A School Closer to Home: The Role of Mealtimes in Fostering Language Development and Aligning Home and School Learning in Rural Kenya and Zambia (Preprint)

UNSTRUCTURED The connection between school and home is fundamental to sustainable education: parents’ understanding of the school’s priorities and teachers’ understanding of their pupils’ home environment are both vital for children to remain in school and succeed academically. The relationship between parents and teachers is closest in preschool settings, providing a valuable opportunity to build bridges between home and school. Focusing on nutrition, early language learning, and responsive caregiving, we will record and analyse mealtime language and eating behaviours at home and in school, targeting 80 preschool children and their families in rural Kenya and Zambia. Our work aims to identify and share practices that increase the quantity and quality of child-directed speech, raise and balance children's nutritional levels, and lay the foundation for the development of practitioner networks and parent outreach programmes.