Ishita Ahmed
Graduate Student Fellowship | 2024–2025 Academic Year
Roots of Learning: Grounding Executive Functions in Rural Bangladesh
Accurate assessment of progress toward equitable quality education and learning for children globally necessitates equitable learning measures. Executive functions (EFs) are cognitive and regulatory skills that support children’s learning. Most EF measures are developed in high-income countries and are not contextually relevant for low-and middle-income countries. This dissertation identifies whether early childhood social protection policies affect middle childhood EFs, examines the validity of existing EF measures, and adapts and validates adult-reported EF measures in rural Bangladesh. The findings will inform how to shape policies and evaluations that account for children’s foundational learning skills and contexts to promote equitable learning globally.
Ishita Ahmed, Social Sciences, Humanities, and Interdisciplinary Policy Studies in Education (SHIPS)
Ishita Ahmed focuses on how to promote equitable education for marginalized communities in the U.S. and low-and-middle-income countries. Her work aims to improve measurement of psychological constructs that contribute to student outcomes and integrate them into economic analyses of education intervention effectiveness. In her dissertation, she integrates measures of executive functions to analyze the long-term impacts of social protection programs on child development and examine the validity of existing EF measures. She also examines how to contextually adapt and validate adult-reported measures of executive functions in rural Bangladesh. Prior to Stanford, she worked with Innovations for Poverty Action to design, manage, and analyze data from field experiments and with multilateral organizations such as the World Bank. She holds a MA in Economics from the University of Maryland College Park and a BA in Economics and International Relations from the College of William and Mary.