JICA Training Program for Early Childhood Education in Central and West Africa

2011年12月21日更新

Ochanomizu University carried out a training program for trainees from French-speaking nations in Central and West Africa. This project was commissioned by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and a total of 10 trainees from Senegal, Mali, Cameroon, and Burkina Faso attended the program, which was conducted from November 28 to December 21, 2011. The 10 trainees are all leaders in the field of early childhood support in their respective countries, where they hold positions as government officials, school inspectors, teaching staff at teacher training schools, etc. This was the sixth year that our university has carried out this training program, which focuses on the Francophone countries in Central and West Africa.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the mortality rate for children under five years of age and the rates of malnutrition and disease are extremely high, and these are urgent problems that must be solved. In recent years, there has been an increasing awareness in the international community of the importance of a comprehensive approach that integrates caretaking and education from infancy, and this has led to the strengthening of the support system for developing nations in the field of early childhood education. However, in sub-Saharan Africa, there is a lack of expert personnel related to infant care and education.

To address this, the Ochanomizu training program sought to contribute to human resource development in Africa by providing lectures, site visits, and workshops on Japanese early childhood care, education, and support for young children-the system and policies, the content and methods of childcare, human resource development, evaluation, and so on. The objective of these activities is to improve the knowledge and skills of trainees with regard to the support of young children. In the post-program survey, the trainees indicated a high degree of satisfaction with the six teaching units and a high level of achievement of the goals in all six teaching units included in the training: (1) Identification and clarification of the issues at own organization; (2) concept, content, and trends of early childhood development; (3) disparities in early childhood education and methods for correcting them; (4) appropriate content and methods of education, and creation of teaching materials that correspond to children’s development; (5) systems of developing and training teachers; and (6) evaluation in early childhood education. On the final day of the training program, each participant presented an action plan to be implemented after their return home. Based on that action plan, the trainees will apply the results of their studies in Japan to their own country.