Background
Our team helped to optimize preschool training in mathematics and literacy in some of the poorest regions of the Philippines, as well as in Hong Kong.
Early childhood interventions are important for developing countries to mitigate negative educational outcomes. In different projects, we have created parenting coaching interventions to help parents acquire the skills necessary to help their children acquire early numeracy, language, and literacy knowledge through parent-children interactions.
How We Help
Through different training programs, we help teach teachers and parents to promote children’s knowledge and interests in numeracy, language, and literacy skills.
Our research has shaped programs in the Philippines and Hong Kong, among others, devoted to early education. In the Philippines, our research has led to the adoption of targeted early mathematics and literacy programs by both the Arcanys Foundation and by the International Christian Ministries, reaching thousands of families so far.
Dialogic Reading
Our research on dialogic reading has also led to widespread adoption of this technique for groups and families when reading to young children:
“Researchers at The Chinese University of Hong Kong have demonstrated that just an hour’s worth of training for parents on how to read effectively with their children boosted their children’s vocabulary skills substantially over a relatively short time of several weeks. In three separate studies of Hong Kong Chinese kindergartners, parents who were trained to read to their children using the dialogic reading technique, originally developed by Professor Grover Whitehurst in the U.S., significantly improved their children’s vocabulary knowledge over time as compared to children reading with their parents the way they typically did at home or not reading at all.”
Read more from our press release.