Shedding light on the black box of girls’ agency and social and emotional development in rural Bangladesh

Over the past decade, the global education sector has amassed strong evidence showing how technology-assisted learning can increase access to learning opportunities, particularly for those most likely to be excluded from in-person learning. We know that reaching previously inaccessible populations through technology can increase foundational skill acquisition, when implemented with fidelity and with necessary consideration of context and access to technology infrastructure (Darling-Hammond et al, 2014; Ganimian et al., 2020; Jordan and Myers, 2022; J-PAL, 2019).

However, we don’t know much about whether supplementary programming focused on social and emotional skill development or income-generating opportunities have a complementary, bi-directional effect on foundational learning. Can acquiring foundational academic skills lead to a greater sense of agency? Is this agency greater when adding supplementary programming?

We sought to explore these questions through an impact evaluation of the Adolescent Girls’ Empowerment Through Education (AGREE) project in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. The AGREE project was implemented across 34 villages in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh from January 2022 to January 2024 with 18 villages receiving a blended learning package of interventions only and 16 receiving blended learning plus Save the Children’s Life Skills for Success curriculum and vocational training.

Life skills and vocational training programs have been seen as important intervention tools within similar contexts, however the connection between these programs and agency – a domain of empowerment – has not been demonstrated fully. In addition, there have been mixed results with some programs showing fewer gains when more skills are added (Scales et al., 2013). Yet other programs, including one studied by Amin and Makino (2024), have found that specifically adding gender awareness training for girls in patriarchal societies has greater impact on increasing girls' agency than life skills alone. The AGREE program fits between these two poles and shines light on how the life skills for success programming and vocational training may contribute to girls’ agency within rural Bangladesh.

Across both groups, we found that girls achieved similar levels of academic learning. This was notable because all the girls that participated in the study were not in school at the time, so any gains on the measured academic skills suggest that the blended learning component was effective.

However, when comparing the two groups on measured social and emotional skills and, in particular, agency, we found small, but notable differences. Girls that received the supplementary programming had statistically significant gains on the skills of freedom of movement, decision-making, and gender norms. We define agency following Zimmerman et al.’s (2019) definition where the domain of agency is comprised of three sub-domains: voice, freedom of movement, and decision making. So, these girls had significantly different levels of two of the three sub-domains of agency: freedom of movement and decision-making.

While the impact estimates for these skills were small, we find through focus group discussions that perceived agency was a strong theme among girls that received the supplementary programming. Girls that received the supplementary programming were more able to articulate a self-sufficient future and exhibited a more entrepreneurial mindset. By studying and acquiring skills, the girls could envision a different path forward and had the tools to self-advocate for their wellbeing. We heard from girls that they felt empowered to push back on the cultural norm of early marriage and that they felt that they had a different status in the community, particularly through their vocational activities. We’ll let one girl speak for herself:

“This project is completely effective for dropout girls staying at home. Before, no one knew what to do in the future. A lot of girls were getting married at an early age, forcefully. We used to live in a fear of forceful marriage. Now we have a life goal of getting more educational qualification.”

This study begins to shed some light on the complex interplay of foundational skills, social norms, and vocational and life skills. However, this is just a glimpse into the black box; much more research is needed to understand these dynamics in more depth. We advocate for the following future research to further this area of study:

1. Conduct research on the unique experiences of individuals to understand intra-individual change over time rather than group level results (see Lerner et al., 2024)
2. Explore how girls acquire knowledge and skills through life skills curriculum to understand the extent to which it enhances academic skill development.
3. Conduct longitudinal studies that explore how participants apply their newly acquired skills after the project has completed, shedding further light on the potential impact on the participants, their communities, and the local economies.

References

Amin, S., & Makino, M. (2024). Adolescent girls’ agency and their labour force participation: experimental evidence from rural Bangladesh. Journal of Development Effectiveness, 16(2), 230–245. https://doi.org/10.1080/19439342.2023.2217151

Darling-Hammond, L., Zielezinski, M. B., & Goldman, S. (2014). Using technology to support at-risk students' learning. Alliance for Excellent Education. https://all4ed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/UsingTechnology.pdf

Ganimian, A., Vegas, E., & Hess, F. (2020). Education technology playbook: A comprehensive guide to support learning during and after COVID-19. Brookings Institution. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/edtech_playbook_full_v2.pdf

Jordan, K., & Myers, C. (2022). EdTech and Girls Education in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Which Intervention Types Have the Greatest Impact on Learning Outcomes for Girls?. In Proceedings of the Ninth ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale (L@S ’22) (pp. 5). https://doi.org/10.1145/3491140.3528305

J-PAL. (2019). Education technology: Evidence review. Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. https://www.povertyactionlab.org/sites/default/files/publication/education-technology-evidence-review.pdf

Lerner, R. M., Yu, D., Abbasi-Asl, R., Keces, N., Gonçalves, C., Buckingham, M. H., Dowling, E. M., Tirrell, J. M., Mackin, M., Olander, K., Hasse, A., & Dunham, Y. (2024). Towards a dynamic, idiographic approach to describing, explaining, and enhancing the development of SEL. Social and Emotional Learning: Research, Practice, and Policy, 100050. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sel.2024.100050

Scales, P. C., Benson, P. L., Dershem, L., Fraher, K., Makonnen, R., Nazneen, S., Syvertsen, A. K., & Titus, S. (2013). Building developmental assets to empower adolescent girls in rural Bangladesh: Evaluation of project Kishoree Kontha. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 23(1), 171–184. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-7795.2012.00805.x

Zimmerman, L. A., Li, M., Moreau, C., Wilopo, S., & Blum, R. (2019). Measuring agency as a dimension of empowerment among young adolescents globally; findings from the Global Early Adolescent Study. SSM-population health, 8, 100454. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2019.100454