Experts explore how technology and behavioural science can strengthen parent-child engagement, build critical thinking and expand access to learning in India
New Delhi, September 18, 2026: The UChicago Center in Delhi, in collaboration with the Behavioral Insights and Parenting Lab (BIP Lab) at the University of Chicago, hosted a dialogue on “Parents, Tech & Early Childhood Development: A Dialogue on the Power of Parents and Technology to Foster Early Childhood Skills” on September 17.
The event brought together researchers, education leaders and practitioners to examine how technology can strengthen the role parents play in children’s learning and development, and how such interventions can be adapted to the realities of Indian families.
The panel featured Ariel Kalil, Daniel Levin Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and Co-Director of BIP Lab; Pramath Raj Sinha, Founder and Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of Ashoka University; Swati Vasudevan, Managing Director of Khan Academy India; and Palaash Bhargava, Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Economics.
At the centre of the discussion was Chat to Learn, an intervention developed to help parents initiate richer, open-ended conversations with their children. Kalil explained that one of the barriers to meaningful parent-child engagement is not necessarily a lack of time or intention, but the mental effort involved in knowing how to begin. Chat to Learn addresses this by providing parents with simple conversation prompts designed to encourage children to imagine, question, explain and think, rather than simply arrive at a correct answer.
The larger ambition, Kalil explained, is not to turn parents into teachers or make families permanently dependent on technology. Instead, technology can provide a timely scaffold that helps certain forms of interaction become habitual. Over time, the aim is for richer conversations to become part of everyday parent-child relationships even without the tool.
The panel situated these ideas within India’s education landscape. The conversation highlighted the realities faced by families in government-school and low-income contexts, including differences in parental literacy, access to devices and digital infrastructure. It also examined models in which teachers and parents work together to enable children to access digital learning at home, rather than treating technology as a standalone solution.
A recurring theme was that access to technology alone is not enough. Children, parents and teachers also need the ability to engage meaningfully with the support available to them. The panel discussed how curiosity, critical thinking, logical reasoning and the ability to ask follow-up questions are increasingly important learning skills, particularly in an environment where information itself is readily accessible through technology and AI.
The discussion also explored the question of scale. Sinha emphasised the importance of moving promising ideas beyond research settings, testing them in the real world and demonstrating success before pursuing wider adoption. The conversation pointed to experimentation, evidence and contextual adaptation as essential to taking education innovations from promising ideas to interventions capable of operating at scale.
Audience questions brought further dimensions into the conversation, including the digital divide, screen use, accessibility for children and parents with disabilities, the risk of dependency on technological tools and the challenge of measuring outcomes such as curiosity and creativity. The discussion emphasised the need for nuance in distinguishing between passive or potentially harmful screen use and technology deliberately designed to expand access to learning and strengthen human interaction.
Aawaaz Centre for Research & Practice supported the event and is involved in taking the research into the Indian context. Co-founded by Chandraditya Raj and Tarang Tripathi, Aawaaz works at the intersection of education, research and practice, developing and implementing programmes with children, educators and communities.
The dialogue ultimately underscored a central idea: the role of technology in education need not be to replace parents, teachers or human interaction. Its potential may instead lie in helping those relationships work better, reducing barriers to meaningful engagement and creating more opportunities for children to question, converse and think.
As AI and digital technologies become increasingly embedded in children’s lives, the discussion calls attention to an equally important question for educators, researchers and policymakers: not simply how much technology children should use, but how it can be designed and used to strengthen the human relationships through which children learn.
