December 16, 2014

Girija Kaimal, PhD, an assistant professor in the Creative Arts Therapies Department, was in Malawi, Africa in September 2014 as a research and evaluation consultant to Save the Children in their study of the outcomes of a project called Healing and Education through the Arts (HEART). The research project involved baseline assessments of over 800 children from approximately 60 preschools. These 60 schools included three groups: 20 preschools that received HEART programs, 20 preschools that received math and literacy inputs, and 20 control preschools that received neither.

Data included both qualitative as well as standardized measures of school readiness and psychosocial development. All measures were translated into the local language of Chichewa and the data collection was conducted by trained local staff. The end line data collection is expected to be conducted in May 2015. This is one of the first studies to examine the impact of arts-based learning support on early childhood outcomes and is also unique in the inclusion of arts-based data for analysis.