Bilingual Home and School Environments Impact Children’s Language and Literacy Outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa

• In Event: Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Topic - Language, Communication

Abstract

Introduction
In multilingual countries in sub-Saharan Africa, children often attend school taught in a language they do not speak, contributing to low literacy rates (Heugh, 2011). Bilingual education (i.e. in child’s native language) may improve learning outcomes. Bilingual children (from bilingual homes and/or attending bilingual schools) have previously shown language and literacy advantages (Jasińska & Petitto, 2018; Berens, Kovelman, & Petitto, 2018). However, this research has been limited mainly to high-income countries (HICs). Little is known about the impact of children’s home and school language background on literacy development in multilingual, low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs). How do home and school language environments impact children’s language and literacy development in impoverished communities in rural Côte d’Ivoire? We compared first language (Attié, Abidji, Baoulé, Bété) outcomes and French language and literacy outcomes of children attending monolingual or bilingual schools who were from monolingual or bilingual households. We predicted that children with bilingual experience (be it at home, or at school) will outperform children with monolingual home and/or school experience. However, education quality, particularly bilingual education, is often poor in sub-Saharan Africa (e.g. inadequate teacher training, Akyeampong, 2013; insufficient teaching materials, Piper & Miksic, 2011). We also explored how monolingual and bilingual schools may differ in ways that may mitigate the potential bilingual advantages afforded in bilingual education settings.
Method
Primary-school children (N=830; 6-14 years) completed phonological awareness, vocabulary, oral language comprehension, and tone awareness (native only) tasks in their native language (Jasińska et al., R&R) and French, and French reading tasks (EGRA; RTI International, 2009; Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2001; Bruce, 1964; Yopp, 1995). Teachers (N=51) completed a questionnaire measuring school quality indicators (e.g. professional experience, pedagogical materials, infrastructure).
Results
Home Language: Children from bilingual versus monolingual households scored higher on phonological awareness, tone awareness, and vocabulary tasks in their native language and on French reading. Among children from bilingual households, children attending bilingual versus monolingual schools had higher French language and reading scores.
School Type: Children attending monolingual French versus bilingual local language-French schools scored higher on phonological awareness and vocabulary tasks in both languages and on reading tasks.
School Quality: Monolingual schools had significantly better infrastructure. Bilingual school teachers reported insufficient local language materials and a lack of training in local language instruction.
Discussion
Our results support our prediction that bilingual home environments are advantageous for children’s language and literacy skills. Contrary to our predictions, monolingual schools were overall associated with better language and literacy skills. Importantly, our results also showed that bilingual schools were of lower quality than monolingual schools, which likely contributed to children’s poorer outcomes in bilingual school settings. However, children from bilingual homes that attended bilingual, rather than monolingual schools, showed benefits; suggesting that the potential language advantages afforded to children through early bilingual exposure (i.e. in the home) might allow children to further benefit from bilingual education. Bilingual education can improve children’s literacy outcomes in LMIC contexts; however, to achieve this goal, it is imperative to ensure education is high quality.

Authors

• Mary-Claire Ball, University of Toronto
  Presenting Author

• Erin Curran, University of Delaware
  Non-Presenting Author

• Fabrice Tanoh, University of Delaware
  Non-Presenting Author

• Hermann Akpe, Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny
  Non-Presenting Author

• Shakhlo Nematova, University of Delaware
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kaja K Jasinska, University of Toronto
  Non-Presenting Author