Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong.
Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong.
Adv Child Dev Behav. 2021;61:255-277. doi: 10.1016/bs.acdb.2021.04.002. Epub 2021 Jun 26.
Child developmental theories and a large body of literature underscore the importance of both home and preschool influences on early childhood outcomes. We leveraged data from UNICEF'S Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys, a nationally representative international household survey that has collected cohort comparable information on children's early development in over 118 low- and middle-income countries since 1995. We focused on data from 216,052 3- to 4-year-olds (106,037 girls) from 28 countries that had undertaken at least two surveys from 2010 to 2018. We considered the impact of maternal education and household wealth (what mothers/caregivers have) on home learning activities and sending children to early childhood programs (what mothers/caregivers do), on early child development. Our results indicated that maternal education, household wealth, home learning activities, participation in early childhood education (ECE) and scores on the early childhood development index (ECDI) generally increased over time and were significantly related to each other. Multilevel structural equation modeling revealed the mechanism through which maternal education and household wealth were associated with child outcomes. More wealthy and more educated mothers were more likely to send their child to an ECE program, which was in turn, associated with a higher ECDI score. Caregiver-reported participation in ECE had a large effect on the ECDI score while maternal education had a small effect on it. In comparison the effects of the home learning environment were much smaller. Taken together, findings suggest that education and wealth (what parents have) influence what they do (providing opportunities for learning), which in turn influences early child development. Furthermore, exposure to ECE services was particularly important for children's development. We conclude by discussing the policy implications of our findings and providing suggestions for future research.
儿童发展理论和大量文献强调了家庭和学前教育对儿童早期发展的重要性。我们利用了联合国儿童基金会的多指标类集调查的数据，这是一项具有代表性的国际家庭调查，自 1995 年以来，一直在 118 个中低收入国家收集关于儿童早期发展的具有同期群组可比性的信息。我们重点关注了来自 28 个国家的 216052 名 3 至 4 岁儿童（106037 名女孩）的数据，这些国家在 2010 年至 2018 年期间至少进行了两次调查。我们考虑了母亲教育和家庭财富（母亲/照顾者拥有的东西）对家庭学习活动和送孩子参加早期儿童发展计划（母亲/照顾者做的事情）的影响，以及对儿童早期发展的影响。我们的研究结果表明，母亲教育、家庭财富、家庭学习活动、参与早期儿童教育（ECE）和儿童早期发展指数（ECDI）得分普遍随着时间的推移而增加，并且彼此之间存在显著的相关性。多层次结构方程模型揭示了母亲教育和家庭财富与儿童发展结果之间的关联机制。更富裕和受教育程度更高的母亲更有可能送孩子去参加 ECE 计划，而参加 ECE 计划又与更高的 ECDI 得分相关。照顾者报告的 ECE 参与对 ECDI 得分有很大影响，而母亲教育对其影响较小。相比之下，家庭学习环境的影响要小得多。总之，研究结果表明，教育和财富（父母拥有的东西）影响他们所做的事情（为学习提供机会），而这又反过来影响儿童的早期发展。此外，接触 ECE 服务对儿童的发展尤为重要。最后，我们讨论了我们研究结果的政策意义，并为未来的研究提供了建议。
