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Assessing social and emotional learning in young children in Tanzania

Wed, March 28, 8:00 to 9:30am, Hilton Reforma, Floor: 15th Floor, Suite 5 (Room 1501)

Proposal

There is an increased demand for assessments of social and emotional competencies of young children in low- and middle-income countries. These competencies are increasingly seen as important for children’s development and for their education. In the context of preschool and primary education, such assessments have a number of uses. They are used to evaluate the impact of programs on children’s social and emotional learning. They can also be used to monitoring individual children’s progress in such programs and to tailor interventions to their needs.
We developed a tool to assess aspects of SEL that are important for children’s education in Tanzania. Using this work as a case study, we describe the challenges inherent in developing such a tool. The tool was developed as part of the USAID Tusome Pamoja preschool program in Mtwara, Southern Tanzania.
First, most assessments of SEL have been developed in high-income contexts. The constructs assessed by existing instruments may not be relevant to Tanzania. Even when assessments target appropriate domains, those domains may manifest differently in Tanzania; that is, competence in a given domain may be demonstrated by different behaviours in Tanzania than in other contexts. In our study, we conducted detailed qualitative interviews with parents, teachers and students to understand the SEL constructs that are perceived as important for children’s education and life success in general. Parents and students had little experience discussing these concepts. We describe approaches we used to facilitating these conversations. We were able to identify 13 social and emotional domains that were valued by interviewees as important. Compared to existing frameworks, participants in Tanzania placed more importance on aspects of social responsibility, such as respect and obedience. Teachers placed more importance than parents on competencies required for learning, such as curiosity and self-direction. Participants suggested several locally relevant behaviours that exemplified competence in each domain.
Second, direct assessment of young children’s social and emotional competencies is challenging. In our study, we relied instead on reports of children’s behaviour by teachers and parents. Using such reports brings additional challenges. We found that understanding of domains and behaviours differed among respondents. Piloting and revision was necessary to clarify ambiguous behaviours and to discard others that could not be clearly defined. We also found that some behaviours were well understood but respondents told us that they had few opportunities to observe the behaviour in children. Parents and teachers differed in the domains they were best placed to observe. They also differed in their assessment of children for some behaviours.
Based on qualitative interviews and piloting of draft questionnaires we developed a tool that assessed children’s competencies in 13 domains. The parent questionnaire had 71 items across the 13 domains; the teacher questionnaire had 42 items. We assessed the validity and reliability of the questionnaire in a sample of 512 students from preschool and the first two grades of primary school from Mtwara region Tanzania. For each student, we interviewed one teacher who knew them well and one parent. The data were analysed using confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) to assess whether the underlying factor structure of the data matched the 13 constructs that we had identified through the qualitative work. We also assessed the relative reliability of teacher and parents reports and the areas of agreement and disagreement between the two.
Based on these analyses, we make recommendations about approaches to developing assessments of young children’s social and emotional competencies based on local perceptions of these constructs.

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