The Challenge
ISSA, the International Step-by-Step Association, is based in Holland and works across Europe and Central Asia. It is an association of agencies committed to protecting and developing the interests of early years children. Members include international, national, and regional NGOs as well as local government and academic institutions.
ISSA advocates for and supports competent Early Childhood Systems for all children, especially the most vulnerable. Always on the lookout for new ways to improve these systems, ISSA asked the =mc consulting decisionscience team to help them explore the potential of decision science to:
- Enable organisations offering childcare provision to create more impactful approaches, especially among employees, parents and volunteers
- Help policymakers and others in senior positions to frame best practice in attractive and engaging ways that would help ensure compliance
- Look at how anyone providing direct care for children could encourage more prosocial changes in diet, exercise, the role of fathers in upbringing, etc.
How we helped
=mc agreed to run an online training programme to explore how techniques from behavioural economics might be used to improve provision for children.
While this was a very modest introduction to a major topic, over 100 individuals and agencies signed up across Europe, Africa and South America.
The webinar and follow up materials provided an introduction to many of the key ideas and frameworks as they could be applied to early years. Specifically:
- The importance of two decision-making frameworks – system 1 and system 2 – in making professional choices
- How to present data and insights in powerful ways that stick in people’s minds and help them act appropriately
- How heuristics like loss aversion, confirmation bias, anchoring, etc. can play an important role in misjudgements
The Impact
It’s always difficult to quantify the impact of a training programme. But the numbers attending, and the positive response, suggested attendees were excited by the ideas presented and could see value in them. Longer term the team at ISSA, working with =mc consulting, are exploring how to track the impact of the training with direct providers of childcare, regulatory agencies, and policymakers. They’re also exploring setting up a number of practical experiments to test the wider potential.
Next Steps?
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Clare Segal, Director
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