Experimental impacts of teacher professional development on adolescent socio-emotional skills, achievement, and hazardous child labor: Evidence from a remedial school program in Ecuador

Abstract

We present findings of an experimental study exploring the role of socio-emotional skills in improving outcomes for youth enrolled in a remedial program in municipal schools in Quito, Ecuador. These at-risk youth often engaged in hazardous child labor, including some of the worst forms of child labor. The Young Potential Development program is an add-on curriculum and teacher professional development initiative that seeks to develop youth socio-emotional skills. We generally found no impacts on youth socio-emotional skills and other outcomes. We explore the lack of impacts with a rich fidelity of implementation and mechanism of change study.