Early Childhood Development: Global Strategies for Implementation
About this course
How can we ensure that we don’t fail the next generation of children? What investments do we need to make an impact? What implementation decisions do we need to make for program success?
An estimated 250 million children in low- and middle-income countries risk not meeting their development potential in the first five years of life—leading to lifelong impacts on health, learning, behavior, and overall adult productivity. During this critical time, strategic interventions can ensure children have a strong foundation to lead healthy, productive lives as engaged citizens.
There is an urgent need to increase access to high-quality early childhood development intervention programs on national and global scales. While the science behind the importance of early development and funding for these programs has increased globally, policy development, research, and implementation best practices have not been widely adopted. As the COVID-19 virus disrupts health, nutrition, childcare, and education services, and stretches social and child protection systems to their limits, children and families least able to cope are being hit hardest with inequities in childhood development widening. Evidence-based policies that support families and young children are needed now more than ever. This course examines best practices in child and family policies, advocacy, financing, and pathways to scale—showing you how to generate an innovative, scalable intervention strategy that supports early childhood development.
The course begins with a review of basic early childhood development concepts and successful implementation programs around the world. You will learn why some programs succeed where others do less well and what strategies are key for enabling widespread adaptation of quality programming. For those working around the world in early childhood development programs, this course allows you to reflect and evaluate your own organization by reviewing real-world case successes, as well as a new global perspective from other learners. You will complete the course with new plans and ideas ready to implement within your program.
What you’ll learn
Gain knowledge about the state of the science on effective interventions for early childhood development.
Learn what makes programs successful around the world in supporting early childhood development and why some programs fail.
Reflect on changes for your program, become familiar with the steps to design successful interventions that support early childhood development, and understand what services you need to prioritize.
Explore strategies to enable widespread adaptation of quality programming and evaluate the effectiveness of your programming.
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A Better Start to Reading
About this course
Teaching children to read well results in a lifetime of benefits.
The research evidence is very clear about the importance of getting children off to a great start in their early literacy learning. Early reading success is the best predictor of later reading achievement, which in turn is closely linked to educational success and healthy wellbeing. How can you as educators, parents or family members, help support children to develop a strong foundation of skills that are critical for early reading success? How can you best support struggling readers to be successful?
Across languages, research has shown that children’s knowledge of the sound structure of their spoken language (phonological awareness) is critically important to early reading and spelling development. The ability to learn new words efficiently, or vocabulary growth, is also vitally important for children to understand what they are reading. Quality shared reading experiences in the early years are a great way to foster the development of these skills.
This course provides a research-to-practice learning experience for professionals and parents interested in the reading development of young children. This course will ensure that teachers and professionals alike are reading books in the most effective way to support children’s early reading skills. The course content will be relevant for all young children, specifically focusing on the key foundational skills of phonological awareness, print concepts, and vocabulary knowledge for children aged 4-6 years. The course will also include a focus on preventing reading problems, such as dyslexia, for children with familial risk, and children with other challenges to learning to read, such as speech and language difficulties. As part of completing the course, students will be given access to a large set of online children’s books, specially designed to foster phonological awareness and vocabulary development.
What you’ll learn
What the critical skills are for children to develop as successful readers.
What phonological awareness and vocabulary are, and why this is important for early reading development.
How to use children’s books to foster phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge for young children.
How to prevent reading difficulties, such as dyslexia, for children with increased risk.
How to support children with speech and/or language difficulties to develop as readers.
How to support children from different languages and cultures to experience reading success.
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