LENS: Understanding Early Childhood Classrooms at Scale

LENS (Learn, Engage, Nurture, Support) is an initiative at the University of Chicago exploring how video insights (leveraging secure computer vision technology) can help us better understand everyday experiences in early childhood classrooms. By developing reliable methods for analyzing classroom video, we aim to generate richer evidence about teaching, learning, and care — evidence that will support educators, children, families, and policymakers to invest equitably and efficiently in the early childhood education landscape.

By expanding what can be measured in everyday classrooms, LENS will generate the evidence needed to empower teachers, guide parents, reassure policymakers and drive positive, lasting change in early childhood education.

The Need

Measuring the quality of early childhood education at scale remains a major challenge for educators, researchers, families, and policymakers around the world. Existing approaches capture only part of what matters in children’s classroom experiences and development, and many important skills, behaviors, and interactions remain difficult to measure consistently at scale. Better evidence could help educators improve their practice, researchers understand classroom experiences, and policymakers make more informed investments in early childhood education.

Early childhood programs should be evaluated using a full range of skills that enable children to become more productive adults. Many analysts equate program effectiveness with performance on short-term measures of cognition that poorly predict life success. Socioemotional skills—such as attentiveness, impulse control, sociability, and conscientiousness—are primary drivers of achievement, health, and increased social and economic productivity. Unfortunately, these skills often go unmeasured.

James Heckman from “Early childhood education and social mobility,” Vox EU, January 12, 2016

Early experiences shape lifelong development

The quality of children’s earliest learning environments can profoundly influence their cognitive, social, and emotional development. Reliable measures that capture a broader range of children’s experiences, interactions, and development are essential for helping educators strengthen children’s experiences and ensuring that public and philanthropic investments in early childhood education have the greatest possible impact.

Current measures provide only brief snapshots

Classroom life is complex and constantly changing, yet quality assessments often rely on a limited set of measures and infrequent, short-term observations—sometimes just a few hours every few years. These snapshots cannot fully capture how educators respond to children, how children engage and interact, how experiences vary over time, or how classroom context shapes learning and development.

New tools could make richer measurement possible

Most computer vision models were not developed for early childhood classrooms and cannot reliably recognize the people, activities, objects, and interactions that matter in these settings. Our multidisciplinary initiative brings together expertise in early childhood education, economics, psychology, and computer vision to develop cost-effective and scalable approaches to measuring classroom experiences that have historically been difficult to capture.

A richer understanding of everyday classroom life could help strengthen teaching and care, guide better decisions and investments, and ultimately improve outcomes for children and educators.

How it Works

  • 1Collect Classroom Video

    Work with early childhood education providers to build classroom video collections

  • 2 Identify Meaningful Interactions

    Define observable activities and interactions based on research and partner and practitioner priorities

  • 3Develop and Validate Measures

    Train computer vision models and compare their results with human coding

  • 4Discover Patterns

    Examine variation across classrooms, times, seasons, programs, and communities

  • 5Connect Experiences with Outcomes

    Examine associations with learning, development, health, educator well-being, and classroom quality

  • 6Build Practical Tools

    Develop and evaluate applications for coaching, research, program improvement, and well-being

  • 7Inform Programs and Policy

    Use evidence to guide lasting, equitable improvements in early childhood education

Together, these steps will enable LENS to provide a clearer, more detailed picture of everyday life in early childhood classrooms:

  • What a typical classroom day looks like, including the frequency, duration, and sequence of activities and interactions.

  • How classroom experiences vary over time and across children, educators, classrooms, activities, and settings.

  • Which patterns are consistent, context-dependent, or uncommon—and under what conditions they occur.

  • Whether detailed evidence supports existing assumptions about early childhood teaching, learning, and care, while identifying new questions for research.

We aim to understand what children and educators experience in early childhood classrooms, how those experiences vary, and develop practical tools that support positive outcomes.

Impact

The long-term ambition of LENS is to create a stronger evidence base for early childhood education. Potential outcomes include:

Rich Research Datasets

Large-scale datasets that help researchers study classroom activities, interactions, environments, and variation over time.

Open Resources

Computer vision models, methods, benchmarks, and technical resources that accelerate research across the early childhood field.

New Ways to Measure Classroom Environments

Validated measures of specific, observable dimensions of classroom quality that complement established observation and assessment methods

Connections to Meaninful Oucomes

Evidence about how classroom experiences are associated with child development, educator well-being, learning, health, and other important outcomes.

Real-World Tools

Research-based tools that could support applications such as educator coaching, program improvement, workforce support, and ongoing assessment.

Better-Informed Programs and Policies

Evidence that can guide decisions about early childhood programs, workforce investments, and public policy—with the goal of benefiting educators, children, families, administrators, and communities

Together, these resources could transform how early childhood classrooms are understood, supported, and strengthened—turning everyday moments into evidence that shapes a better future for children and educators.

Videos

Meet the people behind LENS and discover the vision, purpose, and passion driving this work forward.

Project Partners

 
 

LENS is at an exploratory stage. Its direction will be shaped by collaboration with early childhood educators, researchers, technical experts, policymakers, funders, and other organizations committed to improving early childhood classroom understanding, experiences, and quality.

We are interested in partnerships that can contribute research expertise, technical capabilities, representative data, implementation knowledge, or financial support. These collaborations can help establish which questions are most valuable, which uses are appropriate, and how resulting tools and knowledge can create meaningful public benefit.

Project Team

We are an interdisciplinary team across multiple institutions. We recognize the critical importance of diversity and expertise from educators working directly with children and families and welcome recommendations for committed individuals to join us on this journey.

alisonnewweb

Alison Baulos

The University of Chicago

JHeckmanWeb

James Heckman

The University of Chicago

EBaldo-Web

Elizabeth Baldo

The University of Chicago

jrechkemmer

Jaime Rechkemmer

Watch Me Grow

1734317556339

Parissa Snider

Watch Me Grow

AleishaUpdate

Aleisha Wilson

Building Blocks

Sheridan Forker

Sheridan Forker

Building Blocks

Funders

The LENS Project is seeded through the Center for the Economics of Human Development and we are currently seeking funders.