Daniel Plaut is an associate director working on education, specializing in evaluation and adaptive learning, collaborative learning and amplifying innovation. His focus is on increasing the impact of innovations that expand education access and improve learning outcomes for children and youth. He primarily does this by asking lots of questions: working alongside education implementers to interrogate their assumptions and collaboratively identify ways to learn and improve.
Throughout his time at R4D, Mr. Plaut has worked alongside innovative education program implementers to test, evaluate, learn from and improve their programs. He was central to the development of R4D’s Center for Education Innovations and managed its country and regional hubs in Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and India. He has also contributed to several R4D studies on education innovation and scale, positive youth development, the intersection of health and education and contributed to an evaluation of citizen-led assessments of learning in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
Over the last several years, Mr. Plaut has brought his focus on evaluation and adaptive learning to the EdTech Hub — a research-to-practice program led by R4D and partners — where he serves as Innovation Learning Lead. In this capacity, he has led a number of “sandbox” engagements, focused initially on supporting innovators seeking to respond to school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic. This included an engagement with Keep Kenya Learning, an innovative approach to sharing learning resources with Kenyan parents, which now works in close partnership with the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development. He also works closely with government counterparts to test and iterate large-scale programs, including a tech-enabled teacher-professional development program in Sierra Leone.
Mr. Plaut holds an MSc in violence, conflict and development from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and a BA in international affairs and music production from Florida State University. He is fluent in English and Portuguese and proficient in Spanish.
Articles and other publications
- “Positive Youth Development Programs in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Conceptual Framework and Systematic Review of Efficacy,” Journal of Adolescent Health, Volume 65, Issue 1, July 2019, Pages 15-31
- Forthcoming: Systematic Review of Positive Youth Development in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
- Forthcoming: “Getting to Education Outcomes: Reviewing Evidence from Health and Education Interventions” Disease Control Priorities 3 Vol 8. Ch. 22.
- Assessing Learning, Achieving Impact – A Literature Review: Citizen-led Assessments
- EdTech and Covid-19: Insights from our Sandbox Portfolio
- Keeping Kenya Learning: The importance of caregiver engagement in supporting learning beyond the classroom
- Using technology to support teacher continuous professional development in Sierra Leone
