Browse Publications
Discover and manage thousands of titles across multiple genres, scientific journals, and classic literature.
Improving Early Childhood Development on a Global Scale
By Tsinigo, Edward
More than 250 million children younger than 5 years are at risk of not meeting their developmental potential, the vast majority of whom live in low- or middle-income countries (LMICs).1 In response to this global crisis, as well as political demand generated by recent initiatives like the Sustainable Development Goals and the multilateral Nurturing Care Framework, a growing body of pediatric research has focused on implementing and evaluating interventions to support the early childhood development (ECD) of LMIC-based children.2 Although these interventions have been found on average to improve children’s physical, cognitive, and psychosocial development, their effect sizes (typically d < .50) remain insufficient for maximizing all children’s developmental potential and their take-up by local communities is varied.
Are private kindergartens really better? Examining preschool choices, parental resources, and children’s school readiness in Ghana
By Tsinigo, Edward
Low-cost private schools are expanding across sub-Saharan Africa and are often perceived by parents to be of better quality than public schools. This article assesses the interplay between kindergarten (or preschool) choice, household resources, and children’s school readiness in Ghana. We examine how child, household, and school characteristics predict private versus public kindergarten attendance and whether household characteristics are associated with school readiness beyond preschool selection. Using a geospatial-identification strategy to account for observed and unobserved determinants of preschool choice, we find that parental investments—including number of books at home and caregiver help with homework—predict both private-preschool selection and start-of-year child outcomes beyond their influence on preschool choice. We take this evidence as suggesting that investments in children support learning beyond simply selecting the presumed best preschool type. We also find independent associations between attending private preschool and one-year changes in early literacy scores. The findings contribute knowledge to the literature on the recent expansion of preschool education in sub-Saharan Africa and globally and shed new light on the role of private-preschool attendance in early academic skill development. © 2020 by the Comparative and International Education Society. All rights reserved.
© 2026 AERD Database System. All Rights Reserved. Developed by Strategic Technologies.