Junlei Li, Ph.D.: Finding Essential in the Simple

Professor Junlei Li, is Saul Zaentz Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Development ; Faculty co-Chair, Human Development and Education program, Harvard Graduate School of Education

He confided in this Harvard Gazette article in December 2023 that he was trained to find and fix what is wrong in the fields of human development. He said that “The Power of the Positive Deviance Approach book ..radically changed how I approach my field- it taught me to honor the expertise and wisdom of those who are already on the front lines of any difficult work. It led me to learn from villagers who fostered children with severe disabilities, childcare providers in low-income communities, and social workers in youth group homes”.

Read his observations here.

Ethiopian Parents and Students: Girl’s Access to Education

Sector: Girl’s access to Education in Ethiopia
Location: Ethiopia

PD Parents’ Success Messages:

“I want to send both my boys and my girls because they are equally my children.”

“Flying an airplane or driving an automobile is not through inheritance, but through education.”

“An educated person is always gaining, but an uneducated person is always losing.”

“Girls are more costly than boys.  Girls do not just wake up in the morning and go to school like boys, they want to wash their face, put some lotion, and wear some decent clothes which is most of the time difficult.”

PD Girl Students’ Messages:

“I deal with the challenge [feeling shame for being poor] by not seeing those students of wealthy families and living according to the standard of my family”

“I will tell the child to be strong and bear all the problems that he or she faces and finish schooling to get a job.”

“I want to be a teacher.  My teacher used to be a student just like me and now that he is grown he can support himself by being a teacher and I want to do just like that.”

“I will advise parents to go to Erre town and see all the doctors and teachers, etc, and ask them if you want your children to be just like these people they need to be educated and for that they need to sacrifice.”