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The primary purpose of this toolkit is to provide a resource for researchers from various disciplines interested in planning and evaluating programs or interventions aimed at improving the health and development of infants and young children. The toolkit aims to: provide an overview of issues affecting early development and its measurement; discuss the types of tests typically used with children under five years; provide guidelines for selecting and adapting tests for use in developing countries, and make recommendations for planning successful assessment strategies. The toolkit focuses on children who have not yet entered school, and are thus under six years old. The primary reason we are focusing on this age group is that during the first five years of life, children's language, early understanding of mathematics and reading, and self-control emerge. The extent to which children master these skills during this critical period has implications for success in school (Lerner, 1998), and thus we wanted to focus on children in this pre-school period. The toolkit is essential at this time for the following reasons: children in developing countries are growing up at a disadvantage; assessments of children must expand to include a wider range of outcomes; and no such toolkit exists as present.

Adaptation --- Cognitive Development --- Communication Skills --- Curriculum --- Early Childhood --- Early Childhood Development --- Early Childhood Education --- Education --- Gender --- Health Monitoring & Evaluation --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Infancy --- Kindergarten --- Literacy --- Mental Health --- Nutrition --- Primary Education --- Quality Control --- Reading --- Schools --- Social Skills --- Speech --- Teachers --- Violence --- Wages --- Workers

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This paper evaluates a government program in Malawi, which aimed to improve quality at community-based childcare centers and complemented these efforts with a group-based parenting support program. Children in the integrated intervention arm (teacher training and parenting) had significantly higher scores in measures of language and socio-emotional development than children in centers receiving teacher training alone at the 18-month follow-up. However, the study finds no effects on child assessments at the 36-month follow-up. Significant improvements at the centers relating to classroom organization and teacher behavior in the teacher-training only arm did not translate into improvements in child outcomes at either follow-up. The findings suggest that, in resource-poor settings with informal preschools, programs that integrate parenting support within preschools may be more effective than programs that simply improve classroom quality.

Early Childhood Development --- Education --- Parenting Education --- Preschool Teacher Training