Measuring school readiness globally: Assessing the construct validity and measurement invariance of the International Development and Early Learning Assessment (IDELA) in Ethiopia

Wolf, Sharon; Halpin, Peter F.; Yoshikawa, Hirokazu; Dowd, Amy Jo; Pisani, Lauren; Borisova, Ivelina

doi:10.1016/j.ecresq.2017.05.001

Cited by 65 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Wolf et al (2017) found strong support for a four-factor model (including items measuring motor skills but not EF), compared to other alternative factor structures in Ethiopia. Wolf et al (2017) found strong support for a four-factor model (including items measuring motor skills but not EF), compared to other alternative factor structures in Ethiopia.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 74%

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The role of executive function and social‐emotional skills in the development of literacy and numeracy during preschool: a cross‐lagged longitudinal study

Wolf

McCoy

2019

Developmental Science

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| INTRODUC TI ONAs young children transition to school, they draw on a multitude of social, emotional, behavioral, and academic competencies.Evidence suggests that these competencies are interconnected, with non-academic skills such as executive function (EF) and social-emotional (SE) competence supporting children's ability to learn academic content in the classroom. Less is known, however, about whether academic skills support children's growth in EF and SE, or whether there are bidirectional relations between EF and SE skills themselves. Furthermore, the evidence to date on children's early skill development comes almost exclusively from high-income countries. As such, questions remain regarding how academic and non-academic skills develop over time in different cultural contexts or in settings where educational quality and learning levels are low, such as sub-Saharan Africa (Sandefur, 2016).In this study, we examine the interplay between non-academic skills-namely, EF and SE competencies-and children's early academic skills during the preschool (i.e., pre-primary) years in Ghana.Ghana is a lower middle-income country in West Africa where, despite having free universal preschool and one of the highest preschool enrollment rates on the continent, many young children do not meet basic cognitive and social-emotional milestones (McCoy, Peet, Ezzati, Danaei, Black, Sudfeld, & Fink, 2016). Using cross-lagged panel analysis, we examine how EF and SE contribute to prospective learning, and vice versa, over 2 years of schooling. In doing so, we provide the first longitudinal empirical evidence of the interplay between EF and SE skills and academic growth in sub-Saharan Africa. AbstractThe majority of evidence on the interplay between academic and non-academic skills comes from high-income countries. The aim of this study was to examine the bidirectional associations between Ghanaian children's executive function, social-emotional, literacy, and numeracy skills longitudinally. Children (N = 3,862; M age = 5.2 years at time 1) were assessed using direct assessment at three time points over the course of two school years. Controlling for earlier levels of the same skill, early executive function predicted higher subsequent literacy and numeracy skills, and early literacy and numeracy skills predicted higher subsequent executive function, indicating that the development of executive function and academic skills is inter-related and complementary over time. Early literacy and numeracy predicted subsequent social-emotional skills, but early social-emotional skills did not predict subsequent literacy and numeracy skills. The findings provide longitudinal evidence on children's learning and development in West Africa and contribute to a global understanding of the relations between various developmental skills over time. K E Y W O R D Scross-lagged panel analysis, early academic skills, executive function, Ghana, social-emotional, sub-Saharan Africa

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 74%

“…All child non-academic and academic skills were measured via direct assessment at each of the three time points using the International Development and Early Learning Assessment (IDELA; Pisani et al, 2018;Wolf, Halpin, Yoshikawa, Pisani, Dowd, & Borisova, 2017).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of executive function and social‐emotional skills in the development of literacy and numeracy during preschool: a cross‐lagged longitudinal study

Wolf

McCoy

2019

Developmental Science

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“…Previous research has validated the factor structure of the IDELA in Ethiopia (Wolf et al., ). Each item on the IDELA was scored as correct or incorrect.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…Although scoring in our study was for the most part consistent with the original IDELA developers’ standards, additional flexibility was provided on two of the social‐emotional items to allow children to receive a “correct” score for more than one response deemed by local experts to be relevant within the local context. (For details IDELA scoring, see Pisani et al., ; Wolf et al., ). Children's IDELA scores were used as observed variables representing the percent correct in each domain.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Household Socioeconomic Status and Parental Investments: Direct and Indirect Relations With School Readiness in Ghana

2017

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This study examines how parent socioeconomic status (SES) directly and indirectly predicts children's school readiness through pathways of parental investment. Data come from direct assessments with preschool children and surveys with their primary caregivers in Ghana at the start of the 2015-2016 school year (N = 2,137; M = 5.2 years). Results revealed SES-related gaps in all parental investment characteristics and child school readiness skills. Preschool involvement served as the primary mediating mechanism in the path from SES to most school readiness skills, though it did not predict executive function. The number of books in the household was marginally positively predictive of early literacy, whereas at-home stimulation was negatively related to motor, literacy, and numeracy skills.

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“…See Pisani et al () for details on the development of the IDELA items. Recent studies have assessed the psychometric properties and factor structure of the IDELA (Wolf et al, ), as well as the measurement invariance of the factors across five countries (Halpin et al, ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Longitudinal causal impacts of preschool teacher training on Ghanaian children’s school readiness: Evidence for persistence and fade‐out

Wolf

Aber

Behrman

et al. 2019

Developmental Science

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Preschool programs have expanded rapidly in low‐ and middle‐income countries, but there are widespread concerns about whether they are of sufficient quality to promote children's learning and development. We conducted a large school‐randomized control trial (‘Quality Preschool for Ghana’ – QP4G) of a one‐year teacher training and coaching program, with and without parental‐awareness meetings, designed to improve preschool quality and child development. We followed 3,435 children in 240 schools in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana, a country with universal pre‐primary education. A previous study reported positive impacts of teacher training (but not teacher training plus parental‐awareness meetings) at the end of the implementation year on some dimensions of classroom quality, teacher well‐being, and children's school readiness (Wolf et al., [2019] Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 12, 10–37). The present study analyzed a new round of data collected 1 year after the end of implementation to assess (a) the extent of persistence in impacts on child development and (b) whether such impacts vary by select child, household, and school characteristics. We found impacts of the teacher training intervention on children's overall school readiness were sustained (d = 0.13), but were only marginally statistically significant. When broken down by domain, impacts on social–emotional skills specifically persisted. Persistent negative effects of teacher training plus parental‐awareness meetings varied by the literacy status of the male parent such that negative impacts were concentrated in children in households with non‐literate male heads.

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Measuring school readiness globally: Assessing the construct validity and measurement invariance of the International Development and Early Learning Assessment (IDELA) in Ethiopia

Cited by 65 publications

References 24 publications

The role of executive function and social‐emotional skills in the development of literacy and numeracy during preschool: a cross‐lagged longitudinal study

The role of executive function and social‐emotional skills in the development of literacy and numeracy during preschool: a cross‐lagged longitudinal study

Household Socioeconomic Status and Parental Investments: Direct and Indirect Relations With School Readiness in Ghana

Longitudinal causal impacts of preschool teacher training on Ghanaian children’s school readiness: Evidence for persistence and fade‐out

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