BackHome
Refresh: OffView Personal Schedule
Individual Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Poster #121 - Assessing the Quality of Early Childhood Education in Colombia: Implications for National Policy

Fri, March 22, 7:45 to 9:15am, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

Introduction. The National Law De Cero a Siempre (DCAS) provides a framework for holistic early childhood development and education (ECDE) services (or atenciones as defined in the Colombian context). Against the backdrop of the Sustainable Development Goals and the DCAS policy objectives, Colombia set out to develop and apply a comprehensive measure to track the quality of ECDE at scale and inform its programmatic strategies. We describe the phases to define the policy objectives, the activities that led to the adaptation of the instrument, and the key enablers and challenges to the process.
Methods. The first phase of our study encompassed a multi-stakeholder consultative process to define policy objectives and priorities for the assessment of quality at scale. The second phase included the selection of the base instrument. The third phase included the iterative modifications of domains, constructs, and items of the measure by drawing from the outputs of the consultative process, a content analysis of national quality standards, and practical applications during the field test and a regional study. The fourth and crosscutting phase included communication strategies to disseminate the intent of the measure among key stakeholders and utilize the results to inform public policy and promote sustainability of the effort.
Results. One policy priority that emerged in the first consultative phase was the development of a comprehensive measure that would capture setting, program and system attributes of quality, while also capturing child outcomes to inform policies and strategies to strengthen atenciones as provisioned for in DCAS. The long-term vision was to generate a system that would enable the exploration of associations between quality and child development at scale. Upon a review of candidate base instruments, the country selected the Measuring Early Learning Quality and Outcomes (MELQO) to frame the process. Modifications to the framework were made to include domains that were of high priority for Colombia, such as the level of service integration and strategies to facilitate children transitions form the ECDE settings into primary schools. Domain and item-level modifications (resulting from the consultative process and the psychometric analysis emerging from a regional study) were done primarily to reflect the operational, technical and pedagogical guidelines that exist in the country. We describe strategies that were effective to manage expectations of practitioners, government partners and the broader audience with regards to: (1) the significance of the results as they emerged from field testing and (2) the introduction and use of a direct and population-based child outcome measure as part of the quality measure.
Implications. The process resulted in the first-ever comprehensive measure of quality in Colombia, while bolstering the awareness among different actors of measurement as a necessary mechanism to improve they quality and equity of services and programs. The paper describes the implications for policy, practice and research in Colombia and discusses lessons learned with relevance to the Latin American and global context. Implications of the use of quality measurements that follow global conceptualizations of quality while acknowledging national and local frameworks and visions are also discussed.

Authors