The Improving the Quality of Preschool and Primary School Education Project will support the expansion of the Full Time School (FTS) model, while seeking to improve teaching and evaluation practices in preschool and primary school education. Additionally, it will finance pilot projects geared toward strengthening the primary to secondary school transition.
What are the blood lead levels of children living in Latin America and the Caribbean?
Use of evidence-based interventions in child welfare: Do attitudes matter?
Aaron, Grant J. et. al.
Wirtz, Andrea L. et. al.
McCoy, Dana Charles et. al.
Incredible Years parent training: What changes, for whom, how, for how long?
Seabra-Santos, Maria João et. al.
We report on the first representative sample survey of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) program quality to be conducted in South Africa (n = 242 ECCE centers). The Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale—Revised (ECERS-R) and Infant–Toddler Environmental Rating Scale—Revised (ITERS-R) were used to assess ECCE quality. A Center Management Quality measure based on South African center licensing requirements was constructed and administered to center supervisors. We found that classes for both younger and older children fall just above the 'minimal' quality level on both measures. Regression analyses were conducted to establish determinants of center quality. Predictors included: licensing and subsidy status, teacher information (age, highest qualification and years in ECCE), presence of a Reception Year class in the center, teacher–child ratio, weekly fees, management quality, center support and parent involvement. Outcome measures were ITERS-R and ECERS-R total scale scores. Fees charged and center management capacity were predicted the quality of the care and learning environment. The relationship between level of child deprivation in the community (as an indicator of child poverty) and ITERS-R and ECERS-R total scores was examined separately. A significant negative relationship was observed between program quality and the level of child deprivation in the area served by the center. Implications for improving center quality for disadvantaged children in South Africa are discussed.
Early childhood is a critical period for language and cognitive development. Evidence suggests that children need "language nutrition", or language-rich interactions with caregivers, for optimal language and cognitive development. This integrated review was conducted to evaluate the influence of language nutrition, through talking, interacting, or reading, in early childhood and language or cognitive development. Articles published from 1990–2014 were identified through PubMed, CINAHL, and Web of Science databases and through reference lists of identified articles. Of the 1273 articles identified, 103 articles met the search criteria. Aspects of speech, including the quantity of words, lexical diversity, linguistic and syntactical complexity, intonation, and prosody, all contribute to the comprehension and production of language through enhancing speech processing, phonemic awareness, word segmentation, and knowledge of grammatical rules. In addition to features of language, the delivery of language contributes to variance in developmental outcomes. Language delivered in the context of an adult–child interaction characterized by responsiveness and positive regard helps to scaffold a child's learning and encourages verbal behaviors. Additionally, shared reading increases language and literacy skills by introducing new vocabulary and facilitating dialogue between children and adults. In conclusion, studies consistently demonstrate that quantity and quality of talking, interacting, and reading with a child in the first three years of life are strongly associated with language and cognitive development as well as school readiness and academic performance. As a result, interventions aimed at increasing the quality and quantity of language nutrition have the potential to leverage dramatic results for children's developmental outcomes.
Toddlers often go through a picky eating phase, which can make it difficult to introduce new foods into the diet. A better understanding of how parents' prompts to eat fruits and vegetables are related to children's intake of these foods will help promote healthy eating habits.
60 families recorded all toddler meals over one day, plus a meal in which parents introduced a novel fruit/vegetable to the child. Videos were coded for parent and child behaviors. Parents completed a feeding style questionnaire and three 24-h dietary recalls about their children's intake.
Parents made, on average, 48 prompts for their children to eat more during the main meals in a typical day, mostly of the neutral type. Authoritarian parents made the most prompts, and used pressure the most often. In the novel food situation, it took an average of 2.5 prompts before the child tasted the new food. The most immediately successful prompt for regular meals across food types was modeling. There was a trend for using another food as a reward to work less well than a neutral prompt for encouraging children to try a novel fruit or vegetable.
More frequent prompts to eat fruits and vegetables during typical meals were associated with higher overall intake of these food groups. More prompts for children to try a novel vegetable was associated with higher overall vegetable intake, but this pattern was not seen for fruits, suggesting that vegetable variety may be more strongly associated with intake. Children who ate the most vegetables had parents who used more "reasoning" prompts, which may have become an internalized motivation to eat these foods, but this needs to be tested explicitly using longer-term longitudinal studies.
Infancia en tiempos de guerra: ¿Los niños de Colombia conocerán por fin la paz?
The Spanish online program "Educar en Positivo" ("The Positive Parent"): Whom does it benefit the most?
Tablet computers are increasingly becoming commonplace in classrooms around the world. More than half of early childhood educators in the U.S. now have access to tablets, making it imperative to understand how they are using the device and what influences such use. The current study draws on survey data from 411 preschool educators serving 3- to 5-year-olds in school-based, center-based, and Head Start preschool programs to investigate how TPACK contextual factors (e.g., student background, teacher attitudes, and school support) influence teachers' traditional and student-centered tablet computer practices. Results suggest that teacher-level factors—especially positive attitudes toward technology—are most influential. Overall, this study emphasizes the need for preschool teachers and teacher educators to understand and address the critical contextual factors of tablet computer use in preschool education. Implications for education policy include expanding traditional funding models beyond technology access to provide on-going educator support, and developing new initiatives that encourage novel professional development models based on the same learned-centered practices that teachers are encouraged to use themselves.
How is Child Care Quality Measured?
Lansford, Jennifer E. et. al.
Qual Formação no Trabalho Educativo com a Primeira Infância?
Luis M. Naya Garmendia, Pauli Davila Balsera, Revista Tempo e Argumento, Florianópolis, v. 7, n. 14, p. 48 ‐ 84, jan./abr. 2015.
25 Years of the Convention on the Rights of the Child: Is the World a better place for children?
Highlighting the evidence gap: how cost-effective are interventions to improve early childhood nutrition and development?
Politicas Sociales Nº 204 - 82 pp.
Análisis & Propuestas, 24. Lima: GRADE.
Implicancias de la Convención Internacional de los Derechos del Niño en el posicionamiento de los niños, niñas y adolescentes como sujetos de derecho.
Bastos, Paulo; Bottan, Nicolas L.; Cristia, Julian P.
Public support to families with pre-school children can be in the form of cash benefits (e.g. child allowances) or of "in-kind" support (e.g. care services such as kindergartens). The mix of these support measures varies greatly across OECD countries, from a cash / in-kind composition of 10%/90% to 80%/20%. This paper imputes the value of services into an "extended" household income and compares the resulting distributive patterns and the redistributive effect of these two strands of family policies. On average, cash and in-kind transfers each constitute 7 – 8% of the incomes of families with young children. Both instruments are redistributive. Cash transfers reduce child poverty by one third, with the estimated impacts in Austria, Ireland, Sweden, Hungary and Finland performing above average. When services are accounted for, child poverty falls by one quarter and poverty among children enrolled in childcare is more than halved. This reduction is highest in Belgium, France, Hungary, Iceland and Sweden.
Éste es el primer estudio en analizar la demanda y oferta de educación parvularia en América Latina, específicamente en Chile. La importancia de este tema se explica por el reciente aumento en la cobertura preescolar en la región, la necesidad de entender los determinantes de las decisiones de los padres de enviar a sus hijos a los centros (demanda), la caracterización de los centros que entregan los servicios de educación temprana (oferta) y los desafíos del diseño de políticas públicas en esta área. Nuestro análisis utiliza diversas fuentes de información. Respecto de la oferta, presentamos evidencia que sugiere problemas en la localización geográfica de los centros y en la coordinación entre los proveedores públicos. Respecto de la demanda, nuestros resultados indican que la distancia al centro, la educación de la madre y la situación de empleo son elementos importantes en la elección del establecimiento al que asisten los menores.
El objetivo de este artículo es mostrar cómo las evaluaciones de políticas públicas, en particular las evaluaciones de impacto, pueden constituir insumos importantes para la toma de decisiones de parte de los hacedores de política y, por ende, para el mejoramiento de las intervenciones públicas. La discusión se desarrolla en torno al caso de la evaluación de impacto realizada al programa Hogares Comunitarios de Bienestar (HCB) del Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar (ICBF), entre 2007 y 2008, y a las medidas implementadas por dicha institución para mejorar la atención brindada por este programa a la primera infancia a raíz de los resultados y recomendaciones propuestas en los informes de evaluación. La rapidez y eficacia con las que estas intervenciones fueron llevadas a cabo por el ICBF y el proceso de evaluación al que posteriormente fueron sometidas posicionan la experiencia de los HCB como un ejemplo de gestión de la política pública, lo cual significó una mejora del bienestar de los niños y niñas pertenecientes a las comunidades más pobres y vulnerables del país.