strengthening africa's contributions to child development research

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STRENGTHENING AFRICA’S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CHILD DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH SELECTED PAPERS FROM AN INVITATIONAL CONFERENCE RESULTING IN AN ACTION PLAN AND STRATEGIES TO SUPPORT CAPACITY BUILDING FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH ON CHILDREN’S DEVELOPMENT, HEALTH, AND WELFARE IN AFRICA

STUDY GROUP LEADERS: Kofi Marfo, Ph.D. University of South Florida Alan Pence, Ph.D. University of Victoria

STUDY TEAM MEMBERS Sara Harkness, Ph.D., University of Connecticut, U.S.A Çiğdem Kağitçibaşi, Ph.D., Koç University, TURKEY Robert A. LeVine, Ph.D., Harvard University, U.S.A

CONFERENCE SPONSORS: Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD), with matching funds from the “Investigating Quality” Project, University of Victoria, Canada

Kofi Marfo, Ph.D., University of South Florida, U.S.A Peter A. M. Mwaura, Ph.D., Madrasa Resource Centers, KENYA Robert G. Myers, Ph.D., Independent Researcher, MEXICO A. Bame Nsamenang, Ph.D., Yaounde University, CAMEROON Alan Pence, Ph.D., University of Victoria, CANADA

CONFERENCE LOCATION: Victoria, Canada February 2-6, 2009

Robert Serpell, Ph.D., University of Zambia, ZAMBIA Charles M. Super, Ph.D., University of Connecticut, U.S.A

RESTRICTED PRE-PUBLICATION RELEASE TO SELECTED AGENCIES These papers have been accepted for publication as a Special Section in Child Development Perspectives, a peer-review journal of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD). Questions about the capacity-building initiative as well as suggestions regarding potential funding avenues may be addressed to Kofi Marfo ([email protected]) or Alan Pence ([email protected]). Questions on individual papers should be addressed to the corresponding author through the e-mail address appearing at the bottom of each article’s first page.

CONTENTS

Strengthening Africa’s Contributions to Child Development Research: Overview and Ways Forward Kofi Marfo, Alan Pence, Robert A. LeVine, and Sarah LeVine Strengthening Africa’s Contributions to Early Childhood Care and Development Research: Historical, Conceptual, and Structural Challenges Alan Pence Think Locally, Act Globally: Contributions of African Research to Child Development Charles M. Super, Sara Harkness, Oumar Barry, and Marian Zeitlin

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Social Responsibility as a Dimension of Intelligence, and as an Educational Goal: Insights from Programmatic Research in an African Society Robert Serpell

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Bridging Culture, Research and Practice in Early Childhood Development: The Madrasa Resource Centers Model in East Africa Peter A. M. Mwaura and Kofi Marfo

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Envisioning an African Child Development Field Kofi Marfo

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Strengthening Africa’s Contributions to Child Development Research: Overview and Ways Forward Kofi Marfo1, Alan Pence2, Robert A. LeVine3, Sarah LeVine3 1University of South Florida, 2University of Victoria, 3Harvard University

ABSTRACT: The papers in this special section were initially prepared for an invitational conference funded by the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) and held in Victoria, Canada, in February 2009, with joint sponsorship by the University of Victoria’s Investigating Quality project. In this lead article, we establish the rationale for focusing on Africa as part of the broader objective of advancing an inclusive global science of child development, provide a brief overview of the thrust of the other papers, describe two research capacity-building initiatives culminating from our strategic planning sessions, and conclude with reflections on conceptual and methodological considerations for advancing an African field. KEY WORDS: Child development in Africa; research capacity-building; culture and child development research; disciplinary and methodological integration; theoretical integration

The papers in this special section resulted from an invitational conference on Strengthening Africa’s Contributions to Child Development Research held in Victoria, Canada, in February 2009. The conference was conceived in response to SRCD‘s call in late 2007 for proposals from its membership to pursue small-group scholarly activities that could advance the Society‘s values and strategic priorities regarding multidisciplinarity, cultural and contextual diversity, and international perspectives in child development research. The group leaders welcomed the call as an opportunity to raise awareness about the underrepresentation of non-Western knowledge contributions to child devel*

The conference for which the papers in this special section were prepared was co-sponsored by the Society for Research in Child Development and the Investigating Quality (IQ) Project at the University of Victoria, Canada. The team leaders gratefully acknowledge members Dr. Cigdem Kağitçibaşi, Dr. Robert G. Myers, and Dr. A. Bame Nsamenang, whose equally important contributions are only briefly abstracted in this paper, and Dr. Veronica PaciniKetchabaw, IQ Project Co-Investigator, for her participation and support throughout the conference. The team is also thankful to Marie-Germaine Chartrand, Lynette Jackson, and Debbie Blakely of the University of Victoria for organizational and logistical support. The first author is thankful to the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, where much of his contribution to the final version of this paper was written.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Kofi Marfo, Department of Psychological & Social Foundations, University of South Florida—EDU105, 4202 E. Fowler Avenue, Tampa, Florida, U.S.A 33620. E-mail: [email protected].

SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Kofi Marfo, Alan Pence, Robert LeVine, and Sarah LeVine – Child Development Research in Africa

opment inquiry and to create a forum for an international, interdisciplinary group of scholars to examine the African context specifically. The group‘s work was cast in the larger context of advancing a science of child development that opens up to populations and possibilities outside the EuroAmerican world (Pence & Marfo, 2008).

THE CASE FOR FOCUSING ON AFRICA As is evident from the analysis by Super, Harkness, Barry, and Zeitlin (this issue), Africa already occupies a position of importance in the history of child development research by virtue of its attractiveness as a location for early researchers searching for universal patterns in human development or seeking to test the generalizability of Western theories. Influential footprints from investigations carried out on the continent by expatriate scholars, especially in the second and third quarters of the twentieth century, are evident today not only in domain-specific theorizing — in such areas as attachment (e.g., Ainsworth, 1967, 1977), socialization (e.g., LeVine, 1974, 1988, LeVine et al., 1994; LeVine & LeVine, 1988; Weisner, 1987, 1989), motor development (e.g., Leiderman et al., 1973; Super, 1976), and cognition (e.g., Cole, Gay, Glick, & Sharp, 1971) — but also in broader conceptual frameworks for understanding contextual influences on human development generally (e.g., Super & Harkness, 1986; Weisner, 1984). These contributions, along with newer generations of itinerant research, have been published extensively in North American and international journals and in specialized monographs and collective volumes from major publishing houses. They are easily accessible to scholars from all over the world, barring resource limitations. A different picture emerges when the focus shifts to contributions by resident African scholars approaching the study of child development through lenses and questions grounded in the continent‘s practical realities and challenges. In many regards, the power dynamics between rich and poor societies — as reflected in differential access to research funding opportunities, publication avenues, major conferences, and other professional/academic gate-keeping — virtually ensure the marginalization of intellectual agendas contemplated outside the Western academy (Pence & Marfo, 2008). It is always possible to point to evidence suggesting that things are improving but indisputably scholarly perspectives on issues with conceptual and practical relevance to Africa do not find ready acceptance in leading Western journals. This is in part because the point of reference for determination of relevance in these journals is often the Euro-American worldview (Arnett, 2008). In Africa, research funding is virtually non-existent and outlets for dissemination of the little research that is produced — funded or otherwise — are sparse. With limited, often delayed, access to current literature from other parts of the world, many scholars are rendered non-competitive in their efforts to publish their work in reputable international journals. The net result of these conditions is that much of the research conducted by African scholars on the continent is confined to a grey literature, the expanse and content of which should be a subject for research. The grey literature is defined to include unpublished theses (master‘s and doctoral), working papers, technical research reports, conference proceedings, as well as scholarship appearing in periodicals/monographs with limited circulation beyond the issuing institution. In a paper assessing cognitive development research on the continent, Serpell (1984) noted that as a result of challenges like those highlighted here, it was easier to conduct a systematic survey of trends from outside Africa than from inside.

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This picture has not changed much even with advances in information and communication technologies, although there is a bright spot worth highlighting here. Under the auspices of the Association of African Universities (AAU), the Database on African Theses and Dissertations (DATAD; http://www.aau.org/datad/database/), was launched in April 2003 with funding from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. Along with other initiatives around the continent (e.g., Metcalfe, Esseh, & Willinsky, 2009), DATAD should begin to fill some of the gap, but full-text access to documents through the emerging platforms is still years away. DATAD is just one example of how Africa‘s Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are responding to the critical need for capacity building and infrastructural development activities to advance research. This need was underscored in AAU initiatives to position HEIs as positive change agents across the continent and enable African scholars to strengthen their role in research and policy analysis. The AAU‘s 1999 Strategic Plan objectives, embedded later in the core program of activities for 2005-2009, emphasized (a) strengthening capacity for knowledge generation and dissemination, and (b) enhancing the presence and influence of African universities on continental/international bodies (www.aau.org/coreprog/ 0509/CP200509.pdf). Our study group hoped to accomplish at least two complementary outcomes regarding research capacity building in Africa. First, along with other initiatives on the continent — e.g., the regional research workshops organized by the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development (ISSBD) and the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP) — we hoped that the capacity building initiatives emerging from our work could serve as one model of how the AAU‘s own strategic goals might be achieved. Second, we hoped that our work would give SRCD enhanced representation in efforts by international research organizations to support inquiry and research education in Africa. It may be tempting to view Africa‘s disadvantage in knowledge production and dissemination as an African problem, but while many of the issues raised here have been framed around Africa because of our project‘s specialized focus, they are applicable to other parts of the non-Western world. Thus, left unaddressed, the constraints to knowledge production and dissemination identified here will only serve to perpetuate the contextually slanted nature of existing knowledge, undercutting the credibility of any claims that might be made about a global knowledge base.

PROJECT GOALS AND OUTCOMES The conference was organized to: (1) examine the status and needs of the child development field in Africa, (2) share perspectives on the institutionalization of child development research on the continent, (3) present insights from research programs and practice initiatives on the continent, and (4) identify networking and capacity-building needs for future action. The study group encompassed a diverse blend of expertise and backgrounds, and included scholars from anthropology, early childhood care/development, economics, education, and psychology. The first three goals were addressed through working papers — prepared and distributed ahead of the conference — providing the foundation for the scholarly deliberations, while the final goal served to ensure that a substantial part of the group‘s time was devoted to discussion and strategic planning toward research capacitybuilding on the continent. In the remaining sections, we provide a brief orienting framework for the

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other papers, introduce the central research capacity building proposal emerging from the conference, and present some reflections on ways to advance contextually grounded inquiry in Africa. The contributions in this special section are only a subset of the working papers discussed at the Victoria conference, but they reflect the diversity of perspectives resulting from the selection of scholars. At an initial classificatory level, there are two broad kinds of contributions: those addressing the general challenge of institutionalizing and supporting child development research on the continent and those synthesizing empirical and theoretical insights from past and current research. Beyond that, the following specific themes describe the collection: cultural-historical critique of the Westernization of childhood and child development research in Africa (Pence); synthesis of contributions that Africa has made to a global field through the work of expatriate scholars (Super, Harkness, Barry, & Zeitlin); integration of insights and lessons from a sustained program of research on the continent by a resident African scholar (Serpell); insights from an applied research program that could serve as a model for building systematic inquiry into community-based services (Mwaura & Marfo), and a visioning about disciplinary development on the continent (Marfo). The scholarly contributions constituted one aspect of the study group‘s work. The other aspect was the strategic planning over how best to support research capacity building. In the remainder of this section we provide a quick overview of that part of our work.

Strategies to Support Research Capacity Building The health and developmental challenges facing the world‘s poorest children continue to receive the attention of researchers and development assistance professionals (Walker et al., 2007). Africa has an extremely high and disproportionate representation of children at risk for serious developmental and health problems. Even as international agencies, donor nations, and private foundations make fiscal investments in programs to address African children‘s problems, very little of the research that can provide guidance on how to address these problems has been conducted on the continent (see recent articles by the International Child Development Steering Group –Engle et al., 2007; Grantham-McGregor et al., 2007). Inquiry needed to generate the locally relevant knowledge base to guide policies and interventions cannot be sustained unless there is sufficient local expertise capable of conducting conceptually and methodologically sound research. The study group‘s deliberations on research capacitybuilding culminated in a two-pronged strategy combining the institutionalization of model field research programs with support for the preparation and mentoring of new generations of researchers.

A Regional Multi-Site Field Research Model: Under the first strategy, we developed the broader outlines of what could ultimately become a proposal to seek grant support from a consortium of funding agencies to establish a sustainable multisite longitudinal research program. The research would be designed and directed by scholars on the continent and carried out within a network of three regional sites, one each for West, East, and Southern Africa.

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The design of the program would be informed by insights gained from large-scale research programs that have demonstrated impressive success and sustainability in regions of the world with similar economic and geopolitical circumstances. It would also be informed by small-scale longitudinal projects emphasizing child health and development outcomes. Examples of the former include the still-running biomedical surveillance program begun in Matlab, Bangladesh, in the 1960s (Aziz & Mosley, 1997) and the more recent Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Study involving a cohort of Filipino women and their children born between May 1983 and April 1984 (Cebu Study Team, 1991). Examples of the latter include the Institute of Nutrition in Central America and Panama (INCAP) intervention studies, 1969-1977 (Townsend, Klein, Irwin, Owens et al., 1982; Scrimshaw & Guzman, 1997) and, closer to home, South Africa‘s Birth to Ten/Twenty study (Barbarin & Richter, 2001; Richter, Norris, Pettifor, Yach, & Cameron, 2007). The South African project is uniquely relevant because its designers struggled through, and explicitly addressed, challenges in reconciling recognition of culture-specific conceptions of developmental phenomena and the necessary compromise in using Western instruments (Barbarin & Richter, 2001). Among other design considerations, the proposed multi-site project will follow large cohorts of children, employing child-, context-, and systems-level variables to generate a variety of data forms. Particular attention will be paid to child and maternal health indicators, including immunizations and other forms of health monitoring and promotion; developmental functioning across culturerelevant domains; psychological well-being, including supports and resources for coping with adversity; changing patterns in children‘s roles and responsibilities; socialization processes within the family and community; schooling processes and outcomes; and individual as well as community responses to social change at the macro level. The project will be designed as an open system with significant flexibility to support the spawning of satellite studies on any number of specific questions employing a wide range of methodologies — e.g., historical and ethnographic investigations of children‘s adaptation to different conditions; experimental and quasi-experimental intervention studies exploring all types of interaction effects; and studies of gene-environment interaction in caregiving processes and outcomes within families raising biological children along with foster or adopted children displaced from their own families as a result of social strife or the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

A Mentoring Model of Research Education Under the second strategy, we envisioned a two-stage initiative for supporting research capacitybuilding. Complementing existing regional initiatives on the continent, such as those sponsored by the IACCP and the ISSBD, the first was to support in the near term a mentorship program for scholars in the earliest stages of their academic careers. One approach under consideration employs a triadic model, with each mentorship unit consisting of: (1) an early career-stage scholar in an African university, (2) a senior African scholar in the same or another university serving as the primary mentor and (3) an Africa-knowledgeable senior scholar from an overseas institution who would provide consultation and assist with resource targeting and collaborative research. When in place, the regional, multi-site field research model described in the previous section will serve as one context for the second stage of the mentorship initiative, namely research education through research internships and post-doctoral fellowship appointments on on-going projects .

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In the months following the Victoria conference, we have taken steps toward establishing the first mentoring initiative. Taking advantage of conferences and research workshops occurring on the continent we have begun to establish a networking process that is helping to identify scholars who might benefit from the mentoring program. In July 2010, the first workshop under the mentoring initiative will be convened in Lusaka by co-team Leader Alan Pence, with funding from UNICEF‘s East and Southern Africa Regional Office. Limited at this stage to the field of early childhood development, the workshop is framed around the two Africa-based components of the triadic model. AFRICAN RESEARCH AND THE ADVANCEMENT OF A GLOBAL SCIENCE: SOME PROPOSALS

Running through the conference goals and the resulting scholarly contributions are two intertwined endpoints: (1) African research that is driven by the quest for solutions to problems and issues facing African children, and (2) African research that advances a global science of child development. We devote this final section to a reflective discussion of issues that might guide such research. We begin with the proposition that the institutionalization of child development inquiry in Africa provides opportunities for the advancement of a truly global field. However, neither the indiscriminate rejection of everything Euro-American nor the wholesale importation of Western traditions would position Africa to contribute to such advancement. If the capacity-building strategies outlined above are to promote inquiry that is as relevant to Africa as it is to a global field, the issues framed here deserve consideration.

Inquiry as a Cultural Project The values that define important problems, and the paradigmatic and methodological frameworks that guide the resulting inquiry, are grounded in cultural conceptions and traditions (Marfo, this issue), much the same way as conceptions of childhood and the childrearing practices they engender are rooted in the lived experiences and worldviews of cultural communities (Dawes & Donald, 2000; Zimba, 2002). In this sense, problems and issues relating to the lives of children in family, community, and national contexts will be at the core of an African child development research enterprise. Each of the papers in this special section has highlighted one or more of these issues. We highlight here additional problem areas in need of attention. The generation of normative milestones for various domains of development is one such important problem area. Developmental norms and population-based indicators of health and well-being, along with careful documentations of life circumstances and ecological assets within local communities, are crucially important not only for the advancement of basic research but also for the design and evaluation of policies and interventions. On this as on other issues, the imperative to complement and extend, rather than supplant, what we know from Western developmental science cannot be overemphasized. Research dedicated to the design and local validation of developmental assessment tools is very important. Recent efforts in this direction can be found in East Africa where collaborations involving African, European, and American research institutions are producing locally validated tools for use in Kenyan village settings (e.g., Abubakar, Hodling, Van Baar, Newton, & Van de Vijver, 2008; Abubakar, Holding, Van de Vijver, & Baar, 2010; Abubakar et al., 2007).

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SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Kofi Marfo, Alan Pence, Robert LeVine, and Sarah LeVine – Child Development Research in Africa

Additional areas for potentially groundbreaking work include conceptualization, measurement, and generation of local norms for attributes and behaviors valued by families and communities as important developmental goals in childrearing. These developmental assets and milestones would not register on the radar of many Euro-American developmental assessment tools, and yet they matter very much in local contexts. Examples include some of the attributes emerging from Beatrice Whiting‘s work in Kenya as character traits that Kikuyu mothers preferred to see in their children: confidence, inquisitiveness, cleverness, bravery, good-heartedness, respectfulness, obedience, and generosity (Whiting, 1996; Weisner, 2000). Others include hospitality, empathy, sharing, social responsibility, a sense of belonging, and patience. Focused interviews, observations, and thorough analysis of folk-lore, proverbs, riddles, group games, and other activities would reveal that these are socially valued attributes within African communities. What are ways to measure these attributes? What life outcomes (school-related or otherwise) are predictable from measures derived from any combination of these traits? These questions could spur conceptual and empirical contributions with local and global implications. There are socio-political imperatives as well for the kinds of research anticipated in the preceding paragraph. In an era when non-Western cultural values and traditions are under attack as barriers to progress (Etounga-Manguelle, 2004; Huntington, 2000; Harrison, 2004) — when culture change is being promoted in conservative ideological circles as a potentially more efficacious strategy for international development aid than traditional economics-driven strategies (see Harrison & Huntington, 2000), and when the winds of globalization appear to carry an implicit evolutionist view of human advancement as progression toward Euro-American traditions and values (see Pence, this issue) — there is no better time than now for African researchers to launch systematic empirical explorations of the complex relationships between socialization values and practices on the one hand and child and national developmental outcomes on the other. Regardless of the value judgments that globalization may trigger, it presents another imperative for increased applied developmental research in non-Western societies. Our children‘s lives are now lived at the intersection of local realities and inevitable forces of global change. Many children are thrust into multiple worlds, in none of which they feel at home. How do formal and informal socialization agents prepare children with the competencies necessary to function optimally across contexts? Child development research has an important role to play by forging a better understanding of the competencies, attitudes, and emotional resources children need and use to navigate within and across different environments. Disciplinary and Methodological Integration It is impossible to develop comprehensive understandings about children‘s development without building into the anticipated models of inquiry relevant perspectives and methods from the broad range of disciplines concerned with children‘s development – anthropology, the cognitive and neurosciences, developmental and behavioral pediatrics, education, nutritional science, psychology, public/population health, sociology, etc. In his contribution to the Victoria conference, Myers (2009) addressed the challenges of disciplinary insularity and made a compelling case for multidisciplinarity in child development inquiry: ―… child development, like education, is a ‗field of study‘ to which many disciplines can and should be applied. If there is a ‗science‘ of child development, it sits at the meeting point of these disciplines‖ (p. 13).

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The call for multiple methods is neither a case for sheer equitable representation of quantitative and qualitative methods nor a simplistic advocacy for combining methodological genres. It is premised on two principles: (1) across disciplines, different epistemological and theoretical perspectives trigger different research questions, which in turn call for correspondingly relevant methods, and (2) the knowledge resulting from multiple inquiry forms contribute legitimately to broader understandings about child development. Thus, the anticipated research and mentorship programs should embrace various forms of systematic, rigorous investigation employing different designs (quantitative experimental/non-experimental; qualitative/interpretive) and different forms of data gathering strategies: naturalistic observations, surveys, quantitative measurement, discourse analysis, selfreports, diaries, etc. While the state of the ―science‖ of child development may not yet reflect a deep commitment to this level of methodological pluralism, there are signs, especially within cultural and cross-cultural psychology that this is a valued ideal (Cohen, 2007; Dasen & Mishra, 2000; Greenfield, 1997; Yoshikawa, Weisner, Kalil, & Way, 2008). If an African child development field is to transcend the traditional boundaries of psychological inquiry to include anthropological, economic, historical, political, and sociological perspectives, a deepening of this value is critical, and at both the disciplinary and methodological levels, an ethic of complementarity (Eckensberger, 2002) is axiomatic. Theoretical Integration Especially because much of our argument for systematic institutionalization of child development research in non-Western societies is premised on mainstream Western psychology‘s insufficient attention to cultural relativity, it is important to underscore here that African research cannot afford to commit an error in the opposite direction and frame development as if cultural influences are all that matter. Neither, as Nsamenang (2009) notes in his conference contribution, should advocacy for cultural sensitivity pass for ―cultural essentialism, scientific isolationism, [or] dismissal of the extant body of knowledge … gained through more than a century of child development research‖ (p. 5). An African field with the prospect of advancing a global science is better served by an orientation that fosters theoretical integration in all its varied manifestations. One example of such integration is framing development as the product of constitutional (genetic or non-genetic), social, economic, and cultural factors interacting in linear and non-linear ways throughout the lifespan, such that none of these determinants alone can explain development satisfactorily (Horowitz, 2000). A second example of theoretical integration particularly germane to African research is captured by Super et al. (this issue). Through the constructs of ecocultural niche, developmental microniche, and developmental niche, Weisner (1984), Worthman (1994), and Super and Harkness (1986, 2002) have, respectively, synthesized bodies of research on various conceptions of the cultural environment (as a social setting for daily life; as customary practices, and as caregivers shared beliefs/ethnotheories) into more comprehensive explanatory frameworks. As Super and Harkness (1997) note, these meta-theoretical frameworks contribute transcendent insights on how the various cultural environments are interconnected with each other and with the wider developmental ecology, including endogenous factors. A third example of integration is seen in Kağitçibaşi‘s (2009) response to false assumptions in debates on culture and human development: false uniqueness (depicting a phenomenon as unique to a given culture when it may exist in other cultures) and false universality (assuming commonality

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across cultures when there is none). To illustrate, as Euro-American psychology has depicted autonomy and relatedness as contrasting attributes — often privileging the former over the latter — crosscultural psychology has associated autonomy with individualistic societies and relatedness with collectivist ones. In her contribution to the Victoria conference, Kağitçibaşi addressed the misnomer in psychology‘s portrayal of these two attributes as incompatible and/or exclusively culture-specific. She illustrates how research in a non-Western society (Turkey) can contribute the level of integration evident in her theory of the autonomous related self (Kağitçibaşi, 2007), presented as a model of healthy self across cultures. The African context is ripe for inquiry with the potential to extend such integrative theorizing.

CONCLUSION The Society for Research in Child Development articulated its strategic goals on multidisciplinarity, cultural/contextual diversity, and international perspectives in research at a time of gradual awakening to the reality that what we know about children‘s development is based on inquiry on a very small percentage of the world‘s children (Arnett, 2008; Pence, this issue; Stevens & Gielen, 2007). Our work on Africa was undertaken in the hope of helping to advance a global science of child development. One challenge facing that ideal science today is how to support research capacity around the developing world to advance rigorous research that grows out of the local, reflects the interests and hopes inherent in that world, and contributes unique insights to a global discipline. It is an immense undertaking, but one that must be pursued. We hope our focus on Africa adds a little bit of momentum to existing initiatives aimed at strengthening the continent‘s contributions to scientific knowledge.

REFERENCES Abubakar, A., Holding, P., Van de Vijver, Bomu, & Van Baar (2010). Developmental monitoring using caregive reports in a resource-limited setting: The case of Kilifi, Kenya. Acta Pediatrica, 99, 291-297. Abubakar, A., Holding, P., Van Baar, A., Newton, C. R. J. C., & Van de Vijver, F. J. R. (2008). Monitoring psychomotor development in a resource-limited setting: An evaluation of the Kilifi Developmental Inventory. Annals of Tropical Pediatrics, 28, 217-226. Abubakar, A., Van de Vijver, F. J. R., Mithwani, S., Obiero, E. et al. (2007). Assessing developmental outcomes in children from Kilifi, Kenya, following prophylaxis for seizures in cerebral malaria. Journal of Health Psychology, 12, 417-430. Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1967). Infancy in Uganda. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1977). Infant development and mother-infant interaction among Ganda and American families. In P. H. Leiderman, S. R. Tulkin, & A. Rosenfeld (Eds.), Culture and infancy (pp. 119-149). New York: Academic Press. Arnett, J. J. (2008). The neglected 25%: Why American psychology needs to become less American. American Psychologist, 63, 602-614.

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Aziz, K. M. A., & Mosley, W. H. (1997). The history, methodology, and main findings of the Matlab project in Bangladesh. In M. S. Das, P. Aaby, M. Garenne, & G. Pison (Eds.), Prospective community studies in developing countries (pp. 28-53). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Barbarin, O. A., & Richter, L. M. (2001). Mandela’s children: Growing up in post-Apartheid South Africa. New York: Routledge. Cebu Study Team (1991). Underlying and proximate determinants of child health: The Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Study. American Journal of Epidemiology, 133, 185-201. Cohen, D. (2007). Methods in cultural psychology. In S. Kitayama & D. Cohen (Eds.), Handbook of cultural psychology (pp. 196-236). New York: Guilford Press. Cole, M., Gay, J., Glick, J. S., & Sharp, D. W. (1971). The Cultural Context of Learning and Thinking: An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology. New York: Basic Books. Dasen, P. R. (1993). Theoretical/conceptual issues in developmental research in Africa. Journal of Psychology in Africa, 1(5), 151-158. Dasen, P. R., & Mishra, R. C. (2000). Cross-cultural views on human development in the third millennium. International Journal of behavioral Development, 24, 428-434. Dawes, A., & Donald, D. (2000). Improving children‘s chances: Developmental theory and effective interventions in community contexts. In D. Donald, A. Dawes, & J. Louw (Eds.), Addressing childhood adversity (pp. 1-25). Cape Town: David Philip. Eckensbeger, L. H. (2002). Paradigms revisited: From incommensurability to respected complementarity. In H. Keller, Y. H. Poortinga, & A. Scholmerich (Eds.), Between culture and biology: Perspectives on ontogenetic development (pp. 341-383). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Engle, P. L., Black, M.M., Behrman, J. R., de Mello, M. C. et al. (2007). Strategies to avoid the loss of developmental potential in more than 200 million children in the developing world. Lancet, 369, 229-242. Etounga-Manguelle, D. (2004). Does Africa need a cultural adjustment program? In L. E. Harrison & S. P. Huntington (Eds.), Culture matters: How values shape human progress (pp. 65-77). New York: Basic Books. Garcia, M., Pence, A., & Evans, J. (Eds.) (2008). Africa’s future, Africa’s challenge: Early childhood care and development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Grantham-McGregor, S., Cheung, Y. B., Cueto, S., Glewwe, P., et al. (2007). Developmental potential in the first 5 years for children in developing countries. Lancet, 369, 60-70.Harkness, S., & Super, C. (1992). Greenfield, P. M. (1997). Culture as process: Empirical methods for cultural psychology. In J. W. Berry, Y. H. Poortinga, & J. Pandey (Eds.), Handbook of cross-cultural psychology, Volume 1: Theory and method (2nd Edition) (pp. 301-346). Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Harkness, S., & Super, C. M. (1992). Shared child care in East Africa: Sociocultural originas and developmental consequences. In M. E. Lamb, K. J. Sternberg, C. P. Hwang, & A. G. Broberg (Eds.), Child care in context: Cross-cultural perspectives (pp. 441-459). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Harkness, S., & Super, C. M. (1992). Parental ethnotheories in action. In I. Siegel, A. V. McGillicuddyDeLisi, & J. Goodnow (Eds.), Parental belief systems: The psychological consequensce for children (2nd e.) (pp. 373-392). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Harrison, L. E. (2004). Introduction: Why culture matters. In L. E. Harrison & S. P. Huntington (Eds.), Culture matters: How values shape human progress (pp. xviii-xxxiv). New York: Basic Books.

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Huntington, S. P. (2004). Foreword: Culture count. In L. E. Harrison & S. P. Huntington (Eds.), Culture matters: How values shape human progress (pp. xiii-xvi). New York: Basic Books. Horowitz, F. D. (2000). Child development and the PITS: Simple questions, complex answers, and developmental theory. Child Development, 71, 1-10. Kağitçibaşi, C. (2007). Family, self, and human development across cultures: Theory and applications (2nd Ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Kağitçibaşi, C. (2009). Strengthening the Contributions of Child Development Research to Africa and the Majority World. Paper presented at the SRCD-sponsored invitational conference, Strengthening Africa’s Contributions to Child Development Research, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, February 2-6. Leiderman, P. H., Babu, B., Kagia, J., Kraemer, H. C., & Liedeman, G. F. (1973). African infant precocity and some social influences during the first year. Nature, 242, 247-249. LeVine, R. A. (1974). Parental goals: A cross-cultural view. Teachers College Record, 76, 226-239. LeVine, R. A. (1988). Human parental care: Universal goals, cultural strategies, individual behavior. In R. A. LeVine, P. M. Miller, & M. M. West (Eds.), New Direction for Child Development, Vol. 40: Parental behavior in diverse societies (pp. 3-12). San Francisco: Josey-Bass. LeVine, R. A., Dixon, S., LeVine, S., Richman, A. et al. (1994). Child care and culture: Lessons from Africa. New York: Cambridge University Press. LeVine, R. A., & LeVine, S. (1988). Parental strategies among the Gusii of Kenya. In R. LeVine, P. Miller, & M. West (Eds.), New Directions for Child Development, Vol. 40: Parental behavior in diverse societies (pp. 27-36). San Francisco: Josey-Bass. Metcalfe, A. S., Esseh, S., & Willinsky, J. (2009). International development and research capacities: Increasing access to African scholarly publishing. Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 39(3), 89109. Myers, R. (2009, February). Connecting worlds in early childhood care and development. Paper presented at the SRCD-sponsored invitational conference, Strengthening Africa’s Contributions to Child Development Research, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Nsamenang, A. B. (2009). Culture in child development science: An Africentric review. Paper presented at the SRCD-sponsored invitational conference, Strengthening Africa’s Contributions to Child Development Research, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Pence, A., & Marfo, K. (2008). Early childhood development in Africa: Interrogating constraints of prevailing knowledge bases. International Journal of Psychology, 43(2), 78-87. Richter, L., Norris, S., Pettifor, J., Yach, D., & Cameron, N. (2007). Cohort profile: Mandela‘s children: The 1990 birth to twenty study in South Africa. International Journal of Epidemiology, 36, 504-511. Scrimshaw, N. S., & Guzman, M. A. (1997). A comparison of supplementary feeding and medical care of preschool children in Guatamala, 1959-1964. In M. S. Das, P. Aaby, M. Garenne, & G. Pison (Eds.), Prospective community studies in developing countries (pp. 133-156). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Serpell, R. (1984). Research on cognitive development in Sub-Saharan Africa. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 7, 111-127. Stevens, M. J., & Gielen, U. P. (2007). Toward a global psychology: Theory, research, intervention, and pedagogy. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

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Super, C. M. (1976). Environmental effects on motor development: The case of African infant precocity. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 18, 561-567. Super, C. M. (1991). Developmental transitions in cognitive functioning in rural Kenya and metropolitan America. In K. Gibson, M. Konner & J. Lancaster (Eds.), The brain and behavioral development: Biosocial dimensions (pp. 225-257). Hawthorne, NY: Aldine. Super, C. M., & Harkness, S. (1986). The developmental niche: A conceptualization at the interface of child and culture. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 9, 545-569. Super, C. M., & Harkness, S. (1997). The cultural structuring of child development. In J. W. Berry, P. R. Dasen, & T. S. (Saraswathi (Eds.), Handbook of cross-cultural psychology, Volume 2: Basic processes and human development (2nd. Ed.) (pp. 1-39). Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Super, C. M., & Harkness, S. (2002). Culture structures the environment for development. Human Development, 45, 270-274. Townsend, J. W., Klein, R. E., Irwin, M. H., Owens, W., Yarborough, C., & Engle, P. L. (1982). Nutrition and preschool mental development. In D. A. Wagner & H. W. Stevenson (Eds.), Cultural perspectives on child development (pp. 124-145). San Francisco: Freeman. Walker, S. P., Wachs, T. D., Gardner, J. M. & Lozoff, B., et al. (2007). Child development: risk factors for adverse outcomes in developing countries. Lancet, 369 (Issue 9556), 145-157. Weisner, T. S. (1984). A cross-cultural perspective: Ecocultural niches of middle childhood. In A. Collins (Ed.), The elementary school years: Understanding development during middle childhood (pp. 335369). Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Weisner, T. S. (1987). Socialization for parenthood in sibling caretaking societies. In J. Lancaster, A. Rossi, & J. Altmann (Eds.), Parenting across the lifespan (pp. 237-270). New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Weisner, T. S. (1989b). Social support for children among the Abaluyia of Kenya. In D. Belle (Eds.), Children’s social networks and social supports (pp. 70-90). New York: Wiley. Weisner, T. S. (2000). Culture, childhood, and progress in Sub-Saharan Africa. In L. E. Harrison & S. P. Huntington (Eds.), Culture matters: How values shape human progress (pp. 141-157). New York: Basic Books. Whiting, B. B. (1996).The effect of social change on concepts of the good child and good mothering: A study of families in Kenya. Ethos, 24, 3-35. Worthman, C. M. (1994). Developmental microniche: A concept for modeling relationships of biology, behavior, and culture in development. American Journal of Physical Anthropology Supplement, 18, 210. Yoshikawa, H., Weisner, T. S., Kalil, A., & Way, N. (2008). Mixing qualitative and quantitative research in developmental science. Developmental Psychology, 44, 344-354. Zimba, R. F. (2002). Indigenous conceptions of childhood development and social realities in southern Africa. In H. Keller, Y. H. Poortinga, & A. Scholmerich (Eds.), Between culture and biology: Perspectives on ontogenetic development (pp. 89-115). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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Strengthening Africa’s Contributions to Early Childhood Care and Development Research: Historical, Conceptual, and Structural Challenges  Alan Pence University of Victoria

ABSTRACT: This paper challenges the specter of the universal child and examines historical, conceptual, and structural factors that have resulted in a virtual absence of African-led contributions to early childhood care and development research. It considers the dark side of good work, questions who defines ‗desirable‘ and how it is measured, and considers ways forward in promoting African capacity, leadership, identification of key issues, and scholarly engagement with ideas regarding their own children‘s future and how best to ensure healthy, hopeful, and capable future generations. KEY WORDS: Child development in Africa; historical, conceptual, and structural challenges; research capacity building; leadership development; universalism and globalization

This article, designed to provoke discussion at the 2009 Society for Research in Child Development‘s Africa symposium, considers various academic, sociophilosophical, and political forces that have converged to shape a narrow range of understandings regarding children‘s care and development that are promoted as normative, universally appropriate, and desirable in the eyes of powerful international development agents. These Euro-Western constructions often echo the dynamics of 19thcentury social Darwinism, privileging Western perspectives and restricting the development of local possibilities. These approaches, which exist at both child and societal levels, are linear and hierarchical in nature, providing intrinsic rationales for elitism and inequalities. Western child development science, characterized by its modernist and positivist drive for universals throughout much of the 20th century, has aided political and economic agendas that seek to universalize neo-liberal political and economic orientations. Those children and states that fall outside such ‗normative and desirable‘ constructions become targets for change under the banner of progress. This paper will challenge the specter of the universal child as part of a globalization process, considering the dark side of good work and questioning who defines ‗desirable‘ and how it is measured. It will also consider ways forward that have arisen through other academic orientations over 

This article is based on a paper prepared for the SRCD-sponsored invitational conference “Strengthening Africa‟s Contributions to Child Development Research” held in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, February 2-6, 2009. An earlier version was presented in a symposium on Africa at SRCD‘s 2009 Biennial Conference in Denver, Colorado Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Alan Pence, School of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria, P. O. Box 1700, Victoria, B.C., Canada V8W 2Y2. E-mail: [email protected].

SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Alan Pence – Historical, Conceptual, and Structural Challenges

the past two decades. Of focal interest is Africa, a landmass larger than the United States, China, India, Western Europe, and India combined (The Times Atlas, 2006), with about 14% of the world population and almost 20% of the world‘s children and youth under the age of 15 (United Nations Development Programme, 2007). Despite Africa‘s size and world population share, very few indigenous African voices are heard in the child development literature. Both scientific and popular literature place Africa well outside ‗normative and desirable.‘ As such, Africa is a key target for change. The form that change may take, and the role indigenous institutions, governments, and the peoples themselves will play in determining the nature of and the need for such change concerns us here. STARTING POINTS: MEETINGS IN BERLIN, 1884-1885—AFRICA TRANSFORMED There are various possible starting points for a paper with this purpose—one could be November 15, 1884 in Berlin. Fourteen countries (of which all but the U.S. were European) met at the behest of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to ―end confusion over the control of Africa‖ (Rosenberg, 2010). (It is probably not necessary to add that no African representatives were present at these meetings.) By February 26, 1885, lines had been drawn and the Western powers signed an initial set of Agreements. Neither the map of Africa, nor the lives of Africans, would be the same again. Late 19th-century Europe: Origins of Child Development Theory This paper might also start with other activities in Europe during the latter decades of the 19 th century that held less immediate implications for Africa and Africans at the time, but are relevant for this essay and for those lives today. Through the social Darwinist movement, a ‗scientific‘ rationale for why peoples around the world differ was advanced—the answer being evolution, operating through a mechanism of natural selection, pressing from less to more developed forms from the ‗savage‘ to ‗civilized man‘ (for women too were less ‗advanced‘). The child development movement originated at the same time, and not coincidentally children were placed on a similar developmental continuum from less to more developed over time. These events put in motion diverse activities that impact Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in the present. The transformed map of SSA that emerged from the Berlin Conference is well known, along with its problematic colonial and postcolonial legacy. However, the transformed map of childhood that emerged at a similar point in time is less apparent, obscured by the powers of modernity, progress, and science to suppress, and even erase, other interpretations and perspectives. It is this second map, a Euro-Western construction of the child, with a vast literature that has followed, that is of primary interest here. While certain areas of the world have been able to put forward other constructions, and have anchored key elements of early childhood policies and programs to those other ways of understanding (Aotearoa/New Zealand provides a particularly interesting example: Reedy, 1991; New Zealand Ministry of Education (MOE), 1996; Te Kohanga Reo National Trust, 2003), Sub-Saharan Africa is largely bereft of such initiatives. It has been on the receiving end of colonial ideologies and institutions, and, more recently, those of international and donor organizations, while its own capacity to generate knowledge has declined. This essay is written in the spirit of capacity building that is not fundamentally derivative, but generative and inclusive of local as well as Western and other knowledges.

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Reconfiguring the Map of Childhood, From the Mid 19th Century to Late 20th Century At approximately the same time Darwin undertook his historic voyage on The Beagle (1831-1836) and subsequently published On the Origin of Species (1859), the most influential name in early childhood was Friedrich Froebel. Froebel‘s understanding of the nature of childhood was considerably different from those who would later propose a ‗psychology of childhood.‘ His vision incorporated a strong spiritual element and an appreciation of the child‘s innate goodness and capacity: ―Education must be passive and protective rather than directive, otherwise the free and conscious revelation of the divine spirit in man…is lost‖ (1826, p.34). Froebel noted that ―a child ought to be considered a complete being during every period of life‖ (emphasis added, quoted in Bultman, 2008, p.1). The Froebelian child was not an empty vessel, an incomplete adult, nor was her or his development amenable to coercion. Froebel‘s ideas were not unusual in Western society at that time (Alcott, 1830), nor in many contemporary societies today, particularly in terms of understanding the child as spiritually endowed and with capacities that in certain ways exceed those of adults (see DeLoache & Gottlieb, 2000, for an interesting approach that touches on this topic). By the late 1870s, however, a quite different image of childhood was being advanced in Europe by individuals such as Ernst Haeckel, one of the first to propose a ‗science of psychology.‘ Haeckel connected Darwinian themes with both individual and social evolution: ―In order to understand correctly the highly differentiated, delicate mental life of civilized man, we must, therefore, observe not only its gradual awakening in the child, but also its step-by-step development in lower, primitive peoples and in invertebrates‖ (1879, quoted in Morss, 1990, p.18). Sully, in his influential Babies and Science (1881), continued the theme, firmly embedding the origins of child development theory alongside rationales for colonization: ―The modern psychologist, sharing in the spirit of positive science, feels that he must…study mind in its simplest forms… [He] carries his eye far afield to the phenomena of savage life, with its simple ideas, crude sentiments and naïve habits…. Finally he directs his attention to the mental life of infancy, as fitted to throw most light on the later developments of the human mind‖ (1881, quoted in Riley, 1983, p.47). One sees in the ‗science of child development,‘ from its earliest formulations, a civilizing imperative for the child based on an image of deficiency. A belief in the child‘s incompetence and incompleteness continues as a dominant theme throughout the formative years of child study within psychology. One finds its echoes in William James‘ classic description of a newborn‘s world: ―The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin and entrails at once feels that all is one great blooming, buzzing confusion‖ (1890, reprinted 1981, p.488). This image persists in Gesell‘s work, and an increasingly powerful supplemental association is put in place—that of maturation as financial investment: ―Three is a delightful age. Infancy superannuates at Two and gives way to a higher estate‖ (1950, p.40). These understandings of the child were able to persist in part through psychology‘s failure to incorporate culture as a key factor in child development, for, as noted, not all cultures and societies perceive the child in such a way. Cole, in his 1996 critique of psychology‘s cultural failing, Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline, noted Wundt‘s 1921 formulation of ―two psychologies‖: a ―physiological psychology‖ focusing on the experimental study of immediate experience, and a ―higher psychology‖ (Volkerpsychologie) that was contextual in nature and could not be studied using

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laboratory methods, but only by the methods of the descriptive sciences, such as ethnography and linguistics (p.28 in Cole). Cole went on to note that despite Wundt‘s standing as the founder of scientific psychology, ―the only part of his scientific system to win broad acceptance was his advocacy of the experimental method as the criterion of disciplinary legitimacy‖ (1996, p.28). With that focus one witnesses the marginalization of culture within child development. The experimental method, with its underpinning in positivism and a belief in an objective and knowable ‗truth,‘ dominated psychology throughout much of the 20th century. Kessen, for example, reflected on his introduction to psychology in the 1950s with its pursuit of ―laws of behavior [that] were to be perfectly general, indifferent to species, age, gender or specific psychological content‖ (1981, p.27). It is noteworthy that while psychology continued throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s to strengthen its positivist orientation towards child development, the physical sciences, which psychology had sought to emulate in order to be understood as a true science (‗physics-envy‘ was the term borrowed by Sheldon White [1996, p.xi]), were engaged in processes of poststructural and postmodern critique and deconstruction, questioning the very possibility of separating the seer from the seen, the subjective from the objective. That the physical sciences could engage in such critical reflection while psychology, as a social science, could ignore its own fabric of ‗social‘ is as astonishing as is its long-standing marginalization of culture. Despite such obvious problems and limitations, psychology‘s hold on the field of child development remained strong throughout the 1960s and 70s, in part because of the virtual absence of a focus on children in other disciplines, such as sociology and anthropology, despite the latter‘s significant contributions during the earlier culture and personality movement. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, AND THE PURSUIT OF UNIVERSAL TRUTHS It was during this period of child development‘s positivist and universalist ascendancy under the banner of psychology that the international development community began to elevate the child as a key component of the development equation. Some, including this author, highlight 1989/1990 as a pivotal point, with approval of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC, United Nations, 1989) and acknowledgement at the Jomtien, Thailand, Education for All (EFA) meeting that ―learning begins at birth‖ (UNESCO, 1990). Rather than grounding international child agendas in culture and context, as one might expect (and hope), international development leadership accepted psychology‘s largely universalist understandings of child development. Such understandings were rarely challenged despite their lack of global representation and sources in Western populations and sociophilosophical constructs (Arnett, 2008; Kim and Park, 2006; Levine and New, 2008; Pence and Hix-Small, 2007). The universalist nature of the CRC and EFA complemented and reinforced the universalism inherent in the dominant discourse of general psychology at the time. The pronouncements of such influential discourses within general psychology were quickly absorbed and transmitted broadly by international organizations hungry for direction, legitimization, and ‗products‘ for a global community now primed as recipients for child-focused agendas. These policy and program agendas, as is too often the case in politically and ideologically driven initiatives, had little time for exceptions, nuances, or counter-discourses, seeking instead to keep agendas ‗focused.‘

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SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Alan Pence – Historical, Conceptual, and Structural Challenges

The demand for ideas, services, and products to feed newfound international development interests in the young child led to the creation of what are often termed ‗best practices.‘ Rather than arising locally, ‗best practices‘ are typically imported from Western sources, often through the support of Western donors. They tend to be seen as rising above ethical concerns of cultural imperialism, but nevertheless the ‗trading dynamic‘ is a familiar one. As part of physical colonization, such a practice was called mercantilism: ―The goal of the [colonizing or supplier] state was to export the largest possible quantity of its products and import as little as possible thus establishing a favorable balance of trade‖ (Random House Dictionary, 1969, p.896). The balance of trade in child development ideas has indeed favored the West. Such processes enhance and perpetuate inequalities. It is a system that serves neither Science nor Africa well. Such systems, proclaimed as progressive and in the recipients‘ best interests, are often regressive, undermining the recipients‘ ability to build local capacity in order to engage in their own problem identification and problem-alleviating activities. Creativity, confidence, diversity, leadership, and capacity are all diminished through such processes. The timing of the early childhood care and development field‘s entry into international development was, arguably, unfortunate. In 1989/90 psychology‘s hold on child study was strong, despite influential internal critics like Urie Bronfenbrenner, who famously noted that even within the Western context: ―much of developmental psychology, as it now exists, is the science of the strange behavior of children in strange situations with strange adults for the briefest possible periods of time‖ (1979, p.19). The timing was also unfortunate because child-focused scholarship would soon see the entry of other social science disciplines (e.g., sociology, with a paradigm of social constructionism that poses a significant and useful challenge to universalism [James & Prout, 1990; Qvortrup, Bardy, Sgritta, & Wintersberger, 1994; Jenks, 1996] and anthropology, which reengaged with child issues following a period of lower visibility after the decline of the culture and personality movement [Bluebond-Langner & Korbin, 2007; Levine, Dixon, Levine, Rickman, Leiderman, Keefer, & Brazelton, 1994; American Anthropological Association, 2008]). The 1990s also saw important culturally related developments within psychology, including a strengthening of cross-cultural psychology (Segal, Dasen, Berry, & Poortinga, 1990; Berry, Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen, 1992), cultural psychology (Shweder, 1990; Cole, 1996; Greenfield, 2000), and indigenous psychology (Sinha, 1997; Kim, Yang & Hwang, 2006). Within child development and early childhood studies a host of poststructural and postmodern publications were forming a strong and vibrant international literature (Henriques, Hollway, Urwin, Venn, & Walkerdine, 1984; Morss, 1990; Kessler & Swadener, 1992; Burman, 1994; Moss & Pence, 1994; Canella, 1997; Dahlberg, Moss, & Pence, 1999). Indigenous and postcolonial early childhood studies, with important implications for work in Africa, also became increasingly available throughout the 1990s and 2000s (Mutua & Swadener, 2004; Cannella & Viruru, 2004; Ball & Pence, 2007; Nsamenang, 1992, 2008), and the most recent handbook in the Denzin and Lincoln series Critical and Indigenous Methodologies (Denzin, Lincoln, & Smith, 2008) has much of value regarding research methodologies for early childhood and all social sciences in the Majority (‗developing‘) World. While it is unfortunate that such a broad, vibrant, and contextually sensitive literature was not fully on hand for the initial entry of child development issues onto the world stage of international development, the good news is that such diversity of perspectives and disciplines is increasingly available in the 21st century, and it can be employed in strengthening African and other Majority World contributions to child development and child study literatures.

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SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Alan Pence – Historical, Conceptual, and Structural Challenges

Ways Forward Pursuing new ways forward is more possible today than it was two decades ago. The conditions that led to international organizations‘ largely unchallenged acceptance of universalist and normalizing perspectives are less secure than they were. Other disciplines and subdisciplines, with additional methods and understandings, have entered the child arena; critical theory and poststructuralism have usefully problematized psychology and child development; and indigenous and local perspectives are more respected and powerful than previously. Looking forward should not preclude looking back. As Super, Harkness, Barry, and Zeitlin note in their article (this issue), and as evidenced by the long-standing work of Serpell (also in this issue), good work has come out of Africa in the past. Reviewing these authors‘ citations, however, one cannot but be struck by two phenomena: the prevalence of works led by Western researchers, and the relative absence of studies led by African scholars. This ‗failure to thrive‘ is not, this author believes, the result of poor research leadership, a lack of commitment to indigenous development, uninteresting theories, or limitations in research possibilities. Indeed some very important theoretical and empirical questions have been touched on in this earlier work and deserve to be pursued further. For example, both Serpell‘s earlier work regarding local understandings of intelligence and his more recent work on schooling in Africa represent important contributions that should be extended in the future (Serpell, 1982; Serpell, 1993). In addition, Levine et al.‘s historic and detailed work in East Africa provides useful inspiration for other parts of Africa (Levine, Dixon, Levine, Richman, Leiderman, Keefer, & Brazelton, 1994). Weisner and Gallimore‘s (1977) identification of the importance of child-to-child caregiving around the world is familiar to anyone who has spent more than a few days in Africa, yet it has not been adequately pursued as a scholarly focus. (Note, however, the important practice-focused work of the Child to Child Trust [www.child-to-child.org] dating from 1979.) More recently, the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in southern and eastern African is leading researchers to more closely explore impacts on children, with implications for deeper understandings of theories of attachment, resilience and development over time. Oburu notes: ―There is a possibility that the alarmist construction of the orphan situation in areas heavily infected with HIV/AIDS underrates the capacity of orphans … to overcome adversities (Oburu, 2009; Abebe & Aase, 2007). And finally, the work of Super and Harkness and related others (1986, 2002) on the developmental niche deserves continuing attention—and it may be getting some from experienced international development specialists who are mounting useful critiques of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) ‗in context.‘ This last reference, relating specifically to a recent white paper by Bissel, Boyden, Cook, and Myers (2009), introduces another rich area for African-led child-related research: examining closely the impact and implications of international conventions, declarations, and movements on families, communities, institutions, policies, and politics in Africa as they relate to children‘s lives. These authors, all experienced in international development and in work with the CRC, note: ―Researchers and practitioners involved in child rights and protection issues are questioning the paradigms and strategies now dominating national and international efforts…. There is a growing realization that the real issue may have to do with universalized responses to problems having locally specific characteristics‖ (p.1, emphasis added). Associated with such studies would be research regarding the impacts of a broad set of interventions and programs funded by the international donor community—an acronym for-

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SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Alan Pence – Historical, Conceptual, and Structural Challenges

est of international, governmental, non-governmental, community-based, and faith-based organizations and related groups. This aid and intervention work, ubiquitous across most of Sub-Saharan Africa, represents an expenditure of funds supporting ‗child welfare‘ that exceeds the provision of many services provided by governments. These familiar, foreign ‗elephants in the rooms‘ of SubSaharan Africa (as unfamiliar in the West as real elephants), are an extraordinarily important part of the lives of a large percentage of Africa‘s children and families, who are both recipients of services and sometimes employed as service providers. However, despite their omnipresence and importance, these local organizations rarely feature in independent research, appearing, if they do, only in project-focused evaluations of service or policy reports. This conspicuous research absence may be changing, if a recent doctoral dissertation is an indication. Dr. Dennis Banda of Zambia focused his study on a critical assessment of the EFA (2008), arguing that ―formal schooling education…may not be the right vehicle to deliver EFA goals‖ and proposing that ―African Indigenous Knowledge Systems (AIKS) can enhance the achievement of EFA‖ (p.xi). In support of not losing sight of what has come before, Banda cites educational reports from as early as 1847 flagging the importance of local knowledge, and he also notes two reports from the 1920s with similar recommendations (PhelpsStokes Fund, 1922, 1925). Banda‘s work touches on critical theory and postcolonial research—a particularly vibrant area of recent scholarship. As noted earlier, Denzin and Lincoln‘s latest volume, co-edited with Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith (Denzin, Lincoln, & Smith, 2008), reminds the academy that ―the ways in which scientific research is implicated in the worst excesses of colonialism remains a powerful remembered history for many of the world‘s colonized peoples‖ (Smith, 1999). Critical and indigenous methodologies have had a limited impact on African child research to date, but the excesses of colonialism are a remembered history across the continent. Their continuing presence is evident in Nsamenang‘s (2006) critique: ―Whenever Euro-American ECD programs are applied as the gold standards by which to measure forms of Africa‘s ECD, they forcibly deny equity to and recognition of Africa‘s ways of provisioning for its young, thereby depriving the continent a niche in global ECD knowledge‖ (p.296). Concerns such as those voiced by Smith and Nsamenang will find a fertile ground in many parts of Africa in the years ahead—they are part of a broad mosaic of indigenous and culturally sensitive studies that can inform contextually suitable ways forward for children‘s development. Their approach and potential, as evidenced by the unique contributions of the Maori ‗500 PhDs in 5 years‘ initiative (www.maramatanga.co.nz), will open up pathways of understanding and knowledge not accessible through Western lenses.

CONCLUSION: IMPLICATIONS FOR SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA This paper has argued that African child development and international ECD research will be best served by a broad range of disciplines, methods, and orientations. Consideration should be given to multi-and interdisciplinary approaches as a priority for African tertiary institutions. And in order to maximize potential social benefits of such work, this diversity of interests and approaches should extend beyond the academy to include perspectives from governmental, non-governmental, and local groups, as all are key players in addressing African children‘s well-being. Ideally, such interac-

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SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Alan Pence – Historical, Conceptual, and Structural Challenges

tions would extend beyond individual countries to include regional and subregional interactions and networks as well. Two such networks, one in child development led by the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development (ISSBD), and another in ECD, based on the SRCD supported event that led to this special section of Child Development Perspectives (Marfo and Pence, 2009) and on the Early Childhood Development Virtual University (ECDVU) leadership and capacity building program (www.ecdvu.org and Pence, Habtom, & Chalamanda, 2008), are attempting to promote regional development. Both face significant challenges in moving forward, not least of which is sufficient financial resources to activate and sustain networks over time and to fund research proposals that emerge from such interactions. Such initiatives should be based on the principle of promoting African capacity, African leadership, African identification of key issues, and African scholarly engagement with ideas regarding their own children‘s future and how best to ensure healthy, hopeful, and capable future generations. These ideas should be supported to grow and develop in mutually beneficial exchanges with ideas and research from other parts of the world. Research colonization and mercantilist trade in child development ideas should become a thing of the past. The ‗science of child development‘ as advanced by influential international organizations too often has roots in colonial attitudes and social-Darwinist beliefs that carry sorrow as well as promise. Child-related developments in academia—not only in psychology (cultural and indigenous psychology, for example), but in other disciplines, including sociology and anthropology, and the emergence of critical perspectives that range from issues of gender through poststructural and postcolonial viewpoints—offer an increasing range of opportunities for African scholars. When Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western civilization, he responded, ―I think it would be a good idea.‖ This essay echoes his view. A truly international, inclusive ‗science of child development‘ is a good idea—and one deserving of enhanced and appropriate international support.

REFERENCES Abebe, T., & Aase, A. (2007). Children, AIDS and the politicso f orphan care in Ethiopia: The extended family revisited. Social Science & Medicine, 64, 2058-2069. Alcott, A.B. (1830). Observations on the principles and methods of infant instruction. Boston: Carter and Hendee. American Anthropological Association. (April, 2008). Children and Childhood, Special Issue, Anthropology News. Arnett, J. J. (2008). The neglected 95%: Why American Psychology needs to become less American. American Psychologist, (63) 7, 602-614. Ball, J., & Pence, A.R. (2006). Supporting Indigenous children‟s development: Community-University partnerships. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press Banda, D. (2008). Education for all (EFA) and the „African indigenous knowledge systems (AIKS)‟: The case of the Chewa People of Zambia. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Nottingham, UK. Berry, J.W., Poortinga, Y.H., Segall, M.H., & Dasen, P.R. (1992). Cross-cultural psychology: Research and applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Bissel, S., Boyden, J., Cook, P., & Myers, W. (2009). Rethinking child protection from a rights perspective: Some observations for discussion. Unpublished discussion paper. Bluebond-Langner, M., & Korbin. J.E. (2007). Challenges and opportunities in the anthropology of childhoods: An introduction to ‗children, childhoods, and childhood studies‘. American Anthropologist,(109) 2, 241-246. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bultman, S. (Ed.). (2008). The paradise of children: The wisdom and aphorisms of Friedrich Froebel. Grand Rapids, MI: FroebelUSA Burman, J. (1994). Deconstructing developmental psychology. New York: Routledge. Cannella, G.S.(1997). Deconstructing early childhood education. New York: Peter Lang. Cannella, G. S., & Viruru, R. (2004). Childhood and postcolonization. New York: Routledge Falmer. Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Dahlberg, G., Moss, P., & Pence, A. R. (1999, 2nd edition 2006). Beyond quality in early childhood education and care. London: Routledge Falmer. Darwin, C. (1856). On the origin of species by means of natural selection. London: John Murray. Denzin, N.K., Lincoln, Y., & Smith, L.T. (2008). Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies. Los Angeles: Sage. DeLoache, J., & Gottlieb, A. (2000). A world of babies: Imagined childcare guides for seven societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Froebel, F. (1887). On the education of man (Die menschenerziehung). Kielhau/Leipzig: Weinbrach. Gesell, A. (1950). The first five years of life: A guide to the study of the pre-school child. London: Methuen. Greenfield, P.M. (2000). Three approaches to the psychology of culture: Where do they come from: Where can they go? Asian Journal of Social Psychology, (3), 223-240. Haeckel, E. (1879). The evolution of man. London: Kegan Paul (Original work published in 1874). Henriques, J., Hollway, W., Urwin, C., Venn, C., & Walkerdine. V. (1984). Changing the subject: Psychology, social regulation and subjectivity. London: Methuen. James, A., & Prout, A. (Eds.). (1990). Constructing and reconstructing childhood: Basingstoke, UK: Falmer Press. James. W. (1981, Originally published in 1890). The principles of psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Jenks, C. (1996). Childhood. London: Routledge. Kessen, W. (1981). The child and other cultural inventions. In F.S. Kessel & A.W. Siegel (Eds.), The child and other cultural inventions (pp. 26-39). New York: Praeger. Kessler, S., & Swadener, B. B. (1992). Reconceptualizing the early childhood curriculum: Beginning the dialogue. New York: Teachers College Press. Kim, U., & Park, Y-S. (2006). The scientific foundation of indigenous and cultural psychology, In U. Kim, K.S. Yang and K.K. Hwang (Eds.) Indigenous and cultural psychology: Understanding people in context (pp. 27-48). New York: Springer. Kim, U., Yang, K.S., & Hwang, K.K. (2006). Indigenous and cultural psychology: Understanding people in context. New York: Springer.

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LeVine, R.A., Dixon, S., LeVine, S., Richman, A., Leiderman, P.H., Keefer, C.H., & Brazelton, T.B. (1994). Child care and culture: Lessons from Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levine, R.A., & New, R.S. (2008). Child development: A cross-cultural reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Marfo, K., & Pence, A.R. (2009). Strengthening Africa‟s contributions to child development research. Final Report submitted to the Society for Research in Child Development. Available from http://www.srcd.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=361&Ite. Moss, P., & Pence, A.R. (1994). Valuing quality in early childhood services. London: Paul Chapman. Morss, J.R. (1990). The biologising of childhood: Developmental psychology and the Darwinian myth. London: Lawrence Erlbaum. Mutua, K., & Swadener, B. B. (Eds.). (2004). Decolonizing research in cross-cultural contexts: Critical personal narratives. Albany: State University of New York Press. New Zealand Ministry of Education (MOE). (1996). Te Whariki—Early Childhood Curriculum. Wellington, NZ: Learning Media. Nsamenang, A. B. (1992). Human development in cultural context: A third world perspective. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Nsamenang, A.B. (2006). Human ontogenesis: An indigenous African view on development and intelligence. International Journal of Psychology 41: 293-297. Nsamenang, A. B. (2008). (Mis)understanding ECD in Africa: The force of local and global motives. In M. Garcia, A. Pence & J. Evans (Eds.), Africa‟s future—Africa‟s challenge: Early childhood care and development in sub-Saharan Africa (pp.135-149). Washington DC: The World Bank. Oburu, P.O. (2009). HIV/AIDS generated caregiving burdens and the emergent two generation family structure in sub-Saharan Africa. ISSBD Bulletin, 2(2): 7-9. Pence, A.R., Habtom, A., & Chalamanda, F. (2008). A tri-part approach to promoting ECD capacity in Africa. In M.Garcia, A. Pence & J. Evans (Eds.), Africa‟s future: Africa‟s challenge: Early childhood care and development in sub-Saharan Africa (pp. 487-501). Washington DC: The World Bank. Pence, A.R., & Hix-Small, H. (2007). Global children in the shadow of the global child. International Journal of Educational Policy, Research and Practice 8(1): 83-100 Pence, A.R., & Marfo, K. (2008). Early childhood development in Africa: Interrogating constraints of prevailing knowledge bases. International Journal of Psychology, 2: 78-87. Pence, A.R., & McCallum, M. (1994). Developing cross-cultural partnerships: Implications for child care quality, research and practice. In P. Moss & A.R. Pence (Eds.), Valuing Quality in Early Childhood Services (pp. 108-122). New York: Teachers College Press. Phelps-Stokes Fund. (1922). Education in Africa. New York: Phelps-Stokes Fund. Phelps-Stokes Fund. (1925). Education in Africa. New York: Phelps-Stokes Fund. Qvortrup, J., Bardy, M., Sgritta, G., & Wintersberger, H. (Eds.). (1994). Childhood matters: Social theory, practice and politics. Aldershot: Avebury. Random House Dictionary (1969). Unabridged edition. New York: Random House. Reedy, R. (1991). A Tangata Whenua perspective of early childhood. Paper presented at the fourth Australia and New Zealand The First Years of School Conference, Auckland, College of Education. Riley, D. (1983). War in the nursery. London: Virago.

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Rosenberg, M. (2010). Berlin conference of 1884-1885 to divide Africa: The colonization of the continent by European powers. http://geography.about.com/cs/ politicalgeog/a/ berlinconferenc.htm Segall, M.H., Dasen, P.R., Berry, J.W., & Poortinga, Y.H. (1990). Human behavior in global perspectivie: An introduction to cross-cultural psychology. New York: Pergamon. Serpell, R. (1982). Measures of perception, skills and intelligence: The growth of a new perspective on children in a third world country, In: W.W. Hartup (Ed.). Review of Child Development Research (Vol. 6, pp. 392-440). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Serpell, R. (1993). The significance of schooling: Life journeys in an African society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shweder, R.A. (1990). Cultural psychology: What is it? In J.W.Stigler, R.A. Shweder and G. Herdt, (Eds.), Cultural psychology: Essays on comparative human development. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sinha, D. (1997). Indigenizing psychology. In J.W. Berry, Y.H. Portinga, & J. Pandey (Eds.), Handbook of cross-cultural psychology (2nd ed., pp. 129-170). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon. Smith, L.T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples. London: Zed Press Sully, J. (1881). Babies and science. The Cornhill Magazine, 43, 539-554. Super, C., & Harkness, S. (1986). The developmental niche: A conceptualization at the interface of child and culture. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 9, 545-569. Super, C. M., & Harkness, S. (2002). Culture structures the environment for development. Human Development, 45(4), 270-274. Te Kohanga Reo National Trust. (2003). Retrieved from http://www.kohanga.ac.nz/aboutus.html The Times Atlas. (2006). The size of Africa. Retrieved from http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/ 2006/11/20/35-the-size-of-africa/ UNESCO, (1990). The World Declaration on Education for All: Meeting Basic Learning Needs. Retrieved from http://www.unesco.org/ United Nations. (1989). Convention on the Rights of the Child. Retrieved from http://www.un.org/ documents/ga/res/44/a44r025.htm United Nations Development Program (UNDP). (2007). Human development report. Retrieved from http://hdrstats.undp.org/buildtables/rc_report.cfm Viruru, R. (2001). Early childhood education: Postcolonial perspectives from India. New Delhi: Sage. Walkerdine, V. (1984). Developmental psychology and the child-centered pedagogy. In J. Henriques, W., Hollway, C., Urwin, C., Venn, & V. Walkerdine (Eds.), Changing the subject: Psychology, social regulation and subjectivity (pp. 153-202). London: Methuen. Weisner, T.S., & Gallimore, R. (1977). My brother‘s keeper: Child and sibling caretaking. Current Anthropology, 18 (2), pp. 169-190. White, S. (1996). Introduction, to M. Cole, Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

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Think Locally, Act Globally: Contributions of African Research to Child Development Charles M. Super1, Sara Harkness1, Oumar Barry2, and Marian Zeitlin3 1University of Connecticut, USA, 2University Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, Senegal, 3Earth Rights EcoVillage (EREV) Institute, Dakar, Senegal

ABSTRACT: Research on African children has made key contributions to the emergence of a more globalized developmental science, advancing theory and providing illuminating examples in the domains of motor development, cognitive growth, attachment, and socially responsible intelligence. Because the environments for children’s development are culturally structured, local knowledge is necessary to understand development and to devise social programs to promote healthy outcomes, as illustrated here by a case study in Senegal. This argues for advancing the research activities of local scholars. At the same time, action at the global level is necessary to weave such local knowledge into a global science of human development. KEY WORDS: Contributions to theory; motor development; cognitive growth; socially responsible intelligence; emotional development; globalization and local knowledge

The aphorism “Think globally, act locally” urges one to think of the state of the entire planet as one undertakes local actions. We titled this article with the inverse - “Think locally, act globally” - to emphasize that only through understanding locally regulated development can one approach a more global theory. Child development research in sub-Saharan Africa has made a significant contribution in this regard. Historically, African children were the first outside Europe and the U.S. to be studied (Kidd, 1906), and for decades reports from Africa dominated the cross-cultural developmental literature (Super, 1981). Although research in other parts of the world has grown dramatically, studies of children in Africa continue to contribute unique insights to our understanding of how children develop (Gottlieb, 2004; Lancy, 1996; Weisner, Bradley, & Kilbride, 1997). In this paper, we review contributions from Africa that have shaped developmental science, and describe one contemporary application of science to practice. Our overarching goal is to demonstrate the continuing 

This article is based on a paper prepared for the SRCD-sponsored invitational conference “Strengthening Africa’s Contributions to Child Development Research” held in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, February 2-6, 2009 Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Charles M. Super, Center for the Study of Culture, Health, and Human Development, 348 Mansfield Road, University of Connecticut Unit 2058, Storrs, CT 26269-2058 U.S.A. Email: [email protected]

SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Charles M. Super, Sara Harkness, Oumar Barry & Marian Zeitlin – Contributions of African Research

utility of African research to a global developmental science. MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH PROJECTS IN AFRICA AND THE ADVANCE OF DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY Developmental research in Africa has benefitted particularly from several long-term multidisciplinary projects. These include the French-Swiss investigation of Piagetian development in the Ivory Coast (Dasen, Inhelder, Lavallée, & Retschitzki, 1978); the Kalahari project organized by DeVore and others (Konner, 1976); the Ituri Forest studies (Tronick, Morelli, & Winn, 1987); the Harvard-Nairobi affiliation led by John and Beatrice Whiting (Edwards & Whiting, 2004; Whiting & Edwards, 1988; Whiting & Whiting, 1975); the Gusii (Kenya) study led by Robert and Sarah LeVine (LeVine, Dixon, LeVine, Richman, Leiderman, Keefer, et al., 1994); and research among the Nso people of Cameroon by Keller and her team (Keller, 2007). These projects have provided research training to dozens of young African, American, and European scientists, and have altered our understanding of family life and child development in cultural context. The historical productivity of these projects reflects several key characteristics. First, they lasted over a period of years - thus subsequent researchers, or researchers returning to their field sites, were able to build on earlier observations and discoveries, as well as on previously established working relationships. This helped to avoid the common mistake in cross-cultural research of making generalizations that fail to hold up under further scrutiny. Second, many of the research teams involved investigators from different disciplines including pediatrics and psychiatry as well as anthropology and developmental psychology, and the research products were correspondingly wideranging. For example, studies within the Whitings‟ Kenya project included infant motor skills (Super, 1976), sibling caretaking (Ember, 1973; Weisner & Gallimore, 1977), child language socialization (Harkness, 1977), and the development of moral reasoning (Edwards, 1975), to name only a few. Third, local researchers were included, whether as co-investigators or fieldwork assistants, and their perspectives were build into the structure of data collection and the interpretation of results. Finally, African childrearing, especially in the rural communities where most of these studies were carried out, presented American and European visitors with a vividly unfamiliar picture of children‟s daily lives and opportunities for learning. Faced with such differences in the niches of development, and by the obvious fact that these children were generally thriving in them, expatriate researchers were forced (mostly willingly) to confront their own preconceptions about what constitutes optimal child development. To be sure, the African context also presented challenges of a different sort - unacceptably high rates of infant morbidity, malnutrition, and mortality, gross inequalities in the status of women, and a population growing too fast to be sustained by its traditional economies (Wober, 1973). By studying both healthy and compromised development, however, researchers who came from abroad to study African children found that there were plenty of “lessons” to be taken home (LeVine et al., 1994). The Whitings‟ African project is particularly noteworthy in laying the groundwork for the emergence of three related theoretical frameworks for studying development in context: the “ecocultural niche” (Weisner, 2002), the “developmental microniche” (Worthman, 2003), and the “developmental niche” (Super & Harkness, 1986, 2002). All these frameworks lead the researcher to look at – and

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SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Charles M. Super, Sara Harkness, Oumar Barry & Marian Zeitlin – Contributions of African Research

actually measure – specific features of children‟s environment. In addition, they promote a breadth of integration among measures of the individual child and of the niche, and also with functional, historical, and thematic aspects of the larger culture that reach beyond the specifics of child rearing. This integrative feature is the most distinctive, even as the three paradigms differ somewhat in their empirical focus. Weisner‟s formulation of the ecocultural niche is best known for its close examination of family routines: how they are shaped by social and economic forces, how they are maintained, how they lead the child daily through structured activities, and ultimately, how this pattern of experience influences development. Worthman‟s model is designed to highlight the biocultural regulation of development. The developmental microniche is seen as the immediate interface with the historically constituted environment, such that an individual‟s status at any moment – learning and adaptation, social competence, emotion regulation, physiological functioning – is the product of “bioecocultural processes.” In Super and Harkness‟ developmental niche conceptualization, the child‟s environment is seen as consisting of three interacting subsystems: The physical and social settings of the child‟s daily life; customs and practices of child rearing; and the psychology of the caretakers, particularly parental ethnotheories of child development and parenting. Synergisms among the three subsystems, in interaction with the developing child and features of the larger environment, shape the child‟s opportunities for learning (Harkness, Super, Barry, Zeitlin, & Long, 2009). AFRICAN PERSPECTIVES ON DEVELOPMENT As this brief overview suggests, research in Africa has produced a variety of insights into the ways that culture shapes children‟s development. African perspectives in particular - how African parents think about their children, and how they enact these ideas in parenting - have had notable impacts our understanding of motor development, cognitive growth, attachment processes, and social development. To paraphrase from Goodnow and Collins‟ (1990) book Development According to Parents, we have learned a great deal from studying child development according to African parents. Motor development An early focus of developmental research in Africa was infant motor development (primarily sitting and walking) that appeared quite advanced by Euro-American standards (Géber & Dean, 1957; Vouilloux, 1959). This “precocity” was initially interpreted as a biological, genetically driven phenomenon. Subsequent investigation led in other directions (Kilbride & Kilbride, 1975; Leiderman, Babu, Kagia, Kraemer, & Leiderman, 1973; Super, 1976, 1981; Varkevisser, 1973). First, it was demonstrated that traditional methods of infant care common in sub-Saharan Africa include deliberate teaching and practice of sitting and walking (and sometimes, crawling). These customary practices, carried out by parents, siblings, and other relatives, reflect a local understanding of what young children are capable of, and it is manifest from the earliest days of the infant's life outside the womb (Super & Harkness, 2009). Further, careful observation revealed high levels of leg, trunk, and back exercise, and also vestibular stimulation, incidental to customary methods of holding and carrying the infant. The methods of carrying are dictated in part by physical settings (such as dirt floors) that discourage putting a baby down, and by social settings that include older sisters and others to carry

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SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Charles M. Super, Sara Harkness, Oumar Barry & Marian Zeitlin – Contributions of African Research

and entertain. When families migrate from traditional rural areas to an urban environment such as Nairobi, they adapt to quite different physical and social settings, and they come in contact with a greater variety of ethnotheories; both daily life and infant motor development shift toward the EuroAmerican pattern. Subsequent experimental studies in North America confirmed what the African mothers knew through experience, namely that there is a causal relationship between even modest levels of practice and early, robust motor development (Zelazo, Zelazo, Cohen, & Zelazo, 1993). The initial puzzle of “African infant precocity” and its ultimate resolution provide an unusually concrete example of how a theoretical framework focused on culturally structured environments and ethnotheories facilitates the understanding of universal developmental phenomena. In addition to promoting specific motor competencies such as walking, traditional infant care in much of Africa (and other parts of the world) often incorporates vigorous body massage, in the belief that it promotes strength, coordination, and general health (Hopkins, 1976). The coordination of parental thinking in this regard was evident when two of the present authors undertook a parent education project in Senegal (Zeitlin & Barry, 2004). In a pilot phase exploring “what children learn” and what parents do to help in that learning, a pictorial chart was developed illustrating sequential teaching activities in each of four domains: motor skills, speech and language, analytic thinking, and cultural practices. Discussion started with the topic of motor skills, in part to open with something familiar and uncontroversial, and the pictures included traditional methods of encouraging sitting, crawling, and walking. “Yes,” said mothers when shown these pictures, “that‟s right.” They quickly pointed out, however, that the crucial starting point, massage, was not included, and suggested that the chart be corrected. Although largely unknown or unappreciated in the U.S. during most of the 20th century, infant massage is now an important tool in the hospital nursery (Field et al., 2004) and has a growing presence in the popular culture for new mothers in Europe and North America (see McClure, 2000). Thus as research decentered from motor milestones to include African parents‟ ideas and practices, environmental influences on motor development were highlighted. This shift, from comparing specific behaviors to investigating the developmental niche in which behaviors are preferentially shaped, has been repeated for nearly every domain defined in the Western literature and imported to Africa for study. Cognitive growth Our understanding of cognitive growth has been profoundly transformed by cross-cultural research (Cole, Kuhn, Siegler, Damon, & Lerner, 2006), and a number of core studies in Africa helped move the field beyond the older observation that rural, unschooled, non-Western subjects do poorly on Western, school-oriented cognitive tests. The work of Cole and his colleagues in Liberia (Cole, Gay, Glick, & Sharp, 1971) is a landmark in this literature, using experimental methods to demonstrate the influence of culture on what had been assumed to be universal characteristics of thinking. Other African research demonstrated the experiential (hence, cultural) basis for the nature and developmental timing of intellectual growth. For example, Greenfield (1966) found an approach to reasoning about agency and the conservation of volume in her Wolof subjects not evident in Western samples namely, the hypothesis put forward by some children that the experimenter had used “action mag-

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SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Charles M. Super, Sara Harkness, Oumar Barry & Marian Zeitlin – Contributions of African Research

ic” to transform the materials being observed. Posner and Baroody (1979) demonstrated that unschooled Ivorian children of merchants did as well as their schooled peers on number conservation tasks; likewise Jahoda (1983) found that Zimbabwean children who actively assisted in market trading achieved concrete operational thinking about “profit” before their Scottish peers. Ghanaian children who had access to their parents‟ pottery materials were shown to excel in the conservation of quantity, weight, and volume (Adjei, 1977). Shweder and LeVine (1975) reported that Hausa children exhibited a sequence of understanding dreams not imagined in the classic European studies. On the other hand, the demonstration that rural, unschooled Kenyan and middle-class Americans children show similar developmental timing in some cognitive transformations highlighted the contribution of biological maturation in shaping the interactions between the child and the niche (Super, 1991). Finally, a number of works from Africa were influential in demonstrating the cultural nature of the testing process (Cole et al., 1971; Harkness & Super, 1977/2008). In sum, our understanding of cognitive development as a cultural project has been substantially advanced by research in Africa. Attachment and early emotional relations Bowlby‟s seminal work on infants‟ attachment to caretakers included the proposition that there is a “strong bias for attachment behavior to become directed mainly towards one particular person” (Bowlby, 1969, p. 308). Many scholars were convinced that caretaking by multiple persons would threaten the essential attachment process, and Ainsworth‟s (1967) observations in Uganda, which played a formative role in her later contributions, were generally taken to support this proposition. It is ironic, then, that the first challenge to this tenet came from Leiderman and Leiderman's (1974) research in neighboring Kenya. They found that, in contrast to an exclusive attachment to the mother, infants cared for in part by older siblings also used them as a “secure base.” Other work in a variety of sub-Saharan African communities also documented the important emotional as well as logistical role of sibling caretakers (Hewlett, 1989; Lijembe, 1967; Munroe & Munroe, 1971; Weisner & Gallimore, 1977; Whaley, Sigman, Beckwith, Cohen, & Espinosa, 2002). This body of work continues to raise a variety of questions about early emotional development that are fundamental to developmental theory but that cannot be addressed in monocultural studies. For example, with regard to maternal sensitivity – a key construct in attachment theory – LeVine and his colleagues (Richman, Miller, & LeVine, 1992) observed in their Kenyan project that Gusii mothers were highly attentive to their infants‟ distress signals, quick to soothe and hold in physical contact, but unresponsive to positive vocalizations, a pattern that reflected local conceptions of infants‟ needs and capacities. “Does this qualify as maternal sensitivity in terms of attachment research?” ask LeVine and colleagues (LeVine, Gielen, & Roopnarine, 2004, p. 155). Yes and no, they answer, depending on how narrow and ethnocentric the definition. “[A]s originally conceptualized,” they conclude, “maternal sensitivity captured a small part of a complex relationship; as used in [modern] developmental and clinical studies, it reflects contemporary Anglo-American cultural norms for evaluating maternal care.” The particular Gusii pattern is not found in all rural subSaharan African societies (Super & Harkness, 1974; Tronick, Morelli, & Winn, 1987), and certainly not across the modern range of urbanization and education on the continent. It is evident, however,

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SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Charles M. Super, Sara Harkness, Oumar Barry & Marian Zeitlin – Contributions of African Research

that the study of family interactions in Africa has prompted significant additions and elaborations to standing theories of emotional development, and further, that the rich variety of culturally structured interactions and relationships in African cultures is likely to offer additional discoveries, even as that reality continues to be transformed by larger forces. Socially responsible intelligence Insightful research often means aligning operationalized concepts with schemas used by those being studied - that is, with indigenous concepts. There is a growing interest in the African-based literature on “socially responsible intelligence,” a concept that overlaps, but is distinct from, the American idea of “intelligence.” The first formal consideration of this concept was by A. C. Mundy-Castle, an English scholar who lived and worked for many years in Nigeria (Mundy-Castle, 1974). The cultural model of socially responsible intelligence includes a quick and perceptive quality of the intellect, a sympathetic understanding of the social world, and a readiness to act. “Social cognition translates into responsible intelligence, not in abstraction,” according to Nsamenang (2006), “but primarily as it enhances the attainment of social ends.” It incorporates a „„concern with responsible ways of contributing to the social world‟‟ (Greenfield, Keller, Fulgni, & Maynard, 2003, p. 464). This concept of socially responsible intelligence is well documented in the words – and hence the ideas – used by parents in diverse African groups to describe desired qualities in their children. Serpell (1993) has compiled examples of indigenous words that carry this meaning, including n'glouélé in Baoulé (Dasen et al., 1985) and nzelu in Chi-Chewa (Serpell, 1993). Among the Kipsigis of western Kenya, Harkness and Super (1992) found that children's "intelligence" was often judged in terms of the ability to carry out household chores capably without supervision; a child who could be relied on in this regard was described as ng’om. As one mother elaborated: “For a girl who is ng’om, after eating she sweeps the house because she knows it should be done. Then she washes the dishes, looks for vegetables, and takes good care of the baby. When you come home [from the fields], you feel pleased and say, “This child is ng’om.” Another girl may not even clean her own dishes, but just go out and play, leaving the baby to cry. For a boy, if he is ng’om, he will watch the cows, and take them to the river without being told. He knows to separate the calves from the cows and he will fix the thorn fence when it is broken. The other boy will let the cows into the maize field and will be found playing while they eat the maize.” Despite the growing documentation of “socially responsible intelligence” and its importance throughout traditional Africa, the concept has been studied primarily as a component of parents‟ thinking about their children. It has not been deeply researched as an element in family behavior, as a measurable quality of children‟s development, as a traditional skill to be adapted and nurtured in modern education (but see Serpell, this issue), or as a cultural resource to be drawn upon in regulating social and political institutions. There are at least two reasons to pursue these issues, however. One is that a scientific understanding of indigenous ethnotheories and their role in constructing developmental reality, especially during times of rapid social change, is an essential building block of

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SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Charles M. Super, Sara Harkness, Oumar Barry & Marian Zeitlin – Contributions of African Research

social policy. The second reason relates to the theme of how Africa‟s strengths, its indigenous realities, can contribute to a better understanding of fundamental developmental processes. The mother‟s description of ng’om, above, seamlessly combines qualities that U.S. scholars might differentiate as obedience, empathy, self-regulation, goal directedness, foresight, ingenuity, resistance to temptation, and social competence. Although their synthesis into ng’om conflicts with the definition of intelligence traditional to academic psychology, the combination of traits resonates with a growing focus in contemporary theory on the connections among these qualities, as exemplified in studies of affective social competence (Halberstadt, Denham, & Dunsmore, 2001), emotional intelligence (Salovey & Grewal, 2005), emotion regulation (Eisenberg, Zhou, Liew, Champion, Pidada, Chen, et al. 2006), and psychological control by parents (Chao & Aque, 2009). Notably, the socially engaged conception of intelligence also emerges from free descriptions of intelligent behavior given by laypersons in the U.S., although not academic experts (Sternberg, Conway, Ketron, & Bernstein, 1981). GLOBALIZATION AND LOCAL KNOWLEDGE: A CULTURALLY INFORMED SCHOOL READINESS PROGRAM IN SENEGAL The contributions summarized above focus on the strengths of Africa‟s children and families, and on how African ways of life support these strengths. One outcome of these and similar contributions from around the world is that developmental science increasingly has the potential to see local pathways of development as particular exemplars of a more general model. This understanding, in turn, is helpful when applied back to the analysis of local problems. It is enlightening to learn that there are other ways to rear children successfully; and the rich variety of paradigms across cultures alerts us to the fact that “successful” development is always relative to some set of locally defined goals. Globalization is now rapidly changing the conditions of development for children around the world. Along with many positive features, these changes can invite social, economic, and political disruption. It is our experience that when developmentalists combine globalized knowledge of child development with specific understanding of the local developmental niche, creative interventions in the context of social change can be devised. One example of this is a program in rural Senegal that integrated preparation for modern school with parents‟ indigenous approaches to socializing their young children. Childrearing practices in all cultures follow a more or less implicit agenda, a “local curriculum” that instantiates ethnotheories about children‟s development. European and North American parents use didactic language with their young children – teaching them colors and numbers, asking them questions – in a way that lays the groundwork for success in school, with its abstract learning and language-based curriculum (LeVine, LeVine, & Schnell, 2001). Standardized developmental tests, such as the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development (Bayley, 2006), track the emergence of these Western culturally salient skills against the background of a presumed, generalized Euro-American middle-class environment. Because of the similarity between items for three-yearolds on the Bayley test (e.g. naming colors) and the content of school curricula, poor performance on the former bodes poorly for success in the latter. Rural African children tend to score poorly on tests such as the Bayley after the first 12 or 18 months of life, as the tests become increasingly based on expressive language and on specific cognitive skills emphasized in the originating, Euro-American

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SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Charles M. Super, Sara Harkness, Oumar Barry & Marian Zeitlin – Contributions of African Research

population, and this lag is evident as they encounter the demands of school. The Louga District of Senegal presents an illustrative case study (Harkness, Super, Barry, Zeitlin, Long et al., 2009; Zeitlin & Barry, 2004; Zeitlin & Barry, 2008). A culturally adapted version of the Bayley test found that three-year-olds in Louga, reared in traditional ways, perform poorly on the Cognitive scale (n = 55, average score = 87.6, or nearly a standard deviation from the international norm of 100). This is by no means indicative, however, of retarded development in a more general sense. Maternal interviews revealed that local ethnotheories included ideas about a variety of teaching activities for young children. Even though “teaching” was not always the word used by mothers, they were clear about which behaviors deserved support and promotion. The traditional “curriculum” followed by parents focused on motor skills and the exercise of responsible obedience. It taught the social skills and understanding of seniority in social relations needed to advance appropriately with age. Responding to picture cards, as noted above, the mothers were lively and full of ideas with regard to motor development. They were understanding and supportive of the idea that playing with physical objects promotes both active mastery and also thinking about mechanical operations. Virtually all of the mothers taught their young children “good behaviors” such as respectful greetings, as well as household tasks. Mothers and especially older siblings often engaged in teaching vocabulary for concrete objects and actions in the context of early training for chores. A sixmonth-old would have an object placed in his hand and taught “take” and “give.” With advancing age, the child would be instructed to deliver an object to another person in the room, and later to carry out more substantial errands. This agenda for development integrated young children into the fabric of daily life; it also enabled them to contribute to family maintenance tasks (e.g. food preparation) by the age of three years, and to the family‟s income production by age six (usually through assisting with cash crop agriculture). None of these later accomplishments is tested by the Bayley. Developmental socialization for chores in this community was found to be so pervasive that it was easy to develop a local scale of development, like the Bayley but using maternal reports about such tasks as making deliveries, carrying water in a bowl, and tidying up. Two other domains were added to this local test: motor development, and the social rules for good behavior and respectful interaction. Scores on this local test, like Bayley scores, correlated with health measures such as hemoglobin and physical growth (Zeitlin & Barry, 2008). Not surprisingly, however, the two measures were correlated in opposite directions with maternal education: Bayley scores were positively correlated with mother‟s education (r = .47, p < .05), whereas local test scores were negatively correlated (r = -.24, p = .05). All the children were learning, but their mothers were following different “curricula.” As a result of their examination of family life and social change, utilizing both local knowledge and a more global understanding of child development, the researchers developed a program for “curricular change” in Louga that built on traditional ideas about teaching and learning in infancy and early childhood, adapting them through group discussion to the existing educational demands on these children when they reached school-age. As African societies increasingly draw on Westerninspired schooling to prepare their citizens for the global economy, there is room to learn from traditional Western family life about how early learning can be shaped to facilitate the transition to school. In this case, the value of Western child development research derived precisely from the recognition that it is in many ways a formalization of the indigenous beliefs and practices of Europeans

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SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Charles M. Super, Sara Harkness, Oumar Barry & Marian Zeitlin – Contributions of African Research

and North Americans, like aspects of modern schooling. As African ethnotheories contain lessons for the Euro-American world concerning early motor skills and – we hope – socially responsible intelligence, so may the reverse be true for the African world regarding preparation for certain kinds of school learning. THINK LOCALLY, ACT GLOBALLY The integrated nature of the developmental niche means that a particular institution or practice cannot be simply plucked out of one culture and inserted into another with the expectation of similar outcomes. Understanding the course of healthy development and taking effective action to promote it require thinking about the elements of the child‟s niche – settings, customs, and ethnotheories – and how they interact. An increasingly global developmental science, to which Africa has already contributed so much, provides ample demonstration of this principle. In this regard, the future of African research lies in the hands of those who have a deep understanding of Africa and will “think locally” as they carry out child development research there. At the same time, understanding how to do that, and appreciating the importance of what one learns, can progress only as such local research is systematized and shared with others -- that is, when the local scientific activities connect with the larger global enterprise. From this perspective, a robust local African research community, actively contributing at the global level, is essential to building a true science of human development.

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Social Responsibility as a Dimension of Intelligence, and as an Educational Goal: Insights from Programmatic Research in an African Society Robert Serpell University of Zambia ABSTRACT: Implications of multi-method research in Zambia spanning four decades are discussed for psychological assessment, parent-teacher communication, educational policy, and research methodology. A cultural study of indigenous ideas in a rural Chewa community in eastern Zambia concluded that children’s intelligence was construed as an amalgam of cognitive alacrity with social responsibility. But in Zambia, as elsewhere, the curriculum of institutionalized public basic schooling is almost exclusively addressed to the cultivation of knowledge and cognitive skills. The Child-to-Child approach to education resonates with indigenous African values and practices. A case study of its application at a public primary school in northern Zambia documented sustained increases in social responsibility alongside strong academic outcomes. Connections with research and policy in other societies are discussed. KEY WORDS: social responsibility; psychological assessment; indigenous conceptions of intelligence; educational policy; child-child educational approach; Zambia

HOW CREDIBLE IS DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY IN CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN SOCIETY? Cultivation of children's optimal development is widely acknowledged as a shared responsibility of their immediate family and of the wider society in which they live. The African continent is both rich in cultural resources for this task and also confronted with extraordinary challenges arising from poverty, disease, conflict and a history of exploitative oppression. If systematic inquiry on African child development is to achieve recognition as a source of guidance for African families, service practitioners and policymakers, the science that it generates must not only meet the criteria of a community of scholarship but must also resonate with indigenous understandings (Serpell, 1990, 

An earlier version of this paper was circulated for discussion at the symposium on „Strengthening Africa‟s Contributions to Child Development Research‟ co-sponsored by the SRCD (Society for Research on Child Development) and the University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada, February 2-6, 2009. The present version has been influenced by insightful and constructive suggestions by a number of anonymous reviewers. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Robert Serpell, Department of Psychology, University of Zambia, Lusaka, Zambia; e-mail: [email protected]

SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Robert Serpell – Social Responsibility, Intelligence and Education

1994a, 1996/97). In this paper, I review the methods and findings of several strands of developmental research in Zambia, in search of implications for the future promotion of a field of African child developmental inquiry that is responsive to both of these accountabilities. In the first part of the 20th century, when the disciplinary field of developmental psychology was taking shape in Europe and North America, research on child development in Africa was almost exclusively directed and published by scholars of European cultural heritage. Despite their generally benign intentions and high levels of awareness of cross-cultural differences, the studies they conducted were predominantly 'centri-cultural' rather than 'cross-cultural' in design, posing questions of the form “how well can they do our tricks?” (Wober, 1969) or interpreting differences from Western norms through the lens of a deficit orientation (Cole & Bruner, 1971; Ginsburg, 1972). As a result, this body of research threw more light on the peculiar biases of middle-class, Western cultural practices and ethnotheories than on the meaning-systems informing alternative, endogenous approaches to child-rearing (cf Azuma, 1984; Sinha, 1986). Yet, until recently the findings of this research, along with those of child development research in Europe and the USA constituted the 'expert knowledge' base for training teachers, nurses, social workers and other professionals concerned with child development, at higher education institutions (HEIs) all over the African continent. A professional practitioner or policymaker seeking guidance on how to address a particular problem in Africa could hardly be blamed for regarding such 'expert knowledge' with some skepticism. Still less surprising would be the decision by an African parent struggling with a difficult problem of child development to turn away from such university-based experts in favor of the diagnostic advice of an indigenous traditional health practitioner. Of course, those trained in HEIs might condemn such advice as amateurish, superstitious, or old-fashioned and point to the underpinnings of scientific research to justify their claim that the advice they could offer to such clients is more reliable. But, when the science on which expert knowledge is based is so deeply infused with foreign concepts, theories and methods, an African clientele in the post-colonial era must surely pause for thought. These concerns prompted me to embark on two complementary lines of inquiry in the early 1970s. The first was designed to clarify the influence of recurrent experiences in children's everyday lives on the level of skills they display in various formal test situations. The second explored the ways in which adults responsible for the socialization of children in rural communities conceptualize the processes and outcomes of child development. Exploring the relevance of that perspective to formal education led to a wide-ranging study of the significance of schooling in the life-journeys of children born into such a community. Conspicuous shortcomings of the public education system in turn prompted me to search for alternative models of schooling that focus more productively on some of the personal dimensions of child development that rank high among indigenous African values. One such innovative curriculum was observed, analyzed and evaluated. The programmatic sequence of research questions informing these investigations is outlined in Table 1. The process through which this took place resembles an evolving journey, rather than implementation of a preconceived blueprint. Moreover, at many junctures along the way, I was critically supported by the co-constructive participation in research design, implementation and interpretation by various African colleagues1. In conclusion, I propose some broad recommendations for future research on child development in Africa.

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Table 1. Programmatic sequence of systematic inquiries in Zambia (1971 – 2008) 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Foundational studies – initial insights: a. How specific are perceptual skills? A cross-cultural, comparative, quasi-experimental study of pattern reproduction in various media by urban Zambian and English schoolchildren (197172). (Serpell, 1979) b. Estimates of children's intelligence in a rural African community. A cultural, quasiethnographic study based on semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of adults in Chewa villages (1973-74). (Serpell, 1977) Deepening or refining insights and exploring their scope of generalizability: a. Development and standardization of a nonverbal cognitive test especially suited to children in rural African environments: the Panga Munthu Test (Ezeilo, 1978; Kathuria & Serpell, 1997) b. Endogenous dimensions of intelligence in various African cultures: qualitative analysis of language use in Chi-Chewa and other African languages; critical review and synthesis of other more empirically structured investigations (Serpell, 1989; 1993, Ch 2) Extrapolating and investigating broader implications: a. The significance of schooling in the life-journeys of young people born into a rural community of a contemporary African society (Serpell, 1993) b. How do village adult ratings and locally adapted tests relate to academic performance at school? (Serpell, 1993, Ch 5; Serpell & Jere-Folotiya, 2008) c. Disjunctions between indigenous socialization values and the formal educational model of cognitive growth (Serpell, 1993, Ch 3; Serpell, 1996) d. Challenges of bicultural mediation, institutional coordination, syncretic fusion (Serpell, 1993, Ch 4, Ch.6). e. Local accountability of rural schools in an African national system of public education: implications for planning (Serpell, 1993, Ch.7; Serpell, 1999) Evaluating innovative interventions to address the challenges identified: a. Participatory appropriation of health science and technology: a case study of innovation in basic education in a rural district of Zambia: theoretical and historical analysis (Serpell & Mwape, 1998/99; Mumba, 2000; Udell, 2001; Serpell, 2008). b. The Child-to-Child approach and the cultivation of nurturance in the context of health science curriculum development: observation, interpretation and evaluation (Mwape & Serpell, 1996; Serpell, 2008) c. Personal dimensions and their relation to education: a follow-up study of students graduating from the Child-to-Child program in Mpika, Zambia (Adamson-Holley, 1999). Further evaluation of intervention outcomes. d. Development and refinement of instruments for teachers to assess psychological attributes relevant to indigenous values and communication with parents (Serpell & Mwape, 1998/99; Adamson-Holley, 1999) Methodological reflections: a. Metatheoretical analysis of the rationale for particular methodological strategies in cultural psychological research, grounded in the studies conducted in Zambia, and other studies in the USA and Ethiopia (Serpell, 1994a, 2006)

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Social Responsibility as a Dimension of Intelligence Our early research on cultural bias in the assessment of intelligence rested on the metaphor of culture as a womb (Serpell, 1994b), defining the environment that feeds and constrains child development. Recognizing that different cultures afford different patterns of opportunity for learning specific skills (Serpell, 1979), we went on to develop a new instrument for assessing cognitive ability among children growing up in a rural African context (Ezeilo, 1978, Kathuria & Serpell, 1998). This test (the Panga Munthu Test - PMT) is based in the medium of clay modeling, a widespread play activity in most rural areas. Unlike most of the other, currently available tests for children between the ages of 5 and 12, the PMT does not presuppose exposure to Western cultural practices and artifacts such as storybooks, pictures, puzzles and building blocks, which is very unevenly distributed among Africa‟s children. Thus the test may be especially suitable for the cognitive assessment of children who, for one reason or another, have received less formal schooling than is prescribed by official public policy, e.g. those orphaned by the AIDS pandemic or displaced by civil war. The commonest psychometric approach to test validity is to examine the correlation of test scores with an external criterion such as future scholastic achievement. But the power of a test to predict performance at school is simply beside the point for many clinical purposes of assessment in Zambia (Serpell, 1982). Thus a second, complementary line of research initiated in 1973 addressed the more fundamental question: what constitutes intelligence from the perspective of adults in a rural African community? Or, as my colleague, Chikomeni Banda, put it succinctly in Chi-Chewa for feedback to the host community: wanzelu ndani? (who is a person with nzelu ?) The term nzelu comes up in almost any discussion of intelligence among Chewa people. Its semantic load resembles in some important respects the English term intelligence, and the French word intelligence. But closer examination of how the term is used suggests that it may be closer in meaning to the Luganda concept of obugezi (Uganda), the Bemba concept of mano (Zambia), the Baoule concept of ng'louele (Cote d'Ivoire) and the Djerma-Songhai concept of lakkal (Mali). In studies of each of these African language groups, a distinction emerges between the notion of cognitive alacrity on the one hand and that of social responsibility on the other, with a highly valued personality trait defined as a combination of the two (Serpell, 1989). Our own study among the Chewa people of Zambia's Eastern Province did not focus only on analysis of the language used to describe children's attributes. The vocabulary of local discourse was elicited from adult informants in the context of a discussion that focused on a group of familiar children and how an adult would choose among them in an emergency situation. First reported in 1974 (Serpell, 1974, 1977), these findings have been revisited from a number of different angles over the years, and gave rise to a study that followed a cohort of 50 young people for 14 years (Serpell, 1993). This study of indigenous conceptions of child development in a rural Chewa community gave rise to the insight that nzelu was construed as an amalgam of cognitive alacrity with social responsibility. Since contemporary Western-style schooling in many African countries tends to assess children‟s educational progress almost entirely in terms of cognitive skills and knowledge acquisition, these findings have been interpreted as reflecting a serious credibility gap for public basic education with respect to the values and aspirations of parents in rural African communities.

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SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Robert Serpell – Social Responsibility, Intelligence and Education

Social Responsibility as an Educational Goal The disjunction between indigenous socialization values and those embedded in formal schooling has been a recurrent source of concern in the literature (e.g., Mazrui, 1972; Mukene, 1988; Nsamenang, 1992; Serpell & Hatano, 1997). Some authors have construed it as an impediment to modernization, while others have focused on the alienating consequences of schooling. An intermediary approach is to construe the disjunction as a challenge for bicultural integration. Banda (2008), for instance, advocates a syncretic approach to curriculum development in Zambian schools. Noting that the traditional agricultural practices of the Chewa people are informed by an internally coherent African indigenous knowledge system, much of which is either ignored or challenged by the practices of public formal schooling, he recommends the active promotion of hybridization. An explicit method, described by Barnhart & Kawagley (2005) uses an iterative process of communication between indigenous knowledge and cosmopolitan science to generate an integrated body of appropriate knowledge for the school curriculum. The policy agenda of empowering young people through formal education has been embraced with enthusiasm by most national governments and the United Nations, and a model of Institutionalized Public Basic Schooling (IPBS) has become increasingly standardized around the world (Serpell & Hatano, 1997). But, at a local level, basic schools in many rural African communities lack credibility. In my view, a key factor is the narrowing staircase model of schooling that has become standard in most countries on the continent, and the extractive definition of success that this promulgates. In the eyes of many low-income families in rural areas, schooling has become a system of extracting a small minority of the youth from their local community, leaving behind little of local value for those who do not pass the stringent selection exams, and in many cases alienating those who do pass from their culture of origin. A corrective strategy would be for national educational planners to treat rural primary schools as separate nodes with more explicit local accountability. One element of this process would be to articulate and legitimize alternative indicators of success by which the development of students can be gauged and accorded public recognition (Serpell, 1999). Reacting to the relativistic approach taken by many cultural psychology studies of African child development and socialization, including my own, Kagitcibasi (2007) has issued a stern warning against the adoption of “double standards” (p.217). As she points out, the elaboration of the Human Development Index (HDI) by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is a significant improvement over purely economic indices of progressive societal change such as per capita GDP, and affords an inviting opportunity for scientific psychology to contribute to such change. However, her claims that school learning is “more conducive to generalization and transfer” and “more instrumental than traditional skills for advancement in urbanizing societies” (p. 219), rest on contestable research evidence. Moreover, she acknowledges that “in most of the Majority World schools are inadequate” (p. 224). In my estimation, to overlook the potentially alienating consequences of poorly designed or poorly implemented IPBS is liable to undermine its effectiveness as an instrument of social progress. One systematic programme of educational innovation has centered around the principle of promoting social responsibility in pre-adolescent children. The Child-to-Child approach (CtC) is designed to mobilise the potential of children as agents of health education (Pridmore & Stephens,

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SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Robert Serpell – Social Responsibility, Intelligence and Education

2000). Conceptualised at a series of meetings in London in the 1960s, convened by David Morley (1973), its momentum as an international network was sustained for two decades by Hugh Hawes (1988). Both of these Britons were inspired in early phases of their professional careers by observations in Africa and elsewhere in the „Majority World‟ (Kağitçibaşi, 2007), of the widespread involvement of pre-adolescent children in the nurturant care of their younger siblings (Udell, 2001). In 1995, we embarked on a case study of CtC practices by a team of primary school teachers in the small Zambian town of Mpika (Serpell & Mwape, 1998/99). We observed an impressively comprehensive, integrative approach to involving preadolescent schoolchildren in the promotion of public health both at their school and in their home communities. One practice involved pairing schoolchildren with selected children of preschool age, whose weight was monitored as an index of nutritional status through regular visits to the local health centre. The growth-charts kept for these young children were deployed as resources for learning about mathematics (cf. Gibbs & Mutunga, 1991) and biology, while reflective discussions on factors contributing to their health led into social studies and English. Group projects were undertaken addressed to topics in demography and sanitation, and responsibilities were distributed for practical activities such as growing nutritious foods and bringing clean water to school. Throughout these and various other activities, the theme of active participation was applied both to exploratory problem-solving and to the cultivation of social responsibility (Mumba, 2000). School-leavers completing this programme are expected to be better prepared for many practical challenges of life in a rural community. Practical and social skills acquired were demonstrated through role-play (Mwape & Serpell, 1996), and parents interviewed were generally positive about the program‟s promotion of responsible participation in the nurturant care of younger children, which they recognised as an indigenous tradition (Serpell, 2008). Over the years, my perspective on the CtC approach has shifted from seeing it as a way of harnessing a neglected resource for implementing the expert agenda of health education, to a way of respecting the competence of children, and thus an opportunity to partner with children to address shared challenges. Some critics have voiced concern that outreach activities of the type emphasised by the CtC approach may divert students from mastery of the core curriculum. What we found in Mpika, however, was that students enrolled in CtC classes were also significantly more successful on the purely academic national secondary school selection examination than their peers at the same school enrolled in more conventional, non-CtC classes. The advantage of being enrolled in a CtC class was much more pronounced for one of the two streams, suggesting that individual differences between the two teachers' approach to the implementation also carried weight. The sustainability of prosocial attitudes was assessed in a follow-up study by Adamson-Holley (1999) of ninth grade students at two highly selective national high schools and two less selective basic schools in Mpika. Teachers unfamiliar with the CtC approach were invited to assess their students with rating scales developed in consultation with Zambian CtC practitioners. Basic school teachers rated girls with a CtC primary school background significantly higher on the dimensions of Nurturance, Cooperativeness and Taking Responsibility than their current classmates. But this finding was not replicated for boys, nor for either gender at the high schools. CtC students appeared to have less opportunities at the high schools to apply the cooperative, prosocial skills and attitudes they had acquired at primary school than those enrolled in basic schools.

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SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Robert Serpell – Social Responsibility, Intelligence and Education

CONNECTIONS WITH OTHER RESEARCH ON INTELLIGENCE, CULTURE AND EDUCATION Although the research programme described in this paper was developed in response to an African context, a number of the social issues that influenced its direction in Zambia have also been recognised in Western societies. For instance, public scepticism in American society about the validity of psychometric tests of intelligence and resistance to the use of such tests to justify exclusionary practices has fuelled the popularity of alternative theoretical perspectives on intelligence such as Gardner‟s (1983) concept of multiple intelligences, the contextual subtheory of Sternberg‟s (1984) triarchic theory, and Ceci‟s (1996) bio-ecological analysis. Sternberg et al (1981) found that urban, European-American laypersons‟ conceptions of behaviour indicative of an ideally intelligent person differed from those of American expert researchers on intelligence by including a social competence dimension absent from the expert view. And in rural and urban areas of Switzerland, it seems that different life-styles may be associated with different emphases on the relative importance of the social and technological dimensions of intelligence (Schurmans & Dasen, 1992). The recurrence of an emphasis on social responsibility as a valued dimension of intelligence across several African societies may reflect the predominance of rural modes of social organisation. But it would be unwise to conclude that the values expressed by African samples reflect an unsophisticated or outdated perspective. Many astute social analysts have noted that the progressivist movement of modernisation brings with it many social costs as well as material benefits. Moreover, Western societies acknowledge the importance of prosocial behavior as a socialisation goal, even if it only features rarely among the explicit objectives of school curricula. A sizeable body of empirical research was reviewed by Eisenberg (1992) on the developmental origins of cooperative and prosocial behaviour in Western societies, much of which seems consistent with the Child-to-Child approach in education. One research question of interest is what accounts for the relatively high level of nurturant care for younger siblings displayed by children raised in many African families. Eisenberg (1992, p.83) draws a sharp distinction between the expectation of reciprocity and truly “altruistic (that is, sympathetic and other-oriented)” motivation, as alternative drivers of cooperative behaviour, implying that cultures that cultivate high levels of cooperation may be promoting reciprocity rather than true altruism. In Africa as elsewhere, it is common to hear calls for the goals of education to include not only technical knowledge and skills, but also commitment to the public interest (Serpell, 2006b). If an ethic of reciprocity facilitates the integration of those goals, it may be relevant to the political goals of many different societies. The representation of cultural context offered by my research on child development in Zambia gradually expanded from the metaphor of culture as a womb, to include culture as a language and eventually also culture as a forum (Serpell, 1994b). Looking back, it is clear that the womb metaphor reflected the influence of Gibson & Gibson‟s (1955) developmental theory of perceptual differentiation (Serpell, 1969). The language metaphor was doubtless inspired by Pike‟s (1967) emicetic formulation, of which I later advanced an explicit critique and reformulation (Serpell, 1990). The forum metaphor arose from reflection on various systemic perspectives (Serpell, 1999), including Bronfenbrenner‟s (1979) ecology of human development, Lave & Wenger‟s (1991) apprenticeship model and Rogoff et al‟s (1995) three-tiered account of development through participation in

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SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Robert Serpell – Social Responsibility, Intelligence and Education

sociocultural activity, and the elaborations by Cole, Scribner, Bruner, Wertsch and Valsiner of Vygotsky‟s (1978) account of mind in society. Another influence on the forum metaphor was afforded by participation in an international symposium on the impact of psychology on Third World development (Serpell, 1984), where I was deeply impressed by Azuma‟s (1984) account of the pivotal role played by indigenization in the evolution of psychology in Japan. Among these influential authors, only Pike and Lave were anthropologists. Although I have emphasised the importance of tapping into indigenous culture, my research goals have always been primarily psychological rather than cultural. As Jahoda (1982) has explained in great detail, the disciplinary preoccupations of anthropology and psychology have become systematically different over the course their growth beyond common origins, yet psychology may stand to benefit from “ selective borrowing” (op. cit., 273) of methods and constructs developed by anthropologists. The seminal concept of the developmental niche advanced by Super & Harkness (1986) draws on the insight of Bronfenbrenner (1979) that human development takes place within a nested set of systemic interdependencies, and on the earlier research programme of John and Beatrice Whiting (1963), that documented in rich ethnographic detail how different are the worlds of childhood in different cultural settings around the world. Two dimensions of the developmental niche are cultural practices of child-rearing and caregiver ethnotheories. The parental practice of promoting responsible participation by preadolescent children in the nurturant care of younger siblings that we documented in Mpika is an example of the former, while an example of the latter is the system of ideas about nzelu and how to promote it that we documented in Katete.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH Table 2 presents in summary form some principles I recommend for guiding future research, based on the studies reviewed in this paper. I will elaborate on just three: Focusing on Ostensible Referents to Anchor Cross-cultural Communication In two of the studies described above, as well as another study conducted in the USA (Serpell, Baker & Sonnenschein, 2005), we proceeded by identifying ostensible referents in the foreground of our discussions, and shared horizons in the background, in order to anchor an exploratory process of negotiation with our key informants about their conceptions of intervening constructs in the middle ground (Serpell, 2006a). For example, our study of estimates of intelligence engaged informants with a focus on actual children as ostensible referents, and relied on shared horizons about the nature of parental responsibility in order to secure an authentic discussion between the interviewer and village adults about what attributes are important in children's behavior. Starting with an ostensible referent, by naming a particular person who can be pointed out brings into play a level of interpretation grounded in what Horton (1982) termed “primary theory” that is shared by all human beings and “provides the cross-cultural voyager with his intellectual bridgehead” for communication. Anchoring the communication with reference to real persons affords greater confidence that any secondary theoretical constructs presented by the informant have real application. Describing in detail how a conversation was initiated and conducted affords a kind of

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SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Robert Serpell – Social Responsibility, Intelligence and Education

audit trail, as recommended by Guba (1981), for ensuring that qualitative research is protected against the charge of unreliability.

Table 2. Some principles for guiding future research Researchers on child development in Africa should, whenever possible, seek to: a. unpackage fundamental concepts from the operational forms in which they are embedded b. deploy multiple methods for triangulating phenomena c. invoke multiple audiences in the validation of research conclusions d. focus on ostensible referents to anchor cross-cultural communication e. fine-tune the extrapolation of practical implications for distinctive groups of practitioners f. refine instruments for psychological assessment g. involve students as bicultural mediators and apprentices h. advocate for the cumulative construction of knowledge

Invoking Multiple Audiences in the Validation of Research Conclusions Taking stock of what we had learned in our longitudinal study of the significance of schooling in the lives of young people born into a rural Chewa community, we explored two different approaches to sharing our insights with the host community. The first, although carefully prepared, was much less successful than the second (Serpell, 1993 Ch 6). At first, we prepared documents in the local language citing verbatim, but anonymously, a range of statements of opinion expressed by village adults (many of them women) in the course of tape-recorded interviews. The focus was on potential connections between the school curriculum and either agriculture or health, and the opinions cited ranged from one extreme to another. These documents were distributed in advance in each village, and discussions were moderated by two undergraduate students raised as children in the neighborhood. In addition to village residents, we invited local health and agricultural extension workers to participate. By staging these discussions on the home ground of villagers, legitimizing their opinions by committing them to writing and leaving the agenda very loosely defined, we hoped to generate a balanced policy debate between different positions. In practice, however, the representatives of national health and agricultural agencies dominated the discussions, and those women villagers who attended remained essentially passive throughout. Our second approach involved fictional dramatization and was greatly facilitated by the late Professor Mapopa M'tonga and Ms Tamika Kaluwa, both internationally renowned exponents of the art of popular theatre (Etherton, 1982; Mlama, 1988). We co-constructed and staged a drama, dance and musical performance with the active participation of local teachers and school-leavers as well as a team of experienced animateurs, attracting a large and enthusiastic audience from several villages in and around the neighborhood. Analysis of the informal reflections by members of the audience during and immediately following the drama showed that it had successfully engaged a wide range of local stakeholders, including women, who constitute a crucially important constituency both for understanding child socialization practices and for participating in the design and implementation of progressive social change. Formulating an effective dramatization of research results is at least as

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SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Robert Serpell – Social Responsibility, Intelligence and Education

challenging as writing a technical paper for publication, and calls for interdisciplinary collaboration. For certain important audiences it may be the most viable way of engaging them with substantive issues identified by systematic research on African child development. Involving Students as Bicultural Mediators and Apprentices All of the studies described in this paper involved undergraduate students of UNZA at various stages of data collection. Student participation in research serves an important pedagogical function of special significance in African universities, where so much of the curriculum is modeled on foreign institutional practices and relies heavily on research conducted elsewhere, or conducted in the student's home country by foreign researchers. Under these circumstances, participation in research and other extra-mural projects affords students unique learning opportunities, by engaging them in the demanding cognitive process of testing formal theories against reality, by preparing them for practical challenges in the world of work, and by inviting them to confront indigenous interpretations of experience (Serpell, 2007). Student participation also brings important potential benefits to the research enterprise. Many have been exposed in the course of their earlier socialisation to an indigenous cultural perspective on psychological phenomena and have developed a deep understanding and commitment to certain elements of that perspective. They are thus well-placed to resist simplistic or systematically distorted interpretations of the culture. However, they will only share with researchers their grounds for such resistance if they recognize as authentic an invitation to do so. Opening their minds to the possibility of deploying indigenous concepts in the pursuit of scientific knowledge may pave the way for creative engagement with some of the challenges and paradoxes that have baffled past researchers on African child development.

CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS The principle of local accountability advocated above for rural primary schools is also applicable to universities and regional academic organisations in Africa. While those institutions and networks of scholarship form part of a larger system for the promotion of knowledge to address the grand issues confronting humanity and the planet earth, they also derive an important element of legitimacy from their local mandate from the people of Africa. Communicating effectively with that constituency is not only a matter of paying one's dues. It is also an intrinsic element of the process of scientific validation. Universities can and should include among their educational objectives the cultivation of social responsibility among students. Co-constructive participation by university students in applied research on child development affords many opportunities for addressing that challenge.

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SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Robert Serpell – Social Responsibility, Intelligence and Education

Note 1 In addition to the various colleagues cited in the text, I wish to acknowledge important contributions to the research reviewed in this paper by many African colleagues and friends who drew on their first-hand experience of childhood in African families and village communities to advise me on the design of procedures and the interpretation of results, as well as the many UNZA students who have shared with me their reactions to both preliminary and published reports of our findings. A number of positive responses by other African scholars to our findings among the Chewa and Bemba peoples of Zambia further encourage me to believe that they have some general applicability across the continent of Africa, even though the particulars vary from one African society to another. Even more gratifying than their endorsement of our findings has been the further elaboration they have published of ideas springing from, but going well beyond our original observations (e.g. Dasen, Barthelemy et al., 1985; Nsamenang, 1992; Ogunnaike & Houser, 2003; Mpofu, 2002).

REFERENCES Adamson-Holley, D. (1999). Personal dimensions and their relation to education: a follow-up study of students graduating from the Child-to-Child program in Mpika, Zambia. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Maryland Baltimore County Azuma, H. (1984). Psychology in a non-Western country. International Journal of Psychology, 19, 45-55. Banda, D. (2008). Education For All (EFA) and the „African Indigenous Knowledge Systems (AIKS)‟: the case of the Chewa people of Zambia. University of Nottingham, UK: unpublished PhD dissertation. Barnhardt, R., & Kawagley, A. O. (2005). Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Alaska Native Ways of Knowing. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 36(1), pp. 8-23. (Accessible on-line at http://www.ankn.uaf.edu/curriculum/Articles/BarnhardtKawagley/Indigenous_Knowledge. html. Accessed December 2008.) Bronfenbrenner, U. 1979. The Ecology of Human Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Ceci, C.J. (1996). On intelligence: a bio-ecological treatise on intellectual development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cole, M. & Bruner, J.S. (1971). Cultural Differences and Inferences about Psychological Processes. American Psychologist, 26, 867-876. Dasen, P.R., Barthelemy, D., Kan, E., Kouame, K., Daouda, K., Adjei, K.K., & Assande, N. (1985) Nglouele, l‟intelligence chez les Baoule. Archives de Psychologie, 53, 295-324. Eisenberg, N. (1992). The caring child. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Etherton, M. (1982). The development of African drama. New York: Holmes & Meier/Africana. Ezeilo, B. (1978). Validating Panga Munthu Test and Porteus Maze Test in Zambia. International Journal of Psychology, 13, 333-342. Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of Mind: the theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books. Gibson, J. J & Gibson, E.J. Perceptual learning: Differentiation or enrichment? Psychological Review

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62:32–41. Ginsburg, H. (1972). The myth of the deprived child: poor children’s intellect and education. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Guba, E.G. (1981). Criteria for assessing the trustworthiness of naturalistic inquiries. Educational Technology Research and Development, 29(2), 75-91. Hawes, H. (1988). Child-to-Child: another path to learning. Hamburg, Germany: UNESCO Institute for Education. Horton, R. (1982). Tradition and modernity revisited. In M.Hollis & S.Lukes (Eds), Rationality and relativism (pp.201-306).Oxford: Blackwell. Kağitçibaşi, C. (2007). Family and human development across cultures: A view from the other side, 2nd edition. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Kathuria, R. & Serpell, R. (1998). Standardization of the Panga Munthu Test - a nonverbal cognitive test developed in Zambia. Journal of Negro Education, 67, 228-241. Lave, J. and E. Wenger, 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Mazrui, A.A. (1972). Cultural Engineering and Nation-Building in East Africa. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Mlama, P. (1991). Culture and development: the popular theatre approach in Africa. Uppsala, Sweden: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet. Morley, D. (1973). Paediatric priorities in the developing world. London: Butterworths. Mpofu, E. (2002). Indigenization of the psychology of human intelligence in Sub-Saharan Africa. In W. J. Lonner, D. L. Dinnel, S. A. Hayes, & D. N. Sattler (Eds.), Online Readings in Psychology and Culture (Unit 5, Chapter 2), (http://www.wwu.edu/~culture), Center for Cross-Cultural Research, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington USA. Mukene, P. (1988). L'ouverture entre l'ecole et le mileu en Afrique noire: Pour une gestion pertinente des connaissances. Fribourg, Switzerland: Studia ethnographica Friburgensia. Mumba, P. (2000). “Democratisation of primary classrooms in Zambia: a case study of its implementation in a rural primary school in Mpika,” paper presented at International Special Education Congress 2000, University of Manchester, UK, July 24-28. Accessible on-line at http://www.isec2000.org.uk/abstracts/papers_m/mumba_2.htm (downloaded 30 May 2008) Mundy-Castle, A. C. (1974). Social and technological intelligence in Western and non-Western cultures. In S. Pilowsky (Ed.), Cultures in collision. Adelaide: Australian National Association of Mental Health. Mwape, G. & Serpell, R. (1996) Participatory appropriation of health science and technology. Poster presented at the International Conference of the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development ( ISSBD ). Quebec, Canada: August, 1996. (ERIC document ED417191.htm) Nsamenang, A. B. (1992). Human development in cultural context. New York: Sage. Ogunnaike, O.A. & Houser, R.F. ( 2003). Yoruba toddlers‟ engagement in errands and cognitive performance on the Yoruba Mental Subscale. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 26, 145-153. Pike, K.L. (1967). Language in relation to a unified theory of the structure of human behavior, 2nd edition. The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton.

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Rogoff, B., Baker-Sennett, J., Lacasa, P. & Goldsmith, D. (1995). Development through participation in sociocultural activity. In J.J.Goodnow, P.Miller & F.Kessel (Eds) Cultural practices as contexts for development (pp.45-65). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Schurmans, M.-N., & Dasen, P. R. (1992). Social representations of intelligence: Côte d'Ivoire and Switzerland. In: M. von Cranach, W. Doise, & G. Mugny (Eds.), Social representations and the social bases of knowledge (pp. 144-152), Bern: Hogrefe & Huber. Serpell, R. (1969) The influence of language, education and culture on attentional preference between colour and form. International Journal of Psychology, 4, 183-194. Serpell, R. (1974). Estimates of intelligence in a rural community of eastern Zambia. HDRU Reports, 25. Lusaka: University of Zambia, Human Development Research Unit (mimeo). Serpell, R. (1977). Estimates of intelligence in a rural community of eastern Zambia. In F.M.Okatcha (ed.) Modern psychology and cultural adaptation (pp.179-216). Nairobi: Swahili Language Consultants and Publishers. Serpell, R. (1979). How specific are perceptual skills? A cross-cultural study of pattern reproduction. British Journal of Psychology, 70, 365-380. Serpell, R. (1982). Measures of perception, skills, and intelligence: the growth of a new perspective on children in a Third World country. In W.W. Hartup (ed.), Review of Child Development Research, Vol. 6 (pp. 392-440). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Serpell, R. (1989). Dimensions endogenes de l'intelligence chez les AChewa et autres peuples Africains. In J.Retschitzki, M..BosselLagos & P.Dasen (eds), La recherche interculturelle, Tome II (pp.164 -179). Paris, France: Editions l'Harmattan. Serpell, R. (1990). Audience, culture and psychological explanation: a reformulation of the emic-etic problem in cross-cultural psychology. Quarterly Newsletter of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, 12 (3), 99-132. (Accessible at http://lchc.ucsd.edu/Histarch/newsletters.html) Serpell, R. (1993). The significance of schooling: life-journeys in an African society. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Serpell, R. (1994a). Negotiating a fusion of horizons: a process view of cultural validation in developmental psychology, Mind, Culture and Activity, 1, 43-68. Serpell, R. (1994b). The cultural construction of intelligence. In W.J.Lonner & R.S. Malpass (Eds) Readings in Psychology and Culture (pp. 157-163). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Serpell, R. (1996/97). Social intervention and psychological theory (Lessons from some recent studies in Zambia). African Social Research, 37/38, 40-60. Serpell, R. (1999). Local accountability to rural communities: a challenge for educational planning in Africa. In F. Leach & A. Little (Eds) Education, Cultures and Economics: Dilemmas for Development (pp.107-135). New York: Garland. Serpell, R. (2006a). Negotiating the middle ground between the ostensible and shared horizons: a dynamic approach to cross-cultural communication about human development. In J.Straub, D. Weidemann, C. Kölbl, & B. Zielke (eds.) Pursuit of Meaning: Advances in Cultural and CrossCultural Psychology (pp. 393-433). Berlin: Verlag. Serpell, R. (2006b). Public accountability of the University. Address by the Vice-Chancellor to the 2006 Graduation Ceremony of the University of Zambia. Lusaka: University of Zambia. Serpell, R. (2007). Bridging between orthodox western higher educational practices and an African sociocultural context. Comparative Education, 43 (1), 23-51.

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Serpell, R. (2008). Participatory appropriation and the cultivation of nurturance: a case study of African primary health science curriculum development. In P.R.Dasen & A.Akkari (Eds) Educational theories and practices from the majority world (pp. 71-97). New Delhi, India: Sage. Serpell, R., Baker, L., & Sonnenschein, S. (2005). Becoming literate in the city: the Baltimore Early Childhood Project. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Serpell, R. & Hatano, G. (1997). Education, literacy and schooling in cross-cultural perspective. In J.W. Berry, P.R.Dasen & T.M. Saraswathi (Eds.) Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology (2nd edition), Volume 2 (pp.345-382).Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Serpell, R. & Jere-Folotiya, J. (2008). Developmental assessment, cultural context, gender and schooling in Zambia. International Journal of Psychology, 43 (2), 88 – 96. Serpell, R. & Mwape, G. (1998/99). Participatory appropriation of health science and technology: a case study of innovation in basic education in a rural district of Zambia. African Social Research, 41/42, 60-89. Sinha, D. (1986). Psychology in a third world country: The Indian experience. New Delhi: Sage. Sternberg, R.J. (1984). Towards a triarchic theory of intelligence. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 7, 269 – 315. Sternberg, R.J., Conway, B.E., Ketron, J.L. & Bernstein, M. (1981). People‟s conceptions of intelligence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 37-55. Udell, C. (2001). Educational innovation: a case study of Child-to-Child in Zambia. Unpublished MA thesis, University of Maryland Baltimore County. UNESCO (2006). Education For All – Background Documents. Available on-line at http://www.unesco.org/education/efa/ed-for-all/background/jomtien-declaration.shtml (Accessed December 2008) Vygotsky, L. S. 1978. Mind in Society: the Development of Higher Psychological Processes. M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner and E. Souberman (Eds). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Whiting, B. (Ed) (1963). Six cultures. New York: Wiley. Wober, M. (1969). Distinguishing centri-cultural from cross-cultural research and tests. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 28, 488.

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Bridging Culture, Research and Practice in Early Childhood Development: The Madrasa Resource Centers Model in East Africa Peter A. M. Mwaura1 and Kofi Marfo2 1Madrasa Regional Research Program-East Africa, 2University of South Florida

ABSTRACT: The Madrasa Resource Centers program in East Africa has adapted features of EuroAmerican theory and practice into a service delivery system responding to local cultural and socio-economic realities. After 25 years of implementation in predominantly Muslim communities with high poverty and low literacy rates, the program could serve as a model for other parts of the continent with similar population profiles. We examine some of the program’s key features and discuss the prospects that MRC’s integration of research into service delivery holds for developmental research in the region. We propose that university partnerships with such programs could yield productive inquiry with benefits to local universities, community-based programs, and developmental science. KEY WORDS: Early childhood development, early childhood education; Madrasa preschools; applied developmental research; university-community partnerships; East Africa

Several forces have converged to increase the prominence of early childhood development/ education (ECD/E) programs in Africa. Dramatic socio-cultural change is altering traditional patterns of childcare (Njenga & Kabiru, 2001). Subsistence economies are losing viability, mobility and settlement patterns are reducing the role of extended family members in child care, and enhanced schooling opportunities for children have diminished older siblings‘ involvement in traditional socially distributed childcare systems (see Kipkorir, 1993). Alternative arrangements for childcare have become necessary, and communities are increasingly looking to preschools as a realistic option. With schooling perceived broadly as the ultimate panacea for socio-economic problems facing families and communities, preschool programs have gained importance in their own right; even among poor 

This article is based on a paper prepared by the first author for the invitational conference Strengthening Africa’s Contributions to Child Development Research, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, February 2-6, 2009. The second author is thankful to the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, where his contribution to the final version of this paper was written. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Peter A. M. Mwaura, Lead Researcher, Madrasa Regional Research Program, East Africa, Aga Khan Foundation East Africa,, 8th Floor ICEA Building, Kenyatta Avenue, P.O Box 40898-00100, Nairobi Kenya; E-mail: [email protected]

SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Peter Mwaura and Kofi Marfo – Madrasa Early Childhood Program in East Africa

and uneducated families, there is growing conviction that children exposed to such programs have a better chance at succeeding in school. In East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda), governments have long recognized the importance of ECD/E for later school success, although programs have largely been funded not by governments but by local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international philanthropic agencies. Across all three countries, preschool centers are mostly owned and managed by communities. In recent decades, ECD/E programs have received an additional boost from international agencies — especially UNESCO, UNICEF, and the World Bank — promoting these programs as a necessary part of the broader strategy for national development and poverty reduction (UNESCO, 2000, 2007; Young & Mustard, 2008, Van der Gaag, 2002). Under the foregoing influences, East Africa has witnessed tremendous growth of ECD/E programs during the last three decades, although gross enrollment ratios (GER – number of enrolled children as a percentage of all similar-age children) remain low. The latest Education for All (EFA) report shows that as of 2007, the GERs for the three countries stood at 48% for Kenya, 35% for the Republic of Tanzania, and 4% for Uganda – with boys and girls similarly represented (UNESCO, 2010). The expansion in programs has not been matched with commensurate attention to quality beyond the formulation of national policies focusing predominantly on personnel and physical environment standards (Republic of Kenya, 2006a, 2006b; Republic of Uganda, 2007; Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar, 2005). Neither have there been systematic efforts to assess these programs with regard to their processes and outcomes. Amidst widespread concern that the rapid expansion in ECD/E services is driven by EuroAmerican program models and practices presented as universal standards of best practice (Pence, this issue), the imperative for systematic inquiry into all aspects of ECD/E interventions cannot be overstated. However, the expertise and resources needed to support such inquiry are extremely limited throughout the continent. This paper explores the potential contributions that an analysis of the mission, structure, and operations of a comprehensive cross-national, multi-site community-based ECD/E program could make to applied developmental research on the continent. The paper explores the adaptation and integration of a North American curricular/pedagogical framework into a locally responsive service delivery system, its attainment of an appreciably high level of program sustainability and local ownership within resource-poor communities, and its strong valuing of research. These attributes position the Madrasa Resource Centers‘ (MRC) program to make important contributions to the science and practice of ECD/E. Consequently, the paper uses the program as a prism to explore the prospects for advancing developmental research in the region.

THE MRC ECD/E PROGRAM Currently, MRC supports at least 203 communities: 66 in Kenya, 53 in Uganda, and 84 on Zanzibar Island, Tanzania. The program has benefited some 30,000 children and trained over 4,000 community-based teachers and 2,000 school management committee members across the region. At the 2007 commemoration of the program‘s 25th anniversary, His Highness the Aga Khan described the program as ―a story that began with the sowing of some very small but well selected seeds … seeds which took root and now have blossomed into an educational success story which can serve as an

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inspiring example to educators everywhere‖ (http://www.akdn.org/Content/211). In this section, some of the key components of the program, including a brief history, are summarized briefly. Historical and Socio-Cultural Context The program began initially as a small pilot project on Kenya‘s coastal region in the mid-1980s with Aga Khan Foundation funding. It became a regional initiative when programs were also established in Zanzibar (Tanzania) and Uganda in 1990 and 1993, respectively. It evolved in response to a concern in Muslim communities that appropriate and high quality education programs were not readily available to their children. Access to local schools was inadequate and children who were fortunate to gain admission performed poorly. These economically disadvantaged communities with large families and high adult illiteracy rates (Zimmermann, 2004) perceived the national secular education system as uni-dimensional and incomplete, focusing exclusively on academic skills to the exclusion of education in the moral and spiritual values that defined the cultural and religious outlook of Muslims. Conversely, traditional Islamic education, which was well accepted in the Islamic population, was perceived to be limited because its singular focus on religious values shortchanged children on the critical skills and competencies needed for survival and success in the secular world. In Kenya this concern had been underscored decades earlier by the Education Commission Report, popularly known as the Ominde Report (Ominde, 1964, p. 34-36): Whereas education that has spread elsewhere in Kenya under Christian auspices has assumed a secular form, Islamic education is wholly centered in Islam as a religion and as a social and cultural system … The need for secular education was clearly recognized, as was also the danger that a neglect of it would increasingly place Muslims at a disadvantage in meeting the demands of a modern world. Muslim communities saw the need to have their children well grounded in their faith and local culture while also gaining skills necessary to enter and do well in secular schools. To them, ECD/E was a critical starting point for bridging religio-cultural socialization and secular education. Thus MRC is deeply rooted in practical historical and socio-cultural realities within the communities that came to embrace, support, and own it. Program Expansion: Community Entry and Participation MRC program operations begin with the identification of communities in need of ECD/E services. Community entry is done through community and religious leaders. The number of children with no access to preschool and the community‘s willingness to participate are important criteria for establishing a program. Following selection, community mobilization activities are initiated to 1) raise awareness about existing education problems, 2) sensitize the population to the importance of early childhood development, and 3) position the community to assume collective responsibility for solving identified problems. In so doing, the program promotes self-reliance and active involvement in local capacity building. Once agreement has been reached to establish a center, the community‘s investment and involvement are evident in all aspects of the program. The community identifies or donates land to build a new facility or renovates an existing structure. Under an MRC community development of-

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ficer‘s guidance, community leaders then mobilize people and resources to ensure that the center will provide high quality developmental and preschool experiences for children. Teachers are identified within the community by the community members themselves and trained by MRC trainers. Program evaluation, a core element of MRC‘s service delivery, is a joint venture between community members and MRC staff. For the first two years the preschools are evaluated biannually by the community members and the MRC staff independently; the MRC staff and the community‘s representatives then come together to discuss their findings. This participatory process is intended to build community-level evaluation capacity, sensitize communities to quality issues, and inculcate a sense of ownership for sustainability. At the end of two years, the preschools are assessed by the national MRC board, and then by a panel of external experts, including Ministry of Education officials. Once a preschool meets the required quality standards, it is allowed to join the Madrasa Graduated Preschools Association, which takes over the monitoring and evaluation function with occasional support from MRC staff. Curriculum and Pedagogy The MRC program addresses goals relating not only to learning but also to health and nutrition, growth monitoring, and parenting education. The program serves all children, including those with special needs and HIV/AIDS, and aims to facilitate the transition from home to preschool and primary school, subsequently. The program borrows its pedagogical principles and practices from the High/Scope preschool model (Hohmann & Weikart, 1995), which is grounded in two traditions: the Piagetian cognitive developmental view of learning as ―a process in which the child acts on and interacts with the immediate world to construct an increasingly elaborate concept of reality‖ (Hohmann & Weikart, 1995, p. 16), and the Deweyan progressivist view of learning as ―change in patterns of thinking brought about by experiential problem-solving‖ (Kohlberg & Mayer, 1972) in the context of natural interactions with people and the environment (Hohmann & Weikart, 1995). Thus, the MRC‘s pedagogical foundation is the constructivist philosophy of valuing children as active agents of their own learning and discovery (Piaget, 1970) within a socio-cultural milieu (Vygotsky, 1978). This is a profound departure from the pedagogy of recitation and memorization characteristic of religious education in traditional Madrasas. MRC has adopted High/Scope‘s five ingredients of active learning: abundance of ageappropriate materials for children to use in a variety of ways; opportunities for children to manipulate materials, choose activities and materials in line with personal interests, and use language — all with appropriate adult support. The acronym coined at MRC to capture the centrality of these active learning ingredients is MAMACHOLASU (MA: material; MA: manipulation; CHO: choice; LA: language and SU: support; Madrasa Resource Center, 2000). Throughout the school day, children have opportunities to interact with culturally appropriate materials, with the teacher‘s main role being one of observing and asking appropriate questions to identify the developmental level of the child in order to guide further exploration and discovery. In the context of the raging debate on the importation of Western practices, it is instructive to note that while constructivism and active learning are formal conceptualizations in Western educational theory, the forms of learning and instructional philosophies inherent in them are not uniquely Western. Rogoff and her colleagues have identified attending, observing, imitating, creating, partici-

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pating, and co-constructing as natural, participatory learning mechanisms through which children from all cultures come to gain knowledge of their world long before their exposure to the didactic, assembly-line instruction found in schools (Rogoff et al., 2003). In a conceptual analysis of young children‘s play in African cultures, Marfo and Biersteker (in press) have argued that careful examination of early developmental and learning processes in African contexts reveals pedagogical insights and principles that are very much compatible with constructivist, discovery, activity-based or problem-based learning, as conceptualized in Euro-American contexts. The curricular and pedagogical adaptations at MRC have not necessarily arisen out of formalized guidelines on cultural/contextual relevance; nevertheless, MRC employs instructional methods that build on local approaches to teaching children, including the use of interactions around stories, songs, and concrete as well as imaginary play objects and activities to stimulate thinking and exploration. Grounding program operations and curricular practices in the local context National standards guiding the operation of preschools vary across the region. However, MRC centers in all three countries use a standard curriculum with sufficient flexibility to permit local condition to dictate the selection of instructional materials and the nature of supports elicited or received from the community. The program uses teaching aids and learning materials constructed from lowcost materials readily available within the community. Children, teachers, parents, and the community at large all participate in collecting safe materials for development into useful teaching and learning aids, and parents are encouraged to collaborate with teachers to develop such materials. MRC‘s holistic approach to curriculum content and instructional delivery revolves around three kinds of ‗integration‘. First, by virtue of the socio-cultural values and circumstances that gave birth to the program, the curriculum content integrates secular academic education and Islamic religious education. Second, the two types of content are taught not in isolation from each other but as an integrated whole; lessons are planned around themes fusing instruction in secular academic skills and religious values. Third, the program integrates skills and competencies across all dimensions of child development, along with educational activities for parents and the community emphasizing childrearing skills, including healthy nutrition care and hygiene practices, as well as knowledge facilitative of parents‘ ability to complement the program‘s instructional efforts.

MRC RESEARCH ON PROGRAM PROCESSES AND OUTCOMES Even in resource-rich regions, such as North America, it is unusual for community-based programs to have in-house research units. It is significant, therefore, that the MRC program has a research division headed by a Lead Researcher with formal training in research methodology and statistical analysis. This feature of MRC‘s organizational structure underscores the program‘s commitment to using research to continually inform practice and policy within and outside the program. The Regional Research Program was inaugurated in 1998 ―to undertake studies and create systems that would assist in the identification of gaps, as well as provide information that would help in the decision-making process at all levels‖ (Zimmerman, 2004, p. 95). That mandate now includes ―assess-

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ment of pre-schools, the study of context and features of program effectiveness, and the development of the capacity of staff to undertake monitoring and evaluation‖ (p. 95). To illustrate the promise that MRC‘s research program holds for the ECD/E field on the continent, we consider two specific research initiatives. The first utilized qualitative methodology ―to identify and describe the content, contexts, and processes that go into the creation of projects that enable children and their families to achieve better lives‖ (Zimmerman, 2004, p. 98). The extensive report, published by the Bernard van Leer Foundation (Zimmerman, 2004) reveals a meticulous and creative use of culturally sensitive tools and protocols to obtain evaluative feedback in communities with relatively low educational attainment. For example, the metaphor of the African dish (as entailing ingredients/inputs, the cooking process, the finished dish, and those who partake in the dish) was used to prime respondents to think about a program as having multiple components. Similarly, the tree in a shamba (garden) metaphor was used to prime respondents to think about the program as a tree (its roots, branches, leaves, and fruit being analogous to components of the program) and to consider what might go wrong or well for the program to produce positive or negative outcomes. Using such ecologically appropriate protocols, qualitative interviews were conducted in 24 centers (8 from each country) with seven participants from each center: two children, two parents, a teacher, a school management committee member, and a community member. From the analysis of these interviews 10 conditions deemed to contribute to effectiveness and sustainability were extracted to guide future quality improvement decisions and policies (Zimmerman, 2004). A second study employed a quasi-experimental design to assess short-term program impact on cognitive outcomes (Mwaura, Sylva, & Malmberg, 2008). The design included 8 MRC and 8 nonMRC centers from each of the three countries (total of 48 centers, less one drop-out). Each pair of MRC and non-MRC centers was chosen from the same community, with a minimum of one to three kilometers between them. Centers had to have been non-profit and in operation for at least two years at the time of pre-testing to be included. Within each school, one classroom was selected from which 10 to 17 children were randomly drawn into the sample. A non-preschool control group included at least 10 children from the communities surrounding each selected center (see Mwaura et al., 2008 for other methodological details). Reflecting the dearth of locally developed instruments, the cognitive measures used in the study were based on selected subscales from the British Ability Scales II – Early Years (BAS II, Elliot, Smith, & McCulloch, 1996) and the African Child Intelligence Test (ACIT, Drenth et al., 1980) adapted from a Dutch instrument (Bleichrodt, Drenth, Zaal, & Resing, 1984). The BAS II scales measured verbal comprehension, picture similarities, number concepts, and block building, while the ACIT scales measured class principle/concept, visual cognition, and verbal meaning. The analyses reported by Mwaura et al. (2008) were based on 423 children for whom both pre-test and posttest data were available (Zanzibar—45%, Kenya—33%, Uganda—22%). The study‘s findings are consistent with what has been typically reported in North America. First, even after controlling for child and family characteristics at pre-test, preschool programs (MRC and non-MRC alike) had a significant positive influence on cognitive outcomes; gains from pre-test to post-test were significantly larger for children from the two preschool conditions than they were for non-preschool control children. Second, cognitive gains were stronger for the MRC program children than they were for non-MRC children. Classroom learning environment data from another study (Malmberg, Mwaura, & Sylva, in press) may help to explain the difference in cognitive out-

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comes for MRC and non-MRC children. Using an adaptation of the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (Sylva, Siraj-Blatchford, Taggart, & Coleman, 2003), the study found a higher quality learning environment in MRC centers. While the MRC‘s research unit is young, and the scope of its outcomes research needs to expand substantially beyond the cognitive and academic domains, it is a model worth considering as developmental intervention programs emerge across the continent. In the next section, we explore research challenges on the continent and share a few thoughts on ways forward.

ECD/E PROGRAMS AND APPLIED DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH IN AFRICA: CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS Twenty-five years ago — amidst growing international attention to early childhood developmental interventions in developing nations — Wagner (1986) observed that unless research specialists are involved very early in the planning of such programs, substantial investments may be lost. Considering the combined activities of the World Bank, UNICEF, UNESCO, and major international philanthropic agencies — among them the Bernard van Leer Foundation, the Aga Khan Foundation, and Save the Children — it is safe to contend that significantly more investments are being made in ECD/E in developing countries today than has been the case in the past. Wagner‘s caution is therefore still relevant, but meeting that ideal remains elusive in African. Much of what informs programs in Africa continues to come predominantly from EuroAmerican research (e.g., Hyde & Kabiru, 2003; Nsamenang, 2008; Pence & Hix-Small, 2009). Indeed, in establishing the rationale for investments in ECD/E in developing countries advocates frequently cite American research as if there are no constraints to the extrapolation of findings across societies with different cultural values and socio-economic fortunes. Unfortunately, there is limited research expertise on the continent to take advantage of what we know from the West to launch programs that appropriately reflect local needs and circumstances. Where research expertise exists, it is undercut by numerous challenges, including limited access to current literature on advances in the field locally and abroad. University libraries are under-resourced and inaccessible to community-based ECD/E research professionals. The advent of electronic literature databases promises to ameliorate this problem; however, access to such databases requires internet connectivity, which is not readily available to large numbers of research professionals. Even when connectivity is not a problem, obtaining literature from electronic sources can be extremely expensive, and many universities either lack the resources to acquire access to databases or do not give adequate priority to them in their budgetary planning. The need for research capacity building on the continent is thus clear, and we devote this final section to a selective discussion of some practical steps toward that end. We begin with the critical role that African universities can play. The proliferation of ECD/E programs across the continent presents unprecedented opportunities for creativity in contemplating programs of inquiry to generate knowledge that is directly pertinent to the African context. One way to harness these opportunities, despite the enormous resource challenges facing the continent, is for African universities to build university-community partnerships that simultaneously advance the academy‘s research mission and support community-based programs in their efforts to deliver high quality services. Such

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partnerships have the prospect not only of promoting better engagement between universities and their various publics but also building research capacity in related disciplines and fields. As potential vehicles for undergraduate and graduate research training, these partnerships could be institutionalized as part of a university‘s curriculum for preparing future researchers. In turn, communitybased programs will benefit by tapping into the expertise of research faculty to undertake research that is likely to contribute to program enhancements. To illustrate how some research challenges can be addressed in the context of such partnerships, consider the pervasive problem regarding measurement tools. Research with local relevance is severely hampered by excessive dependence on imported instruments, often adopted with little or no adaptations. The MRC‘s program impact research summarized above is a case in point. The study‘s instruments were not selected because they were the most appropriate for the context but because they were a convenient ―next best choice‖ in the absence of locally validated tools. Collaborative research partnerships in which university faculty and their research assistants are actively involved in the design of ecologically valid instruments for a broad range of developmental and learning outcomes could (1) reduce dependence on foreign instruments and (2) expand the scope of outcome assessments beyond the academic and cognitive domains. Regarding the latter, it is important that programs pay attention to culturally defined measures of social competence, social intelligence, and general astuteness in out-of-school contexts. Ample conceptual and empirical work exists on some of these constructs (Serpell, this issue; Super et al., this issue) to provide guidance on instrument design. Beyond what individual universities can do, there are also ways for the higher education establishment at large to cultivate and/or better harness institutional synergies for research capacity development. For example, as noted in the introductory paper (Marfo et al., this issue), the Association of African Universities (AAU) has made research capacity building one of its top priorities. The challenge lies in finding the appropriate mechanisms and the resources to attain this goal. One reasonable approach may lie in small steps that are not overly costly, especially those that take advantage of existing, but largely uncoordinated efforts. In the child development field, regional workshops sponsored by the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development, and the International Union of Psychological Sciences are contributing in significant ways to regional research capacity building (Marfo et al., this issue). If the AAU were to cultivate collaborative partnerships with similarly responsive international research organizations the multiplier effects on research capacity across disciplines could be quite substantial. Additionally, international organizations and donor agencies would be contributing significantly to the development of research expertise on the continent if they drew more local professionals into their country-level contractual research programs. The prototypical practice within the donor community is one in which donor-funded research projects are routinely contracted out to itinerant expatriate researchers. With a little bit of creativity, these research contracts could be structured deliberately to contribute to research capacity building. Advocacy for movement in this direction has to come from the continent‘s universities and professional research organizations.

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CONCLUSION A cross-national multi-site program delivered within local communities under the auspices of one agency is quite rare and even rarer when it integrates research. The MRC program should thus be of interest to those engaged in research capacity building in Africa. In addition to serving as a model for comparable populations in other parts of Africa, MRC is positioned to spawn applied research with local and global implications. However, such lofty expectations are perhaps unrealistic for an agency with limited financial and personnel resources. Our suggestion that MRC is the ideal ―material‖ out of which productive university-community partnerships are made deserves close consideration by universities across the region. With the high profile attention that ECD/E enjoys in the international donor world, universities exercising leadership in partnering with programs like MRC might succeed in obtaining funding from international sources to build collaborative research programs that will help fulfill the community engagement mission of the African academy and simultaneously advance scientific knowledge with policy and practice benefits.

REFERENCES Bleichrodt, N., Drenth, P. J. D., Zaal, J. N., & Resing, W. C. M. (1984). Revisie Amsterdamse Kinder Intelligentietest. Lisse, The Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger. Drenth, P. J. D., Van der Flier, H., Muinde, N. P., Otaala, B., Omari, I.M. & Opolot, J. A. (1980). Jatibio Akili Mtoto Afrika (African child intelligence test). Vrije Universiteit: Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Elliot, C. D., Smith, P., & McCulloch, K. (1996). British Ability Scale (BAS). Berkshire: NFER-NELSON. Hohmann, M., & Weikart, D. (1995). Educating young children: Active learning practices for preschool and child care programs (Excerpt from Educating Young Children). Ypsilanti, Michigan: High/Scope Press. Hyde, K. A. L., & Kabiru, M. N. (2003). Early childhood development as an important strategy to improve learning outcomes. [Working Document D5]. Paris: Association for the Development of Education in Africa. Kipkorir, L. I. (1993). Kenya. In M. Cochran (Ed.), International handbook of child care policies and programs (pp. 333-354). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Kohlberg, L., & Mayer, R. (1972). Development as the aim of education. Harvard Educational Review, 42, 449-496. Madrasa Resource Centre (2000). The Madrasa preschool Curriculum. Mombasa, Kenya: Madrasa Resource Centre East Africa Regional Office. Available from: [email protected]. Malmberg L.E., Mwaura, P. & Sylva, K (in press). Effects of a pre-school intervention on cognitive development among East-African preschool children: A flexibly time-coded growth model. Early Childhood Research Quarterly. Marfo, K., & Biersteker, L. (in press). Exploring culture, play, and early childhood education practice in African contexts. In S. Rogers (Ed.), Rethinking play pedagogy in early childhood education: Contexts, concepts and cultures. London: Routledge. Mwaura, P., Sylva, K., & Malmberg L-E. (2008). Evaluating the Madrasa pre-school program in East Africa: A quasi experimental study. International Journal of Early Years Education, 16, 237-255.

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Njenga, A, & Kabiru, M. N. (2001). In the web of cultural transition: A tracer study of children in Embu District, Kenya. The Hague: Benard van Leer Foundation. Nsamenang, A. B. (2008). (Mis)Understanding ECD in Africa: The force of local and global motives. In M. Garcia, A. Pence, & J. J. Evans (Eds.). Africa’s future, Africa’s challenge: Early childhood care and development in Sub-Saharan Africa (pp. 135-149). Washington, DC: World Bank. Ominde, S.H. (1964). Kenya Education Commission Report. Nairobi: Government Printers Pence, A. R., & Hix-Small, H. (2009). Global children in the shadow of the global child. International Critical Childhood Policy Studies2(1), 75-91 Piaget, J. (1970). The psychology of intelligence. London: Routledge. Republic of Kenya (2006a). Early childhood development service standard guidelines for Kenya. Nairobi: Ministry of Education. Republic of Kenya (2006b). National Early Childhood Development Policy Framework. Nairobi: Ministry of Education. Republic of Uganda (2007). Final draft policy on Early Childhood Development, Kampala: Ministry of Education and Sport, Department of Pre-primary and Primary Education Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar (2005). Draft policy on Early Childhood Development. Zanzibar: Ministry of Education. Rogoff, B., Paradise, R., Arauz, R. M., Correa-Chavez, M., & Angelillo, C. (2003). Firsthand learning through intent participation. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 175-203. Sylva, K, I. Siraj-Blatchford, and B. Taggart. (2003). Assessing Quality in the Early Years. Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale. Extension ECERS-E. Four Curricular Subscales. London: London Institute of Education. UNESCO (2000). The Dakar framework for action: Education for All—Meeting our collective commitments (Adopted by the World Education Forum, Dakar, Senegal). Paris: Author. UNESCO (2007). Education for all by 2015: Will we make it? (EFA Global Monitoring Report, 6th Edition). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. UNESCO (2010). EFA global monitoring report: Reaching the marginalized. Paris: Author. van der Gaag, J. (2002). From child development to human development. In M. E. Young (Ed.), From early child development to human development (pp. 63-78). Washington, DC: World Bank. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Wagner, D. A. (1986). Child development research and the Third World: A future of mutual interest? American Psychologist, 41, 298-301. Young, M. E., & Mustard, F. (2008). Brain development and ECD: A case for investment. In M. Garcia, A. Pence, & J. L. Evans (Eds.), Africa’s future, Africa’s challenge: Early childhood care and development in Sub-Saharan Africa (pp. 71-91). Washington, DC: World Bank. Zimmerman R. (2004). Stories we have lived, stories we have learned about early childhood development programs. Netherlands: Bernard Van Leer Foundation.

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Envisioning an African Child Development Field Kofi Marfo University of South Florida

ABSTRACT: Institutionalization of an African child development field is a necessary aspect of strategies for strengthening the continent’s contributions to a global knowledge base. A disciplinary structure advances inquiry as it facilitates professionalization and provides space to formulate the canons and conventions that will guide knowledge production and the preparation and socialization of future researchers. Using the term disciplinary development to denote the process of bringing such a field about, this paper outlines a pathway to disciplinary development, emphasizing important lessons that must be learned from (a) internal challenges to knowledge production in African universities, (b) Euro-American psychology’s disciplinary development history, and (b) the movement to institutionalize psychology in non-Western countries. The issues addressed have relevance to other non-Western societies. KEY WORDS — cultural contexts; disciplinary development; African child development field; global developmental science; paradigmatic/ methodological issues

In the late 1920s, anthropological linguist Edward Sapir – a pioneer advocate for interdisciplinarity among anthropology, psychology, and linguistics – affirmed that ‗‗the worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels‘‘ (Sapir, 1929 cited in Shweder, 1991, p. 362). Far from ignoring commonalities in the human experience across cultures, Sapir‘s observation reminds us that cross-cultural variability in the conceptions and conventions that shape human behavior limits the generalizability of knowledge from one culture to another. Notwithstanding the long-standing exhortation for anthropological researchers entering other societies to be cognizant of cultural differences, psychological research in non-Western societies emerged within a Western ―transplant‖ orientation and has proceeded largely as if cultural differences between societies are not significant.



This article is based on a paper prepared for the SRCD-sponsored invitational conference “Strengthening Africa’s Contributions to Child Development Research” held in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, February 2-6, 2009. An earlier version was presented in a symposium on Africa at SRCD‘s 2009 Biennial Conference in Denver, Colorado. I am thankful to Robert Serpell for his thorough and thoughtful feedback on the initial draft and to the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, where revision work on the manuscript was completed during my residential fellowship. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Kofi Marfo, Department of Psychological & Social Foundations, University of South Florida—EDU105, 4202 E. Fowler Avenue, Tampa, Florida, U.S.A 33620. E-mail: marfo@ usf.edu.

SRCD Africa Child Development Research Capacity Building Study Group Kofi Marfo – Envisioning an African Field

Cross-cultural psychology‘s emergence signaled hope that culture would be ―drawn‖ into psychology‘s scientific program and thus open the discipline up to other cultural conceptions and help expand the nexus of psychological knowledge. Cross-cultural psychology was soon to be criticized on the grounds that its preoccupation with attaining a level of methodological sophistication acceptable to scientific psychology had led it to project culture as a qualifying variable, paying insufficient attention to cultural processes underlying differences in behavior across cultures (Cole, 1996; Miller, 1997; Price-Williams, 1980; Shweder, 1991). Cultural psychology — the much heralded ―second psychology‖ that was to put culture back into psychological research more substantively — is seen as charting an uncertain trajectory of maturation (Ratner, 2008; Valsiner, 2009a). Even so, in its various manifestations — e.g., as a sub-discipline supplementing traditional psychology‘s experimental focus with ―a theoretically informed applied psychology that is sensitive to the complex historicalcultural locations of psychological processes‖ (Greenwood, 1999, p. 506) or as a methodologically pluralistic field (Cohen, 2007) in transition — it has inspired important theoretical and empirical contributions in ecological, socio-cultural, and cultural-historical approaches to the study of development (Cole, 1996; Greenfield, 1997a, 2009; Greenfield, Keller, Fuligni, & Maynard, 2003; Rogoff, 1990, 2003; Super & Harkness, 1986, 2002; Weisner, 2002). These contributions, along with influences from cross-cultural psychology, are helping to open Euro-American developmental science up in ways that pave the way for research conducted through other cultural lenses to contribute to a global discipline. Outside American psychology, the indigenous psychologies movement became the platform for Western-trained scholars from developing countries to advocate for a culturally appropriate psychology (Adair & Kağitçibaşi, 1995; Azuma, 1984; Serpell, 1984a; Sinha, 1997). The movement was powered by at least two forces, one reactive and the other generative. The former, reflected in postcolonial critiques, underscored psychology‘s limited relevance to, and imperialist image in, nonWestern countries. The generative force, on the other hand, found expression in efforts to conceptualize and fashion the form and content of indigenous psychologies. Such ―generative‖ work has proceeded in diverse intellectual directions (Kağitçibaşi, 1996, 2000, 2002; Kim, Yang, & Hwang, 2006). In Africa, it is manifested in empirical work on indigenous conceptions of intelligence (e.g., Kathuria & Serpell, 1998; Serpell & Jere-Folotiya, 2008), in philosophical analysis and theory-building on indigenous understandings of development (e.g., Nsamenang, 1992, 2004, 2006), in contributions to dialogue on disciplinary development (e.g., Mpofu, 2002; Nsamenang, 1995; Serpell, 1984a), and in advocacy for contextually relevant developmental services (e.g., Pence & Marfo, 2004, 2008; Pence & Nsamenang, 2008). Notwithstanding these trends, research by resident native African scholars remains limited (see Super and colleagues, this issue, for a review of expatriate research), and no clear disciplinary framework exists to advance inquiry or contemplate the preparation of future researchers. This paper explores a pathway to an African child development field grounded in local contexts but simultaneously open to knowledge systems from other cultures. Scholars contemplating an African field have the benefit of a rearview mirror through which to examine and learn from: (1) historical/ institutional forces in Africa impeding the advancement of contextually relevant inquiry; (2) challenges inherent in prevailing reactions to Western knowledge, and (3) pitfalls in Euro-American psychology‘s disciplinary development.

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PAST AND PRESENT CONSTRAINTS: THE ROLE OF AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES Africa‘s challenges are frequently blamed on colonialism and Western imperialism. While historically justifiable, this narrative sometimes overstates the importance of the past, making realistic assessment of some contemporary problems difficult. One such problem is how poorly African universities have served to bridge the gulf between local realities and academic knowledge production. Figure 1 illustrates the relationship between inquiry and cultural values/traditions. Euro-American research knowledge is a product of Western cultural conceptions of childhood and prevailing epistemological/methodological traditions. Privileged traditions within that knowledge base reflect the values of dominant groups within the culture. Thus, white middle-class ethno-theories and values about childrearing drive the conceptions of childhood that inform research (Figure 1; left pane). Part of the African challenge is the disjuncture (missing links in Figure 1) between the continent‘s own culture-level knowledge traditions/values and the conceptions that drive inquiry. In the place of local traditions, ethno-theories, and ecological realities, Western influences have driven developmental research on the continent. Figure 1 (right pane) illustrates three such exogenous influences (links A, B, and C), two of which, I argue, are very contemporary and thus at best only distally grounded in colonial era policies.

Figure 1. Past and contemporary influences on child development research and scholarship in Africa

Treating the left pane of Figure 1 as a rough approximation of the culture-inquiry connection in the Euro-American context, link A depicts colonialism‘s influence and the associated traditions providing the foundational edifice for Africa‘s socio-political institutions. Some of the traditions driving research in Africa today stem from colonial-era legacies, including the inherited European-style tertiary education system. Long after colonial rule, and decades into independent educational plan-

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ning, research education continues to be under the dominant influence of Euro-American institutions. Link B depicts a less direct colonial influence, entailing factors at the intersection of development aid, international bi-lateral cooperation, and academic free-lancing. Research within Africa‘s universities is shaped significantly by extensive reliance on expatriate expertise from all forms of arrangements and by overdependence on foreign textbooks and curricular content. As necessary as they have been to the sustainability of African universities, expatriate scholars and foreign textbooks are also conveyors of idea systems that might have limited relevance in Africa. There are of course exceptions to this observation; while expatriate faculty may bring their own biases to Africa, some are even more sensitive to matters of contextual fit than local scholars. Finally, link C highlights the dominant approach to the preparation of future researchers. This is perhaps the most intriguing of the three influences. Even as Africanists complain about Eurocentrism‘s debilitating effects on the continent‘s cultural traditions and institutions, African nations continue to send large numbers of their future academics for advanced graduate education in European and American universities. As costs have increased – and as overseas training exacerbates the brain drain – there has been a trend toward bi-lateral arrangements with partner universities in Europe and North America. These programs permit African scholars to complete some of their degree requirements through distance learning or shorter-term residency abroad. Full-time overseas study and partnership programs have one thing in common, however. In either case, African scholars receive their research education around curricula established to prepare scholars primarily for the provider nation. Thus, through type C influence, large numbers of Africa‘s scholars are trained in settings where the unique needs of their own societies are not likely to feature in any appreciable way in the curricula to which they are exposed. The emersion model of full-time overseas research education may indeed increase the likelihood that returning scholars‘ research programs would be less responsive to local realities (Adair & Kağitçibaşi, 1995; Serpell, 2007). The influences depicted in Figure 1 suggest that advanced research education may not be appropriately orienting African scholars for creative research on locally important issues. This calls for a rethinking of graduate education and a shift in the higher education institutional culture. With conceptions of excellence so closely entwined in Euro-American academic traditions, African universities need to strengthen their determination to project local relevance as an explicit institutional mission. This shift should, in turn, translate into personnel development policies and institutional practices that socialize future faculty to approach advanced graduate education, at home or abroad, not as an exercise in uncritical assimilation and transportation of ideas but as preparation to use acquired knowledge and competencies to solve local problems. These concerns are shared by many scholars who work with aspiring African academics in Euro-American institutions. Therefore, part of the solution lies in shaping bi-lateral arrangements to increase the probability that the curricula of these programs will be better aligned with the needs and demands of the contexts to which returning graduates will be applying their knowledge. FRAMING THE FIELD The preceding section addressed the institutional culture shift and capacity-building that must take place for African universities to advance locally relevant inquiry and buttress disciplinary develop-

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ment. This section turns to the task of framing the form and content of an African field in the larger context of the movement to domesticate fields of inquiry rooted within Euro-American traditions. Drawing on the discourse on indigenous psychologies, I offer one perspective on disciplinary development. At the height of the indigenous psychologies movement, exhortations for Western psychology to open up to other cultural conceptions of reality soon triggered a debate over the form that the discipline should take in non-Western societies. Is it possible to broaden Euro-American theories and approaches to accommodate indigenous perspectives or would consideration of such perspectives require the development of concepts and tools that may be so idiosyncratic to local cultural realities as to render cross-context comparisons and generalizations meaningless (see Miller & Chen, 2000)? In framing this tension, Kağitçibaşi (2000) distinguished between an indigenous orientation to psychology and the indigenization of psychology. She saw the first as an approach embracing the idea of ―one psychology which benefits from indigenous knowledge‖ (p. 7). Indigenization, on the other hand, required the development of a psychology for each culture based on each culture‘s construal of psychological phenomena. Thus, while an indigenous orientation contributes to a unified discipline and allows for generalization and cross-cultural comparisons, indigenization presumably anticipates a multiplicity of psychologies producing ―an unwieldy and basically incomparable body of knowledge‖ (Kağitçibaşi, 2000, p. 7) in which universals are perhaps irrelevant. The position taken in this paper is that it is possible to think about these two visions in a way that removes the appearance of a tension. The critical question may not be whether ―specific cultural mentalities‖ are ―so unique that each cultural group needs its own psychology‖ (Gielen, 2000, p. 37). It is whether we can conceive of a truly global discipline in which pursuit of uniquely culturespecific understandings is not antithetical to pursuit of understandings with cross-cultural generality. What is needed, therefore, is a discipline as welcoming to scholarship focusing exclusively on ―indigenous‖ constructs within specific cultures as it is to scholarship guided by ―generalist‖ orientations or universal principles. Extrapolating this unified vision to the central concern of this paper, an inclusive and open pathway to disciplinary development is proposed, one that recognizes diversity of orientations and visions as a sine qua non to the development of a meaningful and healthy intellectual culture. In practical terms, an African child development field would have a place for different forms of inquiry. It should be appropriate for scholars with a relatively more global view of developmental research to focus their inquiry on how local, culturally inspired understandings of developmental phenomena contribute to a global knowledge base with high relevance for Africa. It is similarly appropriate for scholars with a more focused commitment to indigenous content as an important end in itself to dedicate their efforts to such inquiry. Ideally, the field should grow in the direction of integration such that questions on universal and culture-specific issues can be addressed within singular lines of inquiry. What is proposed, then, is an African field conceived not as a culturally insulated enterprise cocooned in its own traditions and designed exclusively to address questions of local relevance, but as a field that is mindful enough of the interconnectedness of the human condition across cultures to be able to benefit from and contribute to other understandings. It should be informed by an orientation that accentuates local relevance and pays priority attention to mechanisms for building a knowledge base on indigenous conceptions of childhood. After all, one way for an African field to contribute to

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a global knowledge base is in showing how research conducted across cultures on the continent helps to distinguish uniquely local and culture-bound developmental processes from those that are universal but expressed differently in particular cultural contexts. In a later section, examples of possible lines of inquiry reflecting the diverse foci suggested here are provided. Paradigmatic and Methodological Issues Epistemological and methodological issues are at the heart of disciplined inquiry. Some of the most incisive critiques of Western psychology have been directed at the discipline‘s extreme positivist heritage. Intriguingly, the vision for the new discipline, toward the end of the nineteenth century, was not one of a monolithic science. Even Wilhelm Wundt, psychology‘s founding father blamed sometimes for laying the foundations for a largely experimental discipline, did not consider experimentation as the only method for the discipline (Giorgi, 1970). Wundt also advocated for Volkerpsychologie (folk psychology). Experimental psychology was best suited to the study of the mental life of individuals, while Volkerpsychologie was appropriate for studying the cultural development of higher mental processes (Greenwood, 1999; Shamdasani, 2003). Importantly, Wundt appears to have conceived of psychology as a discipline through which the causal-experimental methods of the natural sciences could be integrated with the historical-cultural methods of the human sciences for a more meaningful study of psychological phenomena (Greenwood, 1999). Thus, but for the repudiation of this ‗synthetic‘ view of psychology by Wundt‘s own American students (Greenwood, 1999) and, perhaps more pivotally, the success of Watson‘s behaviorist revolution, Euro-American psychology could have emerged as a much broader discipline open to the methodological canons of the natural as well as the human sciences. Under behaviorism, pragmatic hegemonic thought triumphed over epistemological and methodological pluralism, sending psychology down a narrow path for close to half a century. This historical assessment is relevant because it highlights the dangers of building a new field on any form of hegemony – cultural, epistemological, or methodological. More important, there are indications from the indigenous psychologies discourse that some of the pitfalls of American psychology‘s disciplinary development could be repeated in other parts of the world. As Adair (1999) notes, researchers advocating for culture-specific inquiry in developing countries have tended to espouse the view that ―holistic, qualitative, and phenomenological‖ methods are more compatible with, and thus more appropriate for, non-Western cultures (p. 404). This viewpoint may be further reinforced for scholars who see cultural psychology‘s association with an interpretive/qualitative framework in some formulations of the field (e.g. Shweder, 1991; Ratner, 2008; Ratner & Hui, 2003) as a repudiation of quantitative methods. However, it is important to note, for example, that Cole‘s (1996) framing of cultural psychology embraces interpretive as well as causal-experimental methodologies, and the field has evolved in a methodologically diverse direction over the years (Cohen, 2007). Greenfield‘s (1997a, 2009) combined use of descriptive-qualitative analysis and structural equation modeling is illustrative of cultural psychology‘s increasing methodological hybridization. Above all, even within general psychology, experimental quantitative techniques are increasingly being used in combination with qualitative ones (Yoshikawa, Weisner, Kalil, & Way, 2008). In short, an emergent African child development field should be open to different paradigmatic and methodological approaches drawn from multiple disciplines.

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Other Problematic Legacies Non-Western critiques of psychology often address the limited relevance of American research for non-Western settings. Frequently overlooked is its limited generalizability even within the American cultural mosaic. Knowledge generated predominantly through studies of White, middle-class samples from populations around major research centers may provide limited answers to problems within other sub-populations. Tulkin and Konner‘s (1976) classic assessment of ethnocentrism in developmental research provides important lessons on the handling of diversity. Their analysis of comparative parent-child interaction research revealed that when researchers found differences in the behaviors of American parents and parents from other industrialized nations, they consistently explained the differences in terms of cultural variations in the parents' conceptions of childrearing. However, when differences were observed between middle-class parents and lower-income or ethnic minority parents within the U.S., the latter‘s behaviors were interpreted as problematic and needing intervention. Researchers seemed ―reasonably tolerant of child-rearing practices observed in cultures of other industrialized societies which would be devalued if reported in a minority group in the United States‖ (p. 137). Exemplifying differential cultural relativism (Marfo & Boothby, 1997), this comparative bias illustrates the problem of framing optimal developmental conditions within a culturally heterogeneous society around White middle-class values and practices and interpreting deviations ―not as alternative pathways for normal development but as conditions of deficit or deprivation‖ (LeVine, 1989, p. 54). Differential cultural relativism and the imputation of deficiency from difference are quite rampant in American intervention research (Marfo, Dedrick, & Barbour, 1998; Marfo & Boothby, 1997) and possibly stem from evolutionist perspectives on diversity. According to Shweder (1991), evolutionists approach difference from a hierarchical perspective, one in which ideas, belief systems, and practices other than one‘s own are viewed as ―really incipient and less adequate‖ (p. 114). Interventions are thus designed to move the incipient up to the level of a normative standard erected on the basis of one worldview. These are not inherently Euro-American problems. Wherever socio-cultural hierarchies exist, the danger of differential cultural relativism and cultural imposition can be real. Africa is a huge continent with numerous countries, each with multiple sub-cultures rooted in centuries of traditions shaped, to varying degrees, by indigenously African, Islamic, and Western institutions (Nsamenang, 1992). So-called modernization influences, including schooling and urbanization, are uneven even within individual nations. This complex diversity has profound ramifications for framing a field and for generating and applying research. This challenge is exacerbated when the elite class, to which researchers are likely to belong, also happens to be part of ―dominant‖ sub-groups within given societies. The prospect that the conceptions of childhood and optimal development within some cultures would be privileged over others is very real. Advancing a field that is free of these problems is an arduous task, but research education that anticipates and sensitizes scholars to these problems could make a difference.

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NEEDED INQUIRY: ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES Africa offers fertile ground for multidisciplinary, methodologically pluralistic inquiry in which indigenous as well as changing conceptions of child development inform theoretical and applied questions with local and global significance. In this final section, three illustrative examples of relevant inquiry are presented. Inquiry into Indigenous Conceptions There is a dearth of knowledge from theoretical analyses of cultural constructs regarding indigenous conceptions and expectations about child development. Nsamenang (1992, 2006) has begun to provide aspects of this important knowledge. Grounding understandings about development within indigenous conceptions of the human life cycle, Nsamenang has proposed stages in the development of social selfhood with corresponding developmental tasks that are yet to be validated empirically. The stages include newborn, pre-social, social novice, social entrée, social intern, adulthood, and old age. Setting aside the issue of generalizability, Nsamenang‘s work on the Nso of Cameroon is illustrative of needed ―indigenous‖ inquiry on sub-cultures across the continent. Foundational work of this nature is necessary in its own right but also sets the stage for normative and idiographic inquiry on the mechanisms of developmental change. It is also pivotal to addressing applied questions, such as whether and/or how indigenous socialization processes prepare children adequately for ―modern‖ institutions like schooling. Inquiry on Prototypically African Issues Episodic sibling caregiving and prolonged childrearing by older siblings are common forms of socialization across Africa, yet we know very little about their processes and outcomes across African subcultures. This is a subject on which research in Africa can add significantly to a global knowledge base. Weisner‘s cross-cultural work on socially distributed ‗parenting‘ (e.g., 1989a, 1997; Weisner & Gallimore, 1977) and his Kenyan research on sibling caretaking (e.g., Weisner, 1987, 1989b) provide an important foundation for future research. What elements of socialization prepare children to provide caregiving to younger siblings? What are the cultural markers for maturation toward sibling caregiving? What differences exist in the ethnotheories and caregiving behaviors of parenting adults and care-providing siblings? Are there short- or long-term differences in developmental outcomes for parent/adult-reared versus sibling-reared children, and what dynamics account for such differences? Inquiry addressing these questions should expand our knowledge of socialization beyond what is known from the Western parent-child socialization model. Validating Relevant Theories with Euro-American Origins Relevance is a central theme in critiques of psychological research in Africa. As Nsamenang (1992) notes, research focus ―has almost exclusively been on issues that are more pertinent to Western social realities than to the harsh realities of life in African communities‖ (p. 192). As an example of inquiry addressing pressing African issues, consider the implications of rapid social change for child-

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ren‘s development. While Africa is one of the least urbanized regions of the world, it has the highest rate of urbanization globally (Clancy, 2008; UN Population Fund, 2007), and is projected to be only 20 years away from reaching the tipping point at which more people will live in urban than in rural areas (UN Human Settlements Program, 2010). Social change comes with corresponding changes not only in the goals and processes of socialization but also in how children develop, learn, and respond to their transforming world (Marfo & Biersteker, in press). How is urbanization altering socialization goals and practices in hitherto traditional settings? As the broader ecology of development undergoes restructuring, what is the nature of the resultant changes in trajectories of development? What continuities and discontinuities are observable between socialization in school versus community settings; how are these related to developmental differences across groups of children with varying exposure to schooling, and what are the implications for education design? These questions have high contemporary relevance and should prime programmatic research generating theoryinforming data on trajectories of developmental change across age levels, social groups, and subcultural contexts. These questions also present opportunities for researchers to test exogenous theories linking social change to changes in developmental trajectories. For example, Greenfield (2009) posits two socio-demographic complexes as prototypical environments with distinct cultural pathways through universal development: rural/folk community versus urban society. As society shifts from a relatively traditional rural, subsistence economy to an urban, commercialized character, corresponding shifts occur in trajectories of cognitive development. Empirical support for this proposition includes evidence that adolescents in more commercial and technological family environments demonstrated greater abstraction in visual representation and cognitive style (see Greenfield, 2009). Tests of such theories must be guided by research on the ecological validity of psychological instruments. Greenfield (1997b) has addressed the cultural constraints of ability tests generally, and Serpell (1979, 1984b) has demonstrated in the African context the danger of drawing invalid conclusions when tasks used to assess cognitive skills are not ecologically appropriate relative to the prior experiences of research participants. Thus, validation work on theories such as Greenfield‘s also requires the development and validation of ecologically appropriate tasks that measure similar underlying processes across contexts under comparison.

CONCLUSION An authentically global child development field must not be the handmaiden of any one knowledge tradition within a single culture. It should be the product of multiple traditions across societies and should bring diverse paradigmatic perspectives to the complex task of forging inquiry in which consideration of the culturally situated nature of human functioning is the rule rather than the exception. Premised on the perspective that non-Western societies have important contributions to make to the evolution of such a global field, this paper has presented one vision for institutionalizing child development research in Africa. A case has been made for an African field that responds to local realities and contributes simultaneously to a global knowledge base. Disciplines do not develop by design, but I hope an emergent African field guided by the cautions and lessons highlighted in this

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paper will better position researchers to approach the study of children as natural and cultural beings best understood in their local contexts.

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