The Intergenerational Impact of a Rural Community Library on Young Children’s Learning Readiness in a Ugandan Village

Two cohorts of caregivers and preschool children residing in two rural Ugandan villages were recruited to identify the predictors of children’s learning readiness. Caregiver and child variables hypothetically associated with emergent literacy skills included caregiver’s medical health quality, caregiver depression, frequency of caregiver reading and storytelling to their children, and the child’s quality of attachment to the caregiver, which partially determines the attentional resources a child can commit to learning. The findings suggest that caregiver discomfort associated with poor medical health quality might allow caregivers to spend more time at home, where they can distract themselves with less physically demanding tasks such as reading and telling stories to their children. Their children’s more highly developed ability to inhibit their impulses might reflect their preoccupation with minimizing their caregivers’ discomfort. This ability might facilitate the development of emergent literacy skills in a culture that rewards paying strict attention to rote learning over creatively expressing oneself. If inhibitory control ideally prepares children for the hierarchical classroom environment that awaits them, it remains to be seen how children who participate in the STSA activity—which encourages self-expression through collectively acting out the children’s own stories—will perform in such a restrictive classroom setting.