Discover Learning Project

 

Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

 

Locally known as Vumbua Kujifunza, Discover Learning was designed as an afterschool intervention for 10-11-year-old boys and girls in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania to promote gender equality, positive relationships and social, emotional and identity learning (SEIL). This project evolved from a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded project with older adolescents, (15–19-year-olds) where we identified opportunities for prevention in this younger age group, before the emergence of negative sexual and reproductive health (SRH) outcomes.

 

Discover Learning used a phased implementation approach to allow for learning and adaptation during testing of a scalable, developmentally informed intervention. The overall goal was to leverage insights from developmental science to enhance the impact of scalable interventions that facilitate healthy social and identity development leading to better SRH, gender equity, and overall health and well-being outcomes.


Summary/Overview of Developmental Science Resources

 

Two sets of resources were created in collaboration with Save the Children International and the Institute of Human Development and the School of Journalism at University of California, Berkeley. The goal of these resources is to create tools that can be used to promote understanding of the developmental science of adolescence for a broad audience.

 

The first set of resources is titled:  Using Developmental Science to Inform the Design and Implementation of Programs with Very Young Adolescents: Implications for sexual and reproductive health.  This includes a) a 42-page resource guide; b) an interactive e-learning version of the guide; c) a Spanish language version of the guide

 

1.     Using Developmental Science to Inform the Design and Implementation of Programs with Very Young Adolescents: Implications for sexual and reproductive health

 

a)     Link: http://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/library/using-developmental-science-inform-design-and-implementation-programs-very-young-adolescents

 

This resource guide is intended for program designers, implementers, researchers, and policy makers who work with very young adolescents. The resource provides concrete guidance and examples on how to integrate developmental science principles into very young adolescent (VYA) health and development programming.

 

Through implementation research, iterative learning and adaptation of programs, program designers, implementers, researchers, and policy makers have identified what types of interventions and activities are well suited for VYAs. This resource complements existing knowledge by providing a developmental science-informed understanding of why these approaches work and considerations to improve the match between interventions and the developmental process of young adolescents.

 

This guide can be used at any point during the project cycle to review, refine and adapt selected activities and interventions to tailor them to the developmental needs of VYAs.

This guide also includes an optimized for readability version written to have a readability level of no higher than high-school-level to accommodate a wider variety of reading and literacy levels.

 

b)    An interactive e-learning version (with embedded narration and video) is available here: http://rise.articulate.com/share/-575NT_FxghHpvwTvm2maYt5GQxaAEYa#/

 

c)     A Spanish-language version of the guide is available here: https://ihd.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/page/VYA_DevSci_Formatted_Final-ES-WEB.pdf


A second set of resources includes a series of 4 videos describing and discussing the Developmental Science of Adolescence and its use in interventions

 

Video 1: The Developmental Science of Adolescence – Part 1

Dr. Ron Dahl

 

Part one provides and introduction and conceptual overview of adolescent development with an emphasis on understanding adolescence is a window of opportunity—a pivotal time in setting life course trajectories. Accordingly, this is a crucial time to invest in promoting positive learning and development. 

 

Video 2: The Developmental Science of Adolescence – Part 2

Dr. Ron Dahl

 

Part two looks at adolescent development in the context of growing up in a rapidly changing world—from a local and global perspective. It also emphasizes the rise of technology as a learning context and how the use of technology can provide opportunities to amplify valuable learning.

 

Video 3: Developmental Science 101

Dr. Ahna Suleiman

 

Ahna Sulieman gives an overview of why it is important to invest in very young adolescents with an emphasis on how this stage of development can influence trajectories for sexual and reproductive health and gender equity outcomes.

 

Video 4: Real World Applications of Developmental Science

Discussions with Discover Learning project partners

 

Ron Dahl talks with our Discover partners from Ubongo Kids, Camara Education of Tanzania, and Save the Children to discuss the role of developmental science in our collaborations. These discussions highlight concrete examples of how approaches and thinking have changed by insights into the relevance of developmental science; and how our teams learn, mutually, from each other to come up with pragmatic as well as scientific advances in implementation.