We will share our findings and recommendations to high-level policy makers as well as stakeholders supporting the development and delivery of early childhood development and education at district and community level.
Policy-makers
UK and Malawi teams will plan events at the three main ministries (Education, Gender and Health) to ensure dissemination of the key findings. We will produce three policy reports based on:
- barriers and facilitators to ECE services for children with disabilities,
- a summary of what works and what does not work for children with disabilities in different learning contexts,
- how ECE services can be better organised to support the inclusion and participation of children with disabilities.
District and community level
We will produce digestible reports of the findings in the national language (Chichewa) to disseminate to participants in the communities where the study took place.
Social Media
We will disseminate the project to online networks using social media and engaging the project stakeholders to reflect and respond to key messages arising from the study. This approach will enhance the international scope and significance of the project through the development of relationships with research users, giving them the opportunity to provide feedback on the findings of the research. This in turn will provide a space for the ongoing exchange of ideas and information to advance the work of existing networks working to implement new ECD policy in Malawi.
Seminars and International Conference
We will organise and present seminars to students and staff members on findings from the project at Chancellor College and the College of Medicine, University of Malawi.
A small delegation of researchers will present at the AfriNEAD Conference in Cape Town in November 2020.
We will also present the main findings and showcase the outputs (a compendium of case studies of children with disabilities for service providers and policy makers, a set of guidelines on how to support the inclusion and participation of these children in ECD centres, primary and special schools and a short film to accompany the guidelines.)