Browsing by Author "Onditi, James"

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    Administration and Scoring of Measurement tools for the Three and Four-year Old’s and Women before the RCT Baseline Survey in Tharaka Nithi County, Kenya
    (Kenyatta University, 2020) Oteyo, Samson; Gachara, Esther; Mvungu, Eunice; Henningham, Helen; Onywere, Simon; Niavasha, Dorothy; Waudo, Judith; Onditi, James; Mwoma,Teresa; Ong'ang'a, Hudson Ouko ; Mwangi, Margret
    The Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) child-based curriculum intervention was identified as a critical Women's Economic Empowerment (WEE) strategy because women engage in unpaid childcare, which affects their livelihood in rural Kenya. To examine the impact of enrolling 3- year-olds in PP1 class under the child-based curriculum and learning environment on both children’s developmental milestones and women's economic empowerment, there was a need to adapt existing standardised tools to the local Tharaka Nithi context to assess the participant’s at baseline, midline, and endline. The tools which were used in measuring the baseline status of the participants included Daberon-2, Early Childhood Development Index (ECDI-2030), and Preschool Self-Regulation Assessment (PSRA). The household survey was used to assess women's economic status. All the measurement tools used on children were translated into four major dialects spoken in Tharaka Nithi County (TNC), and some pictures of animals, objects, and foods were replaced with local ones. Appropriate and inappropriate responses were identified and revised, informing the administration and scoring of the instruments. To ensure consistency in administration and scoring, fifteen (15) assessors proficient in the dialects spoken within the county were recruited and trained through classroom roleplay, demonstrations, supervised field practice, and interrater supervision. Assessors were provided with administration and scoring guides to boost their proficiency. Using pilot data of 42 children aged between 3 to 4 years, the internal and test-retest reliability of the measurement tools used with the children met the threshold of 0.7. A pool of researchers constructed the household survey for WEE. Fifteen assessors with proficiency in the dialects within the TNC were recruited and trained on administration and scoring using didactical learning, demonstrations by the trainers, and role plays to ensure that the assessment was carried out in a standardised way. Assessors were taken through class training and field practice. The cultural adaptation and training of assessors were expected to boost the objectivity of the assessment because the findings were important in informing whether curriculum-based childcare intervention has an effect on women's economic empowerment and eventually inform policy decisions regarding the curriculum for the three-year-olds
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    Caregiving and Children’s Preschool Attendance: A Case of Tharaka Nithi Preschool Randomized Controlled Trial Intervention Project
    (kenyatta university, 2025) Mwoma,Teresa; Onywere,Simon; Okeyo, Fred; Naivasha,Dorothy; Waudo,Judith; Onditi, James; Ouko, Hudson Ong'ang'a; Mwangi,Margaret; Iguna,Joseph; Oteyo,Samson; Mvungu,Eunice; Gachara,Esther; Meghir, Costas; Henningham,Helen
    Caregiving is a service provided for children with the primary objective of taking care of them and ensuring that they are safe and have opportunities to learn and develop positive relationships with their caregivers and peers while their parents are away. Caregiving takes the forms of home-based care, centre-based care, school-based care, family child care and family, friend, and neighbour (FFN) care. The paper utilises preliminary findings on school attendance from a randomised controlled trial on the effects of a preschool intervention on child learning and women’s economic empowerment in Tharaka Nithi County in school-based care. The research sought to test whether a preschool-based intervention in a rural setting in Kenya influences child development and women’s labour market participation in a cost-effective manner. The project examines the impact of allowing three-year-old children to attend preschool versus the regular pre-primary education programming, which allows children aged 4 years and above to attend preschool. Implementation of the intervention started in January 2024 in 60 intervention schools where five three-year-old children were admitted to a playgroup (PG) in the pre-primary one (PP1) class. Twelve mentors and sixty caregivers were recruited and trained alongside sixty PP1 teachers from the sampled preschools to implement an adapted PP1 curriculum. The twelve mentors coached teachers weekly on the implementation of the curriculum in the five schools assigned to them. This paper presents preliminary findings on preschool attendance for the PG and PP1 children based on weekly attendance data from term one and term two of the 2024 school calendar year on the day the mentors visited the school. Findings reveal that school attendance was low during school openings, midterm breaks, and the last weeks before the schools closed. Public holidays, as well as extracurricular activities coupled with children being sent home for school levies, also contributed to children not attending school regularly. The findings further show that the attendance rate in term one was slightly higher than in term two
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    Leveraging on Interactive Learning Pedagogy in Promoting School Readiness and Women Economic Engagement: Perspectives from the RCT Intervention Project in Tharaka Nithi County, Kenya
    (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND INNOVATION IN SOCIAL SCIENCE (IJRISS), 2025-03-28) Ong’ang’a, Hudson Ouko; Waudo, Judith; Onywere, Simon; Mwoma, Teresa; Mwangi, Margaret; Onditi, James
    Women economic empowerment and school readiness of children cannot be distinctly separated. It is on this basis that Kenyatta University WEE in collaboration with other partners jointly are conducting an experiment on WEE and children’s holistic development including school readiness. The intervention experiment is conducted in Tharaka Nithi county to understand how early enrollment of 3-year-old children would promote children’s school readiness and enable their mothers to engage in income generating activities. This intervention is happening in 60 schools(treatment schools). A control group of 3-year old children from the catchment are also selected for comparison at the end of the intervention. Besides, the same number (5) of 4- year old pre-primary school one (PP1) were identified for the same reason. 4-year old children attend PP1 as per the government policy. The two categories will learn together using an enhanced curriculum, provided learning resources and use of interactive pedagogy. The children were enlisted during a baseline survey to identify families with eligible children for the experiment. Assessment of the children in terms of developmental milestones was done by the assessment team of psychologists using among others Debron-2 school-readiness kit. This paper presents some of the baseline results regarding the status of 4 and 3-year-old children’s school readiness skills. The findings allude to the differences in school readiness of the 3-year old children and the extent to which the can cope with schooling.