Promoting Children's Sustainable Access to Early Schooling in Africa: Reflections on the Roles of Parents in Their Children's Early Childhood Care and Education

Abstract

Sub-Saharan Africa has predominantly rural populations unable to offer children sustainable access to early literacy and childhood care and education. Children's literacy development starts very early in life through participation and experiences in the home and preschool. My research in rural Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania shows that the transition from home to school is compromised by acute barriers such as lack of parental participation, lack of encouragement and support from teachers, and unavailability of learning materials. However, rural homes and communities are well endowed with a stock of practices, knowledge, and skills relevant to the promotion of literacy development. In this chapter, I reflect on how to empower parents to draw on knowledge and resources within the local context to become better involved in their children's education while also empowering teachers to better recognize and take advantage of local knowledge and resources to enrich instruction and enhance meaningful learning.

Home literacy activities: Accounting for differences in early grade literacy outcomes in low-income families in Zambia

“…As such, the acquisition of books for reading purposes was secondary especially when parents experienced other pressures that were deemed primary. This is in line with Ngwaru (2014) where he reports that low-income parents often do not see educational provisions of their children beyond their economic circumstances.…”

“…Other researchers have also reported on the importance of unconventional reading materials and their impact on the emergent literacy in the absence of conventional books (Heath 1983;Ngwaru 2014;Purcell-Gates 1995). Using unconventional reading materials is a way by which children are exposed to print in less-resourced homes.…”

“…The teaching of letters as an activity is a deliberate, systematic and intentional activity which aims at introducing children to written language. Although the presence of reading materials may not necessarily require systematic teaching, the presence itself is considered by many researchers as a gateway to a literate world (Bloch 2002;Goodman 1986;Ngwaru 2014). The presence of reading materials not only introduces children to the written language but additionally can be viewed as an important cultural phenomenon which in itself is a significant part of their experience.…”

“…Of the 103 million, large proportions come from developing countries. The challenges of low literacy rates are widely recognised to be greatest in sub-Saharan Africa where both access and quality remain critical problems (Ngwaru 2014). The region has the highest proportion of out-of-school children, the greatest gender disparities, the highest ratio of pupils to teachers and the lowest primary completion rates in the world (UNESCO 2008).…”

How Mothers in Poverty Explain Their Use of Corporal Punishment: A Qualitative Study in Kampala, Uganda

“…The heavy emphasis placed on material poverty by study participants is in many ways reminiscent of Ngwaru’s (2014) account of rural Zimbabwean and Kenyan parents’ perceptions of their role in early childhood education. Reflecting on the findings of three studies around childhood education and literacy, Ngwaru notes that parents were “preoccupied with poverty, socioeconomic insecurity, morbidity (usually arising from the scourge of HIV/AIDS), […] and lack of education” (pp.…”