Evaluating Program Enhancement Strategies for Remedial Tutoring - A Cluster-Randomized Control Trial With Syrian Refugee Students in Lebanon

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Adam

Evaluating Program Enhancement Strategies for Remedial Tutoring presents evidence from a cluster-randomized control trial using non-equivalent treatment groups to test program access among Syrian refugee students enrolled in Lebanese public schools. Two enhancements are compared: longer duration and the addition of skill-targeted social and emotional learning (SEL) activities. Results show 26 weeks marginally improves literacy skills and significantly improves behavioral regulation versus 10 weeks, while students report less positive perceptions of school environment and tutoring sites. Adding skill-targeted SEL increases school-related stress reports compared with programs without such activities, with implications for program and policy.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages25

Reading Time1 h 3 min

AccessFree to download

Research question and context

Study design and treatment enhancements

Key findings on literacy, behavior, perceptions, and stress

Implications for program and policy

AERA Open January-December 2023, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 1–25 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584231209268 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2023. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) Evaluating Program Enhancement Strategies for Remedial Tutoring: A Cluster-Randomized Control Trial With Syrian Refugee Students in Lebanon Lindsay Brown New York University Global TIES for Children Kalina Gjicali Meta, New York University Ha Yeon Kim Carly Tubbs Dolan New York University Global TIES for Children Paul Frisoli The LEGO Foundation Mahmoud Bwary United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) J. Lawrence Aber New York University Global TIES for Children Despite widespread enthusiasm for remedial education programming with refugee populations, there is little rigorous evidence on how to design and implement such programs. We employ a cluster-randomized design of non-equivalent treatment groups to test the impact of access to two types of program enhancement: longer program duration and the addition of skilltargeted social and emotional learning (SEL) activities for Syrian refugees enrolled in Lebanese public schools. We find that, compared to 10 weeks of programming, 26 weeks marginally increases students’literacy skills (ES = 0.04) and significantly improves behavioral regulation (ES = 0.31), but students reported less positive perceptions of their public school environment (ES= −0.83 to −0.89) and remedial tutoring site (ES= −0.15 to −0.24). We also find that the addition of skill-targeted SEL activities to 26 weeks of programming results in higher student reports of school-related stress compared to programming without skill-targeted activities (ES = 0.21). Implications for program and policy are discussed. Keywords: child development, cognitive processes/development, experimental research, international education/studies, program evaluation, randomized controlled trial, refugee education, remedial education, social-emotional learning As of 2015, an estimated 617 million school-aged children—a slight majority of school-aged children worldwide—lacked minimum proficiency in reading and mathematics (UNESCO, 2017) . Students displaced by conflict and crisis—arguably among the most vulnerable—fare even worse. More than half of 7.1 million refugee students around the world are out of school completely, temporarily, or permanently. Those who are able to attend schools lag behind peers in basic literacy and numeracy skills, and enrollment rates decrease precipitously over time (OECD, 2017) . Beyond academics, pre- and postmigration experiences can leave refugees with lingering trauma that can result in cognitive and mental health challenges (Kim et al., 2020; Mendenhall et al., 2017) . Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License ([https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages ([https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage](https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage)). Brown et al. To stem the learning loss experienced by children in crises such as armed conflicts and pandemics, and to buoy their academic proficiency, the majority of recently surveyed ministries of education report intentions to introduce and/or expand remedial education programming (UNESCO et al., 2020) . Remedial education programming is generally defined as a short-term increase in instructional time or targeted academic support to students whose proficiencies in content or skill are below expected levels for grade. But widespread enth

FAQs

What program enhancement strategies are tested in the trial?

The study tests two enhancements to remedial tutoring access: extending program duration and adding skill-targeted social and emotional learning (SEL) activities.

How do the results from 26 weeks compare with 10 weeks?

Compared with 10 weeks, 26 weeks marginally increases students’ literacy skills and significantly improves behavioral regulation, but students report less positive perceptions of the public school environment and remedial tutoring site.

What is the effect of adding skill-targeted SEL activities?

Adding skill-targeted SEL to 26 weeks leads to higher student reports of school-related stress compared to programming without skill-targeted SEL activities.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Adam