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Short-term Impact of an Early Childhood Curriculum Intervention in Rural Thailand

Author

Listed:
  • Wisuwat Chujan
  • Weerachart T. Kilenthong

Abstract

This paper evaluates the short-term impact of an early childhood curriculum intervention on child development. Teachers in rural childcare centers in northeastern Thailand were encouraged to employ the new curriculum, which is based primarily on the HighScope approach. We overcome the endogenous decision of teachers to adopt the new curriculum by using the randomization of additional teachers as an instrument. We find that the new curriculum significantly improved child development in several dimensions, including gross motor, fine motor, expressive language, and personal and social skills, with an effect size of roughly 0.54 standard deviations for the benchmark case. The results are robust with regards to various estimation methods, child development measures, and sample selections. We also find that the impact of the new curriculum is quite homogeneous across sub-groups except in some dimensions, notably parental absence and teacher's job status.

Suggested Citation

  • Wisuwat Chujan & Weerachart T. Kilenthong, 2019. "Short-term Impact of an Early Childhood Curriculum Intervention in Rural Thailand," Working Papers 2019-077, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    • Handle: RePEc:hka:wpaper:2019-077
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    File URL: http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Chujan_Kilenthong_2019_impact-early-childhood-intervention-thailand.pdf
    File Function: First version, September 13, 2019
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    early childhood education; early childhood curriculum intervention; HighScope; Child Development; developing countries; rural development; impact evaluation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

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