Building Blocks: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Evaluating Contemporary Early Childhood Development Practices in Developing Countries

Abstract

The impacts of interventions targeting the ‘golden’ years of a child’s development are being increasingly recognized by the development professionals. With growing evidence on early childhood interventions across developing countries, there is an increasing need to synthesize the impact of these interventions, for understanding what works for developing physical, social, emotional, language, and cognitive outcomes for children. With an aim to fill this gap, this research aims to undertake a systematic review of literature for examining the impact of early childhood development interventions in developing nations from 2000 to 2019. Conditional on the nature of the evidence found, this study will aim to undertake a meta-analysis of the experimental and quasi-experimental studies on early childhood development interventions. This study will be first of its kind to provide a synthesis of all the evidence on early childhood interventions for children between 0-8 years of age, across developing countries