collaboration in action.
“Adapting and Responding to Continuous Change and Uncertainty: The Breteau Foundation’s Edtech Programme in Lebanon”
As an education provider in developing countries, the Breteau Foundation witnesses firsthand the disruptions, challenges, and barriers that negatively affect access to education, which include poverty, lack of infrastructure, trafficking, child slavery, and conflict. The Breateau Foundation delivers a range of programmes to support disadvantaged children. At the heart of their work is their Edtech programme, which provides tablets pre-loaded with educational apps aligned to national curriculums and a two-year teacher training programme to schools and local learning centers.
“Learn-Earn-Return: Working With Underprivileged Youth in Thailand”
This article describes how the Thai Child Development Foundation (TCDF), a charity operating in rural Thailand, implements the Learn-Earn-Return focus throughout ALL stages of life. TCDF implements circular thinking into the curriculum of all programs, including early development education for students with special needs and scholarship mentor programs for underprivileged youth. The aim is to encourage self sufficiency and sustainable development, not only for the children, but also for the charity itself.
“Social Franchise Models Enable Innovation in Social and Financial Education”
Social franchises—where the franchisor grants franchisees licenses and training to use their intellectual property for social benefit—are an innovative yet under-explored model in education. Aflatoun International, an education NGO based in Amsterdam, uses a social franchise model to provide SFE to children and youth globally. They pioneered SFE 15 years ago, when financial education for children was still essentially taboo, and the success of the programs highlights the power of social franchises to deliver quality, innovative SFE.
“Treasure Your Family: Supporting Families by Linking Schools and Community”
The Gallia-Vinton Educational Service Center (ESC) in Ohio, created a Treasure Your Family program in 2021 with the goal of offering experiences that would develop stronger relations between relatives. Through the program, families could engage in a series of events resulting in incentives. The area served was a community that lies along the Ohio River in Appalachia. The first offering of the program demonstrated considerable community support from students and their families, and so the program grew substantially for the second round in the fall of 2021. Urban lower socio-economic locations require actions, discussions, and relationships. Interactions and partnerships depend on these improved opportunities for developing school-community partnerships.
“Teaching Empathy Through Documentary Films”
Documentary films created by children and youth have the power to facilitate discussions in classrooms and at family dinner tables, and to promote global competency, empathy, and action. Through the medium of documentary film, young people are able to speak across experiences and lines of class, race, and nationality. Rather than being talked down to, they are transformed from subjects to narrators and from victims to activists, with the agency to tell their own stories. Documentaries facilitate opportunities for cross-cultural exchanges that teach global citizenship and shared values starting at a young age.
“Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality: Benefits and Barriers for Early Childhood Education”
It is no longer a question of when technologies will be used but rather how broad and impactful their use will be. Therefore, it is important to ask the question of how useful various technologies will be in supporting learning in the early years classroom. This article will explore what virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality are and the benefits and barriers they may have with regard to early learning. Deepening our understandings of these digital tools will help inform principals, teachers, policymakers, and other stakeholders who are interested in these digital technologies for early educational purposes.