Bunavia – Organizing to Learn

Humans are eager to learn throughout their lives. Yet in today’s society – with increasing pressures on families, the growing reach of social media, and a diverse population in the school system – opportunities to learn depend on being well-organized. How do families spend their time and with whom? How are schools and neighborhoods organized? And how do students develop critical organizational skills such as being punctual and paying attention in a classroom? One major aim of BUNAVIA at the Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development at the University of Zurich is to investigate how children and families structure their lives, including, for example, how they spend time in different activities and how networks of children, parents, and teachers contribute to the children’s development, identity, and learning. Targeted interventions will allow us to test the causal effects of changes in time structure, identity, and networks on children’s development, well-being, and academic achievement. The outcomes of this study will help to describe the “blueprint”/“bauplan” of daily life in families, the origin of these organizational schemes, and their consequences for  learning, but also for well-being and child development.

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