Catalina Torrente

School-based strategies to prevent violence, trauma, and psychopathology: the challenges of going to scale.

Childrens trauma-related mental health problems are widespread, largely untreated and constitute significant barriers to academic achievement and attainment. Translational research has begun to identify school-based interventions to prevent violence, trauma and psychopathology. We describe in detail the findings to date on research evaluating one such intervention, the Reading, Writing, Respect, and Resolution (4Rs) Program. The 4Rs Program has led to modest positive impacts on both classrooms and children after 1 year that appear to cascade to more impacts in other domains of childrens development after 2 years. This research strives not only to translate research into practice but also translate practice into research. However, considerable challenges must be met for such research to inform prevention strategies at population scale.

Cumulative Risk and Teacher Well-Being in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Remarkably little systematic research has examined the living and working conditions for teachers in sub-Saharan Africa and how such conditions predict teacher well-being. This study assesses how various risks across several domains of teachers’ lives—measured as a cumulative risk index—predict motivation, burnout, and job dissatisfaction in the Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Cumulative risk is related to lower motivation and higher burnout levels, and the relationship between cumulative risk and burnout is moderated by years of teaching experience. Specifically, less experienced teachers report the highest levels of burnout regardless of their level of cumulative risk. Experienced teachers with the low cumulative risk scores report the lowest levels of burnout, and burnout increases with higher levels of cumulative risk, suggesting that burnout decreases with experience but not for teachers who experience more risk factors. Implications for research and education policy in low-income and conflict-affected countries are discussed.

Impacts after One Year of "Healing Classroom" on Children's Reading and Math Skills in DRC: Results from a Cluster Randomized Trial.

ABSTRACT This article examines the effects of one year of exposure to “Learning to Read in a Healing Classroom” (LRHC) on the reading and math skills of second- to fourth-grade children in the low-income and conflict-affected Democratic Republic of the Congo. LRHC consists of two primary components: teacher resource materials that infuse social-emotional learning principles into a reading curriculum and collaborative school-based teacher learning circles to exchange information about and solve problems in using the teacher resource materials. To test the impact of LRHC on childrens reading and math skills, 40 school clusters containing 64 schools and 4,465 students were randomized to begin LRHC in 2011–2012 or to serve as wait-list controls. Hierarchical linear models (students nested in schools, nested in school clusters) were fitted. Results indicate marginally significant positive impacts on childrens reading scores (dwt = .14) and geometry scores (dwt = .14) but not on their addition/subtraction scores. These results should be treated with caution given the reported significance level of p < .10. The intervention had the largest impacts on math scores for language minority children and in low-performing schools. Research, practice, and policy implications for education in low-income conflict-affected countries are discussed.

Promoting children's learning and development in conflict-affected countries: Testing change process in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Improving childrens learning and development in conflict-affected countries is critically important for breaking the intergenerational transmission of violence and poverty. Yet there is currently a stunning lack of rigorous evidence as to whether and how programs to improve learning and development in conflict-affected countries actually work to bolster childrens academic learning and socioemotional development. This study tests a theory of change derived from the fields of developmental psychopathology and social ecology about how a school-based universal socioemotional learning program, the International Rescue Committees Learning to Read in a Healing Classroom (LRHC), impacts childrens learning and development. The study was implemented in three conflict-affected provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and employed a cluster-randomized waitlist control design to estimate impact. Using multilevel structural equation modeling techniques, we found support for the central pathways in the LRHC theory of change. Specifically, we found that LRHC differentially impacted dimensions of the quality of the school and classroom environment at the end of the first year of the intervention, and that in turn these dimensions of quality were differentially associated with child academic and socioemotional outcomes. Future implications and directions are discussed.

Relative Risk in Context: Exposure to Family and Neighborhood Violence within Schools

This paper evaluates the extent to which four different measures of exposure to risky neighborhood and family environments are associated with individual levels of victimization and attitudes suppo...

Teaching Emotional Intelligence in Schools: An Evidence-Based Approach

The skills of emotional intelligence, such as recognizing emotions in the self and others, understanding the causes and consequence of emotions, and effectively regulating the experience and expression of emotional responses, are essential for children’s success in school and life. Yet, many children arrive at school lacking these skills, which can impede them from reaching their full potential. This chapter describes RULER, a Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) SELect approach, to illustrate how the teaching and learning of emotional intelligence can be integrated into the core academic curricula. RULER uses multiple tools to nurture five interdependent skills: recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing, and regulating emotions. The chapter focuses primarily on emotion regulation skills and on how the tools that RULER uses foster their development. The promise of formative assessments to enhance the teaching and learning of emotional intelligence is also discussed.

Using Child Indicators to Influence Policy: A Comparative Case Study

Economic indicators have guided economic policymaking for almost a century. A wide range of social indicators have become increasingly important to policy debates over the last half century. But child indicators are only recently having impact on the policy process. This is likely due to the relative recency of children’s issues as a formal focus of policy making and to the relative conceptual and methodological immaturity of child indicator data systems. But, as evidenced by new journals, books, data series and practices, the child indicator movement and its relevance to policymaking is undergoing rapid transformation and change. Increasingly, governments and non-governmental organizations throughout the world recognize that children are their nation’s (and the world’s) future. And indicators of children’s welfare and well-being, if designed and used in particular ways (Aber & Jones, 1997; Ben-Arieh, 2008; Moore & Brown 2006), are increasingly influential in the policy formulation, implementation and evaluation processes.