A school closer to home: using mealtimes to foster language development, improve girls' nutrition and align home and school in rural Kenya and Zambia

We develop a new way to address educational disadvantage in rural Africa, through a collaboration between academics from Kenya, Zambia and the UK, teachers, families and community groups. The connection between home and school is key to sustainable education: (i) parents must recognise the school's priorities if they are to support their child's continuing education, (ii) teachers need to understand their pupils' home environment so they can build on positive home experiences and (iii) schools must build on children's existing skills and knowledge and fit with their goal of a successful life in their community. There is currently a serious disconnect between home and school in Africa and this is exacerbated in rural Kenya and Zambia by the predominance of non-local teachers who often don't speak pupils' native languages. We aim to connect home and school learning by targeting Early Childhood Education and Development programmes (ECDE; age 4 - 6). Unlike primary and secondary schools, ECDE centres recruit teachers from the local community. The relationship between parents and teachers is closest in ECDE settings, providing a crucial opportunity to build bridges between home and school. It is also a critical opportunity for mitigating early disadvantages for girls and empowering females in leadership roles since ECDE teachers are predominantly female. We prioritise language and nutrition as fundamental to all later learning, and aim to (i) identify positive practices in the home that benefit early language development and nutrition and (ii) to work together with ECDE teachers as researchers to empower them to develop teacher and parent networks to share best practice in school and at home. We target mealtimes for our observations of behaviour and language since they are a particularly rich time for social interaction, and the focus on eating gives an authentic setting for natural communication. Our objectives are (i) to measure home and school mealtime behaviour and language to identify practices that are most crucial for raising the quality of language children are exposed to (e.g., whether adults and children sit together; whether they have a television) (ii) to observe eating behaviours in the home, assess the extent to which girls' eat less food, or less nutritious foods, and identify practices that raise levels of female nutrition (e.g., girls may eat more if they share food as a family, rather than when girls and women eat separately) (iii) to work together with our teacher-researchers and community advisors to co-develop a teacher-network and parent outreach programme, based on evidence from objectives 1 and 2. The aim is to raise awareness and share practices that increase the quality of language children are exposed to at home and in school and raise levels of female nutrition, motivated by evidence of gender inequalities. Objective 3 will be achieved firstly by working together to identify key messages that are culturally appropriate and achievable (e.g., switch the TV off before eating at home; encourage teachers to sit together with pupils when eating in ECDE centres). Second, by working together in practitioner networks, guidance will be developed to inform a parent outreach programme to be shared with well-established groups in the community. The network will also provide a platform for teachers to conduct their own research, share research findings and discuss best practice. Importantly, it will provide a vital link to teachers in primary and secondary education, to develop continuity in children's education. Finally, the evidence base we provide through objectives 1 and 2, and the networks created in objective 3 provide a powerful basis for contributing to the development of the new ECDE curriculum in Kenya and to lobby for similar priorities in Zambia.

Who will benefit: Children, families, health practitioners, education practitioners (e.g., ECDE, primary and secondary teachers; speech and language therapists), local government (e.g., the department for Early Childhood Education), national government (Ministries of Health for Kenya and Zambia, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology for Kenya and the Ministry of General Education for Zambia), and Public Bodies involved in disseminating evidence and guidelines for language development and nutrition nationally (e.g., Kenya Medical and Educational Training; Kenya Female Advisory Organisation) and globally (the World Health Organisation, UNICEF, Save the Children and the Borgen Project).
How will they benefit: The teacher-researchers we work with will benefit from training in research methods and support to continue their own research via practitioner networks (objective 3). The teachers, community workers, health professionals and other educational practitioners (e.g., speech and language therapists) will benefit from joining the practitioner networks which will provide a mutually supportive group in which practitioners can share research findings and discuss best practice. They also provide a platform for different services (health, education) and different levels of education (ECDE, primary and secondary school teachers) to coordinate to provide a consistent culturally-appropriate and child-centred approach to education and health. Families and children will benefit from participating in Objectives 1 and 2 because participation will foster a closer relationship between teachers and parents which is known to benefit children's learning. Families and children will also benefit from our parent outreach programme, which aims to share easy-to-implement ways to increase the quality of language children are exposed to and raise the levels of girls' nutrition. Heads of ECDE centres, and local government will benefit from evidence-based advice on good practice which will enhance the delivery of the ECDE curriculum and increase levels of parent engagement. National governments, public bodies and global stakeholders will benefit from knowledge of simple evidence-based messages that have been tested in rural African communities.
How do we ensure they benefit: Teacher-researchers will receive research training from us and we will support them to develop practitioner networks as part of Objective 3. These networks will provide a platform for teachers and other health and education practitioners to coordinate to increase continuity in children's education and provide a route to feed into the development of the new competency based curriculum of the Kenyan government which requires a learning nexus between school and home, and a platform to lobby for similar priorities in Zambia. The parent outreach programme will be developed through these networks, promoted via our contacts in well-established community groups, and its success evaluated as part of the project. Our research team and advisory committee will meet at crucial points during the development of the project to maximise the potential impact of the research, and relevance to local priorities and context. We will hold 4 practitioner workshops to extend the reach of our impact to community, health and education practitioners outside the ECDE centres we already work with and to enable these practitioners to feed into our future research plans and the development of networks and parent outreach. Research summaries, workshops and policy briefs will be publicised to local government and local and national public bodies. Policy briefs at the end of the project will be publicised to all local, national and global stakeholders, including research outcomes and an evaluation of our practitioner networks and parent outreach programme.