Improving Outcomes for Refugee Children: A case study on the impact of Montessori education along the Thai-Burma border

Tierney Tobin; Prairie Boulmier; Wenyi Zhu; Paul Hancock; Peter Muennig

Authors

Tierney Tobin
Prairie Boulmier
Wenyi Zhu
Paul Hancock Khom Loy Foundation
Peter Muennig Columbia University

Keywords:

Montessori, child-centred education, refugees, ASQ, pedagogy, child development, displaced children, Burma, Thailand

Abstract

There are 25 million displaced children worldwide, and those receiving schooling are often educated in overcrowded classrooms. Montessori is a child-centred educational method that provides an alternative model to traditional educational approaches. In this model, students are able to direct their own learning and develop at their own pace, working with materials rather than in supervised groups or with direct teacher instruction. Because most children are working alone, teachers have more time to work one-on-one with children even when student-teacher ratios are quite large. This gives teachers increased opportunity to tailor their teaching to the specific needs and strengths of each student. We conducted an evaluation of Montessori classroom conversion for displaced students on the Thai-Myanmar border. We administered the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ) to 66 children before and after classroom conversion and across treatment and control classroom conditions. We then conducted difference in difference testing. All domains showed meaningful improvements in ASQ scores, with the Montessori students gaining 18 points relative to the traditional students (p = 0.33). However, only the personal-social domain of the ASQ was statistically significant (8.8 point gain for the Montessori students relative to the control, p < 0.05) in our underpowered sample.

Author Biographies

Tierney Tobin

Tierney Tobin has been working in and studying the field of education for the past ten years. She received her masters' degree in International Education Development from Columbia University Teachers College, specializing in policy and the human rights crisis along the Thai-Burma border, in 2012. Since 2011, Ms. Tobin has worked for Kwah Dao, a non-profit organization providing educational opportunities for stateless children and Burmese migrants in Thailand.
Prairie Boulmier

Prairie Boulmier has worked in the field of Montessori education for nearly ten years as a parent volunteer, assistant, teacher, program administrator, school founder, consultant, and now teacher trainer. She founded and worked with a number of schools and organizations that deliver multi-lingual education and deal with diverse students from all over the world. She has also spent many years working for and with disenfranchised and marginalized populations of parents and children. She has extensive training in education including an M.Ed in Montessori Integrative Learning and training in early childhood mental health. She currently trains Montessori teachers in Beijing, China.
Wenyi Zhu

Wenyi Zhu trained in statistics at Columbia University, where she worked as a statistician after graduating. She has since worked at a statistician at Parexel in Shanghai, China. She has 4 publication in the scientific literature on topics ranging from the health impacts of education to the non-medical determinants of health.
Paul Hancock, Khom Loy Foundation

Paul Hancock has a law degree from Oxford University and an MBA from INSEAD, France. In 2002, he moved to Thailand where he set up Khom Loy Foundation which helps refugee and migrant families on the Thai/Burma borders in early childhood education and community development.
Peter Muennig, Columbia University

Policies that focus on education, immigration, welfare, the control of industrial pollution, health insurance, and the built environment have the potential to shape to social and environmental fabric of society. They might even alter the environmental niche in which families live, thereby influencing gene expression, cellular biology, and social functioning in ways that dramatically impact a population’s health, cognitive potential, and economic contributions. Peter Muennig, an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, studies the ways in which such social policies can be optimized to maximize population well-being. He does so using randomized policy experiments coupled with cost-effectiveness analyses. He has worked with government agencies on immigration policy (in Canada and the US), health insurance reform (in China), and the design of a healthy city (in China). He has published over 90 articles in the scientific literature. He is currently working with a team of Columbia researchers on GRAPH, a project geared toward 1) understanding which social policies are most effective at improving health and longevity, and 2) estimating the return on investment in such policies.