Browsing by Author "Akpe, Yapo, Hermann"

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    De l'introduction d'un kit d'évaluation linguistique à l'Evaluation des compétences orales chez les apprenants du primaire en langue Ivoirienne pour les langues Attié, Abidji, Baoulé et Bété
    (2019-09-12) Akpe, Yapo, Hermann; Seri, Axel, Blahoua; Tanoh, Fabrice; Yoffo, Rodrigue; Jasińska, Kaja
    Dans les zones rurales de Côte d'Ivoire, les communautés pauvres, dépendant des productions agricoles de rente sont confrontées à l'épineux problème de l'éducation de leurs enfants dans une langue autre que la langue maternelle. Cette étude s'appuie sur la justification théorique de l'opportunité d'une éducation préalable en langue locale. En outre ; elle s'interroge sur les compétences linguistiques avérée des enfants débutants les différents grades primaires en langue maternelle. Nous présentons les résultats d'une nouvelle évaluation linguistique pour les enfants du primaire utilisant une batterie de tests adaptés à l'environnement ivoirien. Ainsi, (600) enfants (âge: 4-14 ans, M = 9.61 SD = 2.09; grades: CP1: n = 114; CE1: n = 232; CM1: n = 220) issus de 11 écoles dont 5 écoles bilingues (langue maternelle et français; n = 228) et 6 écoles primaires monolingues (Français, n = 338) ont participés à cette étude. Les test d'évaluation inspirés de EGRA et WJ III et IV sont composés des activités de conscience phonologique (PA: identification, élision initiale / finale, segmentation), de conscience tonémiques (TA: appariement), vocabulaire (synonyme, génération d'antonymes) et compréhension orale en langues Abidji, Attié et Baoulé. Les résultats obtenus ne relèvent aucune différence significative entre individu de l'échantillon excepté au niveau de l'âge (F(1,8)=37.47, Wilk's Λ=0.637, p<.001), et le grade (F(2,8)=14.739, Wilk's Λ=0.668, p<.001) . Les courbes de centiles permettent de déterminer si un enfant est à égalité avec ses pairs du même âge dans chaque sous-test.
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    Effective bilingual education in Francophone West Africa: Constraints and possibilities
    (2023-03-24) Ball, Mary-Claire; Bhattacharya, Jasodhara; Zhao, Hui; Akpe, Yapo, Hermann; Brogno, Stephanie; Jasińska, Kaja
    Bilingual education that incorporates a local language alongside the official language has become an increasingly common approach in sub-Saharan Africa for improving literacy rates and learning outcomes. Evidence suggests that bilingual instruction is largely associated with positive learning and literacy outcomes globally (Bühmann & Trudell, 2007; Takam & Fassé, 2020). However, the adoption of bilingual education does not guarantee positive learning outcomes (e.g., Ball et al., 2022). This paper reviews bilingual programs in sub-Saharan Africa, with a particular focus on programs in six Francophone West African countries (Niger, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon). We identified factors critical to high-quality and effective bilingual programs. Implementation factors, such as teacher training and classroom resources, and socio-cultural factors, such as perceptions of local languages in education, constrain and contribute to the quality of bilingual education. These insights may help inform policy-makers and other stakeholders seeking to improve bilingual education programs in Francophone West Africa and other contexts.
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    Home learning environment and physical development impact children’s executive function development and literacy in rural Côte d’Ivoire
    (2022-04-28) Jasińska, Kaja; Zinszer, Benjamin; Xu, Zizhuo; Hannon, Joelle; Seri, Axel, Blahoua; Tanoh, Fabrice; Akpe, Yapo, Hermann
    Socio-economic status (SES) is closely linked to children’s reading development. Previous research suggests that executive functions (EF) mediate the effects of SES on reading, however, this research has almost exclusively focused on high-income countries (HICs). Comparatively less is known about the mechanisms that link SES and literacy in low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs). Childhood experiences of poverty in LMICs have been consistently linked to cognitive development through two sets of predictors: nutrition and physical growth, and the availability of educational scaffolding at home. The influence of the home learning environment (i.e. material deprivation, types of caregiver interactions) and nutrition to support children’s physical development (i.e. children’s BMI and stature for their age) on EF and literacy was examined in 630 primary-school children (6-14 years) in rural Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa. Structural equation modeling revealed that SES had an indirect effect on EF via the home learning environment, and in turn, reading. Importantly, the home learning environment, and a child’s physical development and nutrition showed distinct contributions to EF. The results suggest that improved educational scaffolding at home and supplemented nutrition could support EF development and reduce the negative impact of socioeconomic risk factors on reading.
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    Risk and resilience factors for primary school dropout in Côte d’Ivoire
    (2022-10-18) Wortsman,. Brooke; Capani, Angela; Brice, Henry; Ball, Mary-Claire; Zinszer, Benjamin; Tanoh, Fabrice; Akpe, Yapo, Hermann; Ogan, Amy; Wolf, Sharon; Jasińska, Kaja
    We examined child-, family-, and school-level risk and resilience factors associated with dropout using longitudinal data of fifth-grade students in rural Côte d’Ivoire (N=1195, Mage=10.75, SDage=1.42). Children who dropped out were older, involved in more child labour, had poorer literacy, owned fewer books, and attended schools with poorer learning environments. Cumulative risk (CR) indices revealed that child-level CR most strongly predicted dropout (b=-0.86, OR=0.42); further, children with low child-level CR were more likely to drop out when family-level CR was high (b=0.23, OR=1.25). Better school infrastructure and teachers were protective for children who were at high risk of dropout yet remained enrolled. Although child- and family-level factors contribute to risk of dropout, school-level factors may mitigate risks and promote academic resilience amongst students in West Africa.
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    Statistical learning in children's emergent L2 literacy: Cross-cultural insights from rural Côte d'Ivoire
    (2020-08-30) Zinszer, Benjamin; Hannon, Joelle; Hu, Anqi; Kouadio, Aya, Élise; Akpe, Yapo, Hermann; Tanoh, Fabrice; Wang, Madeleine; Qi, Zhenghan; Jasińska, Kaja
    Studies of non-linguistic statistical learning (SL) have often linked performance in SL tasks with differences in language outcomes. Most of these studies have focused on Western and high-income educational contexts, but children worldwide learn in radically different educational systems and communities, and often in a second language. In the west African nation of Côte d’Ivoire, children enter fifth grade (CM-1) with widely varying ages and literacy skills. Across three iteratively-developed experiments, 157 children, age 8-15 years, in rural communities in the greater-Adzópe region of Côte d’Ivoire watched sequences of cartoon images with embedded triplet patterns on touchscreen tablets, while performing a target-detection task. We assessed these tablet-based adaptations of non-linguistic visual SL and asked whether the children’s individual differences in performance on the SL tasks were related to their first and second language and literacy skills. We found group-level evidence that children used the statistical regularities in the image sequence to gradually decrease their response times, but their responses on post-test discrimination did not reflect this learning. When evaluating the correlation between SL and language skills, individual differences related to other task demands predicted oral language skills shared by first and second languages, while SL better predicted second language print skills. These findings suggest that non-linguistic SL paradigms can measure similar skills in Ivorian children as previous samples, but they also echo recent calls for further cross-cultural validation, greater internal reliability, and tests for confounding variables (such as processing speed) in studies of individual differences in statistical learning.