Abstract: An Innovative Approach to Promoting Young Children's Literacy through Dialogic Reading and Local-Language Storybooks: A Randomized Trial in Rural Kenya (Society for Social Work and Research 23rd Annual Conference - Ending Gender Based, Family and Community Violence)

Schedule:

Sunday, January 20, 2019: 9:45 AM

Union Square 19 Tower 3, 4th Floor (Hilton San Francisco)

* noted as presenting author

Heather Knauer, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, MI

Pamela Jakiela, PhD, Associate Professor, University of Maryland at College Park, MD

Owen Ozier, PhD, Economist, The World Bank, DC

Frances Aboud, PhD, Professor Emeritus, McGill College, QC

Lia Fernald, PhD, Professor, University of California, Berkeley, CA

Background and Purpose:

Worldwide, 250 million children under five years old are at risk of failing to meet their developmental potential, primarily because of poverty and a lack of adequate nutrition and cognitive stimulation in early childhood. Children in low- income families, and particularly those whose parents have lower educational attainment, have underdeveloped pre-literacy skills, and poor knowledge of the alphabet and vocabulary, which can lead to poorer schooling outcomes in early elementary school. Several parent support programs have shown significant benefits for children's development, but the programs are generally expensive and resource intensive. The objective of this study was to develop a scalable and cost-effective intervention - using a dialogic reading program and culturally and linguistically appropriate books - that could improve cognitive stimulation by parents and school readiness in children.

Methods:

We used a cluster randomized controlled trial with four intervention arms and one control arm in caregivers (n=357) and their 24- to 83-month-old children (n=510) in rural Kenya. The arms of the study were: T1: Storybooks only; T2: T1 + Group Dialogic Reading Training (DRT) and Feedback Session; T3: T2 + Booster Training; T4: T3 + Home Visit. Baseline measures were collected prior to implementation of the intervention, with follow-up conducted 4 to 5 weeks post-intervention. Main effects of each arm of the trial were examined, and tests of heterogeneity were conducted to examine differential effects among children of illiterate caregivers.

Results:

Findings were that DRT paired with a set of six locally sourced and adapted children's books, translated in English and Swahili, increased caregivers reported frequency of reading with their child and improved the quality of caregiver-child reading interactions observed with their preschool-aged child. There were no effects of the intervention on children's expressive or receptive vocabulary, however children of illiterate mothers demonstrated a significant increase in storybook-related expressive vocabulary of similar magnitude to the gap found at baseline.

Conclusions and Implications:

Our study suggests two important conclusions. First, a well-designed DRT can be implemented in a setting with high levels of poverty and low literacy among caregivers, with positive effects on caregivers reading interactions with their children. Second, even two-year olds are able to engage with and benefit from local-language, contextually-appropriate children’s books. Simple storybooks are also engaging for older children, who appear to become very familiar with their content – suggesting regular use. While many early literacy and child development programs have yielded greater benefits for children of parents with higher levels of education, this program demonstrates that it is possible to design a reading intervention that is accessible to illiterate caregivers. Longer term follow-up study is needed to build on these promising findings, to determine the effectiveness and cost- effectiveness of the intervention, and if there are effects on children’s vocabulary development not seen in the short term.