Education Research

New Tools Will Measure Impact of Play on Child Development

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 02/09/21

An international effort is setting out to come up with new ways to help educators and others measure the impact of play on learning and child development. According to the organizers, the tools will be "open source, user friendly, cost effective and designed to be adopted across contexts by local governments, researchers, civil society and other stakeholders." The focus will be on children aged zero to 12, and the toolkit will include resources to support training, piloting, contextualization and analysis.

The project is being undertaken by three collaborators: RTI International, a nonprofit research institute; New York University's Global TIES for Children Center (NYU-TIES), a research center within NYU's Institute of Human Development and Social Change; and the LEGO Foundation, which is funding the work.

"RTI is very excited to be working with NYU-TIES, funded by the LEGO Foundation, to develop tools to help us better understand the benefits of play and how it can be promoted at home and at school for children of all ages," said Melinda Taylor, senior vice president of international education at RTI, in a statement.

According to RTI, the toolkit will be tested in Kenya, Jordan, Bangladesh and Ghana, with local institutions and experts in each country providing input on their development.