A global research network to improve our understanding of variability in learning and development through coordinated data collection.
Dimensions of variability
Learning variability is a hallmark of children’s day-to-day lives – encompassing variability within their own behavior, both within and across functional areas; diversity within the peer learning groups to which they belong; and variability in the contexts they encounter each day. Variability is therefore the norm, rather than the exception. In order for children to reach their full potential, we need to shift the focus from group means to variability, across its different dimensions.
The LEarning VAriability NeTwork Exchange (LEVANTE) aims to improve our knowledge about the complexities of developmental variability and its impact on learning outcomes. It will furthermore allow a better understanding of the predictors of variability, processes that underlie variability, consequences of variability, and implications for interventions with children.
Learning variability is central to children’s lives, affecting their behavior, peer group dynamics, and learning outcomes.
Children behave inconsistently over time and across skills; why is this, and how can it be influenced productively? Their behaviors change not only with development, but also within much shorter timeframes, from months to weeks or even within a few hours. Why do children show inconsistent behavior, skills, knowledge, and characteristics from one time point to the next? What are the explanations for such variability, and what is its developmental purpose? Given the complexity of these within-person variations, how can educators, parents, or caregivers know what a particular child needs in a particular moment?
Children spend much of their time learning in social groups such as in daycare settings, classrooms, and formal or informal out-of-school learning experiences. Each child brings their own unique needs and experiences to these groups, which then influence how they learn and participate. How can education systems be designed so that instruction meets the needs of heterogeneous groups of children? How can group instruction in social environments, like classrooms, both cater to the needs of individual students and take advantage of learning variability for improved learning for all?
Children encounter many learning contexts throughout their day – home, math class, playground – and they are expected to navigate successfully within each context. Multiplying the number of contexts over years and decades, children need to be equipped with the ability to adapt to and shape the different contexts surrounding them. This adaptive flexibility becomes therefore instrumental to their long-term success. What are the skills, behaviors, knowledge, and characteristics that prepare children to learn in future contexts? How might environments be described so that we may better understand how to facilitate children’s successful adaptation within and across them? How can and should the child’s present learning benefit their future learning?
Key features
Explore the key features that make LEVANTE a unique framework to investigate the impact of variability in childhood on learning
To understand the nature of developmental variability alongside its counterpart, developmental continuity, LEVANTE provides researchers with open-access to direct and indirect holistic assessment measures of core constructs, enabling them to gather a large, rich, multi-context dataset measuring change over time in children aged 2 – 12 years.
The LEVANTE Data Repository (LDR) serves as a centralized repository for the standardized datasets generated via this framework, and allows for the open sharing and reuse of these data. Hosted by Stanford University, LDR is the first cross-cultural, multidisciplinary open dataset that captures the richness and diversity of child development and learning.
LEVANTE is designed to enable coordinated data collection around measuring children’s variability within and across individuals, groups, and cultures. Distributed across groups and populations via a call for proposals, data collection will result in an interrelated set of accelerated, longitudinal studies that use the same sampling plan and core measure set.
Adaptive tests are remarkable tools: instead of giving every child the same 50 questions, the computer picks the next question based on how the child is doing, zeroing in on their ability with a much shorter test. In practice, that efficiency depends on one thing going right: the system has to know how hard each […]
Planned targeted support for proposals from Global South. LEVANTE is launching a new call for proposals, with the aim of continuing to build a truly inclusive and globally representative network. To this end, the Foundation will also offer active support to Global South researchers. This includes: Who qualifies as a Global South researcher? For this […]
The Jacobs Foundation has launched the 2026 Call for Proposals for the Learning Variability Network Exchange (LEVANTE), offering up to USD 6 million in funding to research learning variability and its impact at the individual, group, and contextual levels. The Jacobs Foundation is excited to announce the 2026 Call for Proposals for its flagship initiative, […]