Household attributes and early learning: Applying the IDELA Household Survey in rural Cameroon

• In Event: Community-based early childhood care and education. Part I: Understanding and adapting to local contexts

Proposal

Children develop cognitive, social, motor, and language skills through interaction with their environments, beginning in the womb and throughout early childhood in and outside of their home. There are large differences in the child development opportunities and outcomes across settings, with the sub-Saharan Africa region showing the largest proportion of three and four-year-old children failing to meet their cognitive and social-emotional milestones (McCoy et al., 2016). Two Rabbits works with indigenous Baka hunter-gatherers in Cameroon to create community preschool centers. In semi-nomadic forager societies like the Baka, the availability of print material and educational toys may be expected to be lower than other rural contexts. In contrast, children may have access to a different set of opportunities that promote development. The environment in the home is important to contribute to exposing children to new experiences that can lead to developing new skills. Analyzing the home environment is thus critical to understanding the types of skills, experiences, and background knowledge that children possess already, and the assets that we can build upon to provide enriching learning experiences that link school and home.

Two Rabbits administered the International Development and Early Learning Assessment (IDELA) Household Survey in October 2018 and again in June and October 2019. The tool includes information on who lives with the child, caregiver education levels, caregiver views on education and child development, presence of household objects, and how the child tends to spend his/her time. Through descriptive statistics and case studies, we will present trends observed in household data in order to establish an overview of the types of resources and experiences Baka children have at home. We will then present an analysis of household characteristics and child development outcomes measured using the IDELA (Pisani et al., 2018).

Author

• Pierre De Galbert, Brown University