Strengthening Preschoolers' Academic and Relational Skills

Jaden Kajou is a school-based, comprehensive early childhood education intervention designed to improve foundational literacy and numeracy and social-emotional learning outcomes among Pre-K Level 3 children. The intervention consists of integrated classroom instructional activities, teacher training, instructional materials, and ongoing coaching support.
The SPARK program uses the Jaden Kajou curriculum, a Pre-K Level 3 integrated curriculum in which Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) is woven throughout the full school day rather than taught as a standalone subject. SEL defines daily school and classroom routines, informs teacher-student and peer interactions, shapes classroom management, and is integrated into curriculum content and instruction, including literacy, math, reading, and science.
The Jaden Kajou school day is organized into clear, predictable blocks, including welcoming and flag ceremony, Sek matine / Morning Meeting, Apesi jounen an / Morning Circle, daily read aloud, literacy, numeracy, Discover the World (science), closing circle, and dismissal routines. Read aloud activities use interactive storytelling to support letter knowledge, oral language, comprehension, SEL integration, and love of stories. Literacy activities use a multisensory, phonics-based and scaffolded station format, moving from exposure to kinesthetic engagement and fine-motor production. Numeracy activities move children beyond rote counting toward conceptual fluency across subitizing, counting, operations, measurement and data, and geometry. Discover the World uses the child's daily life as a setting for scientific observation and social responsibility.
Treatment schools will receive core curriculum materials, including a Teacher Guide, Student Workbook, Facilitator Training Guide, classroom books and other instructional materials. Approximately 25 treatment-school teachers will participate in in-person training before implementation, including two five-day training sessions and a two-day booster session. Teacher training covers the Jaden Kajou curriculum and SEL integration approach, the new school day structure, routines and transitions, read aloud, literacy, numeracy, Discover the World, classroom management and positive discipline, use of teacher guides and student workbooks, and the coaching relationship.
Five SPARK coaches will provide ongoing support to Pre-K Level 3 teachers across the 25 treatment schools. The coaching model includes weekly school visits, monthly cohort professional development meetings, and open communication through WhatsApp groups, phone calls, and unscheduled visits when urgent. School visits include classroom observation, structured feedback and debriefing, and data collection using KoboCollect-based tools. Coaching is intended to support continued improvement in teacher instruction and performance, strengthen school climate and non-violent conflict resolution, and generate field evidence for ongoing professional development and implementation improvement.

2026-10-19

2027-05-28

Preschool children's social and emotional development, foundational literacy skills, and foundational numeracy skills

The study is a parallel cluster randomized controlled trial. 50 eligible Model School Network (MSN) schools in the Central Plateau department of Haiti will participate. Schools will be randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to either the SPARK intervention arm or the comparison arm. The unit of random assignment is the school. The primary unit of outcome measurement is the individual Pre-K Level 3 child. Baseline data will be collected before intervention delivery begins. Treatment schools will then implement the Jaden Kajou intervention, including classroom instruction, teacher training, materials, and coaching support. Comparison schools will continue business-as-usual preschool practices during the study period. Endline data will be collected from the same cohort of children and teachers assessed at baseline, to the extent possible.

Not available

A list of schools that meet the inclusion criteria will be sent to the PI. Using a random number generator in Microsoft Excel, the PI will assign each school a random number between 0 and 1. Schools will then be sorted by this random number into two groups of schools. Using a separate random number generator, one of these two groups will be assigned to the treatment condition, and the other will be assigned to the control condition. Within each group, the PI will select the requisite number of schools to be part of the data collection for the study, with the rest of the schools in the group acting as a waitlist in case we need to replace schools before data collection.

The unit of random assignment is the school.

Yes

50 schools

1000 Pre-K Level 3 children, 20 per school

25 schools in control condition and 25 schools in intervention condition

Using a simple cluster random assignment design we estimated the sample size. Based on the assumptions presented in the table below, we calculated a sample size of 50 schools (50% in the treatment arm), with data collected from 20 students in each school. Minimum Detectable Effect Size: 0.15 Alpha level, probability of a Type I error: 0.05 Statistical power: 0.8 Proportion of variance in outcome that is between school clusters: 0.12 Average number of students per school: 20 Proportion of sample randomized to treatment condition: 0.5