IDRC-Early Childhood Project

Building Teachers’ Capacity to Enhance Early Learning -through Child Focussed and Play Based Approaches in Ghana and Sierra Leone”(February 2022 to present)

This is a KIX/GPE and International Development Research Centre (IDRC) supported research project being conducted by the Institute for Statistical Social and Economic Research (ISSER), University of Ghana and Associates for Change in Ghana along with the Division of Education Studies, University of Sierra Leone. The KIX IDRC research seeks to bring together multiple stakeholders in early childhood education in Ghana and Sierra Leone to enhance the capacity of teachers to implement innovations in play-based learning at early childhood levels of education. These innovations in play-based approaches will assess the shift in teaching towards more play-based approaches by evaluating the teaching and learning outcomes across a variety of schools in urban and rural schools along with the cost of implementation. The purpose is to generate evidence of what works to improve classroom practice of play-based learning in early childhood education in Ghana and Sierra Leone.

The overarching objective of the study is to explore how the selected education innovations can help close the trained teacher gap at early childhood education levels and within community-based learning  centres particularly in rural and extreme poverty zones across Ghana and Sierra Leone.