2025 Symposium

Impactful Science: From Research to Policy and Practice in Child Development and Learning

On the occasion of the presentation of the 2025 Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize and in honour of the laureate, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, the Jacobs Foundation is pleased to invite you to the symposium Impactful Science: From Research to Policy and Practice in Child Development and Learning on 14 November, 2025.

Please note seats are limited. If you would like to attend, please complete this form. Your attendance will be confirmed when you receive an email from symposium@jacobsfoundation.org . Attendance is only possible upon email confirmation.

Organizers

• Prof. Dr. Isabel Gunther, ETH Zürich
• Prof. Dr. Moritz Daum, University of Zurich

Venue

• Semperaula (HG G 60), ETH Zürich

Agenda

08:30-09:00h   Welcome Coffee

09:00-09:15h   Welcome and Introduction

Prof. Dr. Isabel Gunther and Prof. Dr. Moritz Daum

09:15- 9:45h A Relational Model of Research and Policy in Early Childhood Development 

Prof. Dr. Hirokazu Yoshikawa, 2025 Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize Laureate- NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development

Translational models of the relationship of research to policy — which focus on strategies such as solely translating research into simpler language or policy briefs or organizing policy briefings – have been shown not to work. This lecture will summarize the evidence on the effective use of research evidence in public policy in child and youth development.  Then I will describe two examples of research that is more responsive to policymakers’ questions — one drawn from Ahlan Simsim, an initiative to provide and evaluate early childhood development programming in the Syrian refugee response region; and a second drawn from a national costed policy proposal for early childhood development in the U.S. context. 

10:00-10:15h How can we increase school attendance at scale? Descriptive, correlational, experimental, qualitative, and quasi-experimental evidence from Argentina

Prof. Dr. Alejandro Ganimian- Harvard Graduate School of Education

Research from the United States indicates that school absences adversely affect students’ academic performance and long-term behaviors. However, evidence on school attendance remains limited in low- and middle-income countries. I present a seven-year research–practice partnership with the Province of Mendoza, Argentina, in which I: (a) documented the frequency and predictors of absences in primary schools before and after the pandemic; (b) quantified the consequences of these absences on academic performance and achievement; (c) conducted a randomized evaluation of two text-messaging interventions designed to reduce absences; (d) elicited parents’ perceptions of absences and their efforts to address them; and (e) carried out a quasi-experimental evaluation of an initiative that offered teachers bonuses to solve absence-related problems in their schools. This partnership illustrates how Hirokazu Yoshikawa’s relational model of how research influences policy.

10:20-10:35h Developing a culturally specific gratitude measure for children in rural Kenya and Ethiopia

Dr. Pamela Wadende- School of Education and Human Resource Development, Kisii University

Gratitude is one of the virtues that reflect high moral standards; much needed in the current tumultuous times in the world. Few studies with children have taken a cross-cultural lens and investigated variations in understanding and expressing gratitude while working among sub-Saharan Africa populations. Our project with 4-8year-olds from Turkana of Kenya and Amhara of Ethiopia surveyed local conceptions of gratitude, how children are taught and express the virtue in home and school settings.  We first used qualitative measures that invited local community participation in two waves and later quantitative measures to be in the form of child observations. In wave one, we conducted focus group discussion with 10 groups of families and teachers disaggregated by gender and age per site. We also completed individual interviews with eight teachers and eight focal persons in the communities. Our repeat wave (two) confirmed our wave one findings from a new, but similar, sample. We have drafted a child observation checklist. Next, we will work with local teachers and parents to come up with concrete observable behaviors to confirm the checklist and child observation. Briefly, gratitude is encapsulated in emotional dispositions, social interactions and relationships, moral and ethically values, action and behaviors as well as other virtues.

10:40-10:55h Decision-making: the bridge that must connect public policy and science

Constanza Alarcon Parraga, former Vice-Minister of Education of the Republic of Colombia

This presentation explores the persistent disconnect between scientific evidence and public decision-making, with a particular focus on early childhood policy. From a policymaker’s perspective, it examines how science and politics often operate according to different logics—science being driven by the pursuit of long-term knowledge, while policy-making is shaped by short-term urgency. This gap ultimately weakens both fields. Bridging it requires sustained dialogue among diverse stakeholders, both within the policy sphere (ministers, technical teams, regional managers, community leaders) and within the scientific community (not only researchers and universities, but also teachers, funders, and multilateral organizations). Moving beyond formal exchanges toward genuine collaboration demands a mutual understanding of each field’s operational and logical imperatives. Enduring partnerships between decision-makers, researchers, educators, and communities can only be sustained when foundational structures—shared language, institutional bridges, mutual capacity-building, policy-driven research, trust, and accountability—are firmly in place.

11:00-11:30h Coffee Break

11:30-11:45h Learning with visualizations: What is difficult for students and how to help them overcome these difficulties

Prof. Dr. Martina Rau- Department of Humanities, Social and Political Science, ETH Zürich

Visual representations play an important role in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) learning. Because many concepts are fundamentally visual-spatial instructors use a variety of visual representations to make them accessible to students. However, students often fail to understand how a visual representation depicts conceptual information. Instructors in turn often fail to recognize students’ difficulties with visual representations. My research investigates (1) which competencies students need to benefit from visual representations, (2) through which learning processes students acquire these competencies, and (3) how to support these learning processes to enhance students’ learning of domain-relevant concepts. I will present findings from studies showing that support for representational competencies students’ learning outcomes. The talk will conclude with practical advice for STEM instructors.

11:50-12:05h Fertility Regrets

Prof. Dr. Ulf Zölitz- Department of Economics of the University of Zurich and the Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development

We provide the first global evidence on fertility regrets – the wish to have fewer children than one currently has. Using survey data from 47,000 parents across 42 countries, we show that 13.8% express regret, with substantial variation across socio-demographic groups and cultural contexts. We conceptualize regret as the positive gap between expected and realized utility from having children driven by (1) pre-birth expectations misaligned with reality and (2) post-birth shocks that increase the costs of childrearing. At the individual level parents facing financial stress, lack of childcare, loss of freedom or strained relationships are more likely to regret. At the country level, regret has a strong positive correlation with child penalties, with mothers regretting more than fathers in basically all contexts. Regret is lower in societies where children are seen as an economic necessity rather than a lifestyle choice. Our findings highlight fertility regret as an underappreciated dimension of parental well-being and overlooked factor for explaining declining fertility rates. We discuss social policies with the biggest potential for reducing regrets about parenthood.

12:10-12:30h The role of responsive caregiving in early child development

Prof. Dr. Pasco Fearon- Department of Psychology of Cambridge University

The concept of parental sensitivity was originally formulated by Mary Ainsworth, based on extensive home observations of families in Uganda and the United States, as part of her efforts to understand the interactional determinants of attachment security. Since then, her findings have been consistently replicated in many studies across the world.  In this talk, I will summarise this corpus of evidence and explore the breadth of outcomes associated with sensitive-responsive caregiving in both longitudinal studies and clinical trials.  I will suggest that sensitivity plays a much broader role in early child development than previously assumed, and that interventions that improve sensitivity may produce improvements in multiple areas of early child development. While many such interventions exist, a key challenge is scale up.

12:30-13:30h Lunch Break

13:30-15:00h Discussion Panel

15:00h End of Symposium