LEVANTE Sites

The LEVANTE site at Monash University, co-led by Principal Investigator Dragan Gašević together with Inge Molenaar, Sanna Järvelä, and Roger Azevedo, focuses on how self-regulated learning develops in primary school children in Colombia, particularly between the ages of 9 and 12. The research examines how learners build the ability to plan, monitor, and manage their own learning in technology-supported environments.

The study combines longitudinal data with AI-supported interventions, using digital trace data from students’ interactions with learning technologies to capture learning processes in real time rather than relying only on surveys.

The site advances approaches to capturing learning processes in real time, offering new ways to study how self-regulated learning develops across contexts.

The LEVANTE site at the Bern University of Teacher Education, co-led by Principal Investigator Luciano Gasser together with Sergej Wüthrich and Caroline Sahli Lozano focuses on how classroom interactions and school environments shape variability in children’s learning and development in the early years of primary education in Switzerland.

The research examines how factors at the level of the child, classroom, and school interact to influence developmental trajectories. The project combines LEVANTE measures with data from the Swiss SWING study, integrating classroom observations, child-level assessments, and information on school climate and resources.

Using longitudinal and observational data, the site investigates which classroom practices and school conditions support different groups of learners, particularly those at developmental risk.

The LEVANTE site at Harvard University, co-led by Principal Investigator Dana McCoy together with Stella M. Hartinger Peña, focuses on how early childhood experiences shape children’s development as they enter and progress through primary school. The research builds on a prior study of two parenting interventions in rural Andean Peru—one in-person and one digital—and examines whether their effects persist over time.

Using longitudinal data, the project investigates how early environments influence developmental trajectories into middle childhood. It also contributes to ongoing work on measuring child development in ways that reflect local contexts while allowing for comparison across settings.

By examining how early interventions relate to longer-term outcomes, the site adds to understanding how developmental trajectories evolve over time in different settings.

The LEVANTE site at the Public Health Foundation of India, co-led by Principal Investigator Debarati Mukherjee together with Pradeep Kumar Choudhury, Gokulakrishnan Kuppan, and Murali Krishna, examines how early-life experiences shape learning and development in children growing up in urban India. The research draws on the MAASTHI birth cohort, following around 1,000 mother–child pairs from pregnancy through early adolescence.

Using a life-course approach, the study investigates how biological, social, and environmental factors interact to influence developmental trajectories. This includes repeated assessments of children’s learning, health, and environments, as well as data on gut health and brain development.

The site will follow ~1,000 children from birth through early adolescence and map how learning, language, numeracy, and social-emotional skills develop over time to identify critical factors that push children onto different trajectories.

The LEVANTE site at the Kintampo Health Research Centre, co-led by Principal Investigator Kwaku Poku Asante together with, Kenneth Ayuurebobi Ae-Ngibise, Amy E. Margolis, and Christopher Yaw Kwaah, sinvestigates how early-life environmental exposures shape children’s cognitive and emotional development in rural Ghana. The research draws on the GRAPHS cohort, following around 700 children over time to examine how household air pollution affects how children learn and develop.

Using longitudinal data, brain imaging, and environmental exposure measures, the project studies whether air pollution from cooking fuels influences developmental trajectories and how brain changes may help explain these effects by building on existing cohort health data.

This work brings environmental and developmental data together to better understand when and how early conditions shape children’s learning over time.

The LEVANTE site at Universidad de los Andes, co-led by Principal Investigator Diego Iván Lucumí together with Natalie Slopen, focuses on how Afro-Colombian children in the Colombian Pacific Coast grow, learn, and thrive in contexts shaped by poverty, violence, and other long-standing adversities. Through the TEACH-IND project, the research examines how families, schools, and communities support children’s cognitive and socioemotional development over time.

Using the LEVANTE framework and a longitudinal mixed-methods approach, the project investigates how adversity and resilience interact across developmental trajectories. It also uses modeling tools to explore how different interventions might influence future outcomes.

Tracing how risks and protective factors combine over time, the site adds a strengths-based perspective on learning variability in an underrepresented context.

The LEVANTE site at the Group for the Analysis of Development (GRADE), co-led by Principal Investigators Santiago Cueto and Juan Leon, examines how educational opportunities relate to children’s learning outcomes in Peru. The research focuses on differences in the quality and use of school resources, and how these links vary across contexts, particularly for children living in poverty, with disabilities, or from ethnic minority groups.

Through the APPrendemos program, the project investigates how participation in a digital education program relates to the development of mathematics, reading, reasoning, and executive functioning skills. It also examines school effects and learning loss during school breaks using longitudinal data from diverse Peruvian settings.

Tracing how skills grow across children, schools, and communities, the site adds a context-sensitive view of learning variability in digital and school-based settings.

The LEVANTE site at Sapienza University of Rome, co-led by Principal Investigator Laura Di Giunta together with Ana Victoria Ricaurte, investigates why children’s adaptation and learning follow different developmental pathways, with a particular focus on socio-emotional development. The research examines how processes such as emotion regulation and self-efficacy shape children’s responses to challenges and opportunities in school and everyday life.

Using longitudinal research across diverse educational contexts, including digital learning environments in Latin America, the project studies how socio-emotional development and computational thinking evolve over time. Through its collaboration with Arukay, this is the first LEVANTE site to draw on large-scale educational ecosystems across multiple countries, with research conducted in Colombia, Mexico, Ecuador, and Costa Rica.

This work combines developmental and educational data to examine how children’s learning pathways unfold across contexts and relationships.

The LEVANTE site at the University of Sheffield, led by Principal Investigator Alicia Forsberg, focuses on the development of working memory, metacognition, and their roles in learning. By studying how these cognitive processes vary across individual children and developmental stages, the research aims to identify factors that can help reduce learning inequalities. A key component of the research involves integrating metacognition—awareness of one’s own cognitive processes—into the LEVANTE framework, assessing its impact on learning success. The team also plans to develop metacognitive interventions tailored to individual learning profiles. Through these efforts, the site contributes to a better understanding of how to support personalized learning and address variability in educational outcomes, in line with the goals of the LEVANTE network.

The LEVANTE site, led by Principal Investigator Iliana Karipidis from the University of Zurich, focuses on exploring the development of language and literacy skills in children, particularly in multilingual contexts. The research aims to understand the variability in children’s learning trajectories, investigating how brain development, language environment, genetics, and learning experiences influence literacy acquisition. Karipidis and her team strive to develop and assess new tools for measuring literacy skills across diverse linguistic backgrounds, enhancing educational strategies, and identifying early indicators for children at risk of learning difficulties. Their contributions to the LEVANTE network include creating a shared framework for studying children’s learning and building an international brain imaging database.

The LEVANTE site led by Principal Investigator Professor Rogier Kievit at the Donders Institute/RadboudUMC, in collaboration with Co-PI Professor Carolina de Weerth, investigates how early life experiences shape children’s later cognitive performance. By incorporating the LEVANTE cognitive battery into two unique longitudinal cohorts—Skippy, an RCT exploring the effects of mother-infant skin-to-skin contact, and Smiley, an observational study with data on diet, stress, behavior, and the microbiome—their research aims to uncover how modifiable early-life factors impact cognitive performance and intra-individual variability over time. Using advanced quantitative tools, like Hidden Markov Models, the team will model cognitive fluctuations and development. Their findings will contribute to the LEVANTE network by offering empirical evidence and methodological expertise, helping to bridge scientific insight and real-world impact through collaboration and global dissemination.

The LEVANTE site, led by Principal Investigator Catherine Lebel from the University of Calgary, is focused on studying child development through the ongoing Pregnancy during the COVID-19 Pandemic study. This research follows over 6,500 mother-child pairs and seeks to understand how early life environments, including family structure and parental mental health, impact children’s cognitive development and learning outcomes. By incorporating LEVANTE’s performance-based measures of child cognition at ages 6 and 7, the project aims to enhance the understanding of developmental variability, resilience, and risk factors across diverse contexts. The study also integrates rich datasets, such as MRI scans and parent-child interaction videos, to offer unique insights into the factors that support optimal child development.