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This book is a briefer, simpler popular edition of "Militarism and Peace Education in Africa." It is intended to interest the African peoples in the problems of peace and allow them to discuss and debate the issues of militarism and peace for Africa and to suggest solutions. It is also intended to interest leading organizations and people working at the grassroots level in urban and rural areas in problems of militarism and peace education. The first two chapters show how, in former times,...

Education in Kenya requires rethinking as the country faces the demands of educational and socio-economic transformation of the 21st century. One of the general objectives of primary education in Kenya states that primary education should provide the learner opportunities to acquire literacy, numeracy, creativity and communication skills. There is evidence from research reports that the objective has not been fully met. A number of learners go through the primary school course without...

Our objective was to assess the effectiveness of educational sessions that accompanied breast cancer screening events in three communities in western Kenya between October and November 2013. Five hundred and thirty-two women were recruited to complete a test of breast cancer-relevant knowledge and randomly allocated to 'pre-test' or 'post-test' groups that immediately preceded or followed participation in the educational sessions. The education was organized as a presentation by health...

The primary purpose of this study was to find out the attitudes of trainers and trainees towards the 8-4-4 power mechanics course offered in secondary schools in Kenya. The attitudes and other related aspects obtained from the trainers and trainees were used as evaluative devices for the course and hence the graduates of the course. A comparison between the 8-4-4 power mechanics graduates and non power mechanics trainees was done to establish how well they fit into the job market in the...

Five science reading booklets were developed to foster the development of communication, observation, and experimentation skills in Uganda elementary school students. Topics selected, resulting from interviews with teachers and students, included: 1) rain; 2) round worms; 3) caterpillars; 4) butterflies; and 5) insects in the school ground. Booklets were evaluated after an initial trial (focusing on vocabulary level, time required to read the readers, student interest, whether related...

School closures due to teacher strikes or political unrest in low-resource contexts can adversely affect children's educational outcomes and career opportunities. Phone-based educational technologies could help bridge these gaps in formal schooling, but it is unclear whether or how children and their families will use such systems during periods of disruption. We investigate two mobile learning technologies deployed in sub-Saharan Africa: a text-message-based application with lessons and...

• Homes in rural Kenya lack storybooks that could support children's early literacy. • We conducted a cluster-randomized trial of combinations of books and training. • Dialogic reading training (DRT) can improve the quality of parent–child reading. • Books and DRT yield vocabulary gains for children with illiterate caregivers. • More intensive intervention variants did not markedly increase impacts. Worldwide, 250 million children under five (43%) are not meeting their developmental...

In many low- and middle-income countries, young children learn a mother tongue or indigenous language at home before entering the formal education system where they will need to understand and speak a country's official language(s). Thus, assessments of children before school age, conducted in a nation's official language, may not fully reflect a child's development, underscoring the importance of test translation and adaptation. To examine differences in vocabulary development by language...

In sub-Saharan Africa, where there is limited financial and human capital, it is important to examine how social relationships may serve to promote or undermine human capital formation. However, little is known about the contributions of social relations to human capital development, especially in terms of academic achievement in Africa. This study examined how variations in key aspects of social relations among teachers; between teachers and students; between principals, teachers, parents...

Roughly 350,000 refugees, over 90% of them Somali, lived in five sprawling camps in Dadaab, Kenya in 2015. In the Dadaab refugee camps, families had unique experiences of disability, education, women's roles, and involvement with International Non-Governmental Organization (INGO) programming. INGOs provided a variety of basic services including education such as the program analyzed here for parents of children with disabilities. Many children with disabilities in the refugee camps faced...

Roughly 350,000 refugees, over 90% of them Somali, lived in five sprawling camps in Dadaab, Kenya in 2015. In the Dadaab refugee camps, families had unique experiences of disability, education, women's roles, and involvement with International Non-Governmental Organization (INGO) programming. INGOs provided a variety of basic services including education such as the program analyzed here for parents of children with disabilities. Many children with disabilities in the refugee camps faced...

The aim of this paper, and more generally, our project "Impact from the ground" (a multi-stage ongoing project), is to reimagine education so that it transcends the walls and harsh constraints of a "universal one size fits all" education. To achieve this, we propose a framework that will inform the design of a participatory approach to co-create a learning hub (an informal lifelong learning opportunity) with and within the community. To weave this framework, we explore the current landscape...

Sub-Saharan African countries have made remarkable strides in closing the gender gap in primary enrolment and more girls than ever are attending school. With the existing gender differentials in youth literacy rates, an important question is whether they are learning as well as their male classmates. This article explored factors that contribute to gender gaps in reading for sixth-grade pupils from 61 396 pupils from 15 countries in the third evaluation of the Southern and Eastern Africa...

Previous studies have paid considerable attention to the impact on a child's primary education of attending pre-primary school. Researchers have asserted that early educational intervention can compensate for the effects of poverty and inadequate learning environments on child development and school success. This study analyzes the relationship between pre-primary education and student reading and mathematics achievement in the sixth grade, focusing on disadvantaged children, in countries...

The article presents a profile of Sammy Gitau, a Kenyan who managed to overcome many obstacles and complete a two-year degree at the University of Manchester in England. Gitau began supporting his mother and 10 siblings at age 13, after his father's death. In the slums of Kenya's Mathare Valley he turned to petty crime and drugs, as there were few opportunities for legitimate work. After a personal crisis, Gitau began working with local youth to try to improve the slum area where he lived....

This article details a pilot program of mother tongue instruction in five primary schools for classes one through three, in Kajokeji County, Central Equatoria State, South Sudan. The program was launched by teachers and volunteers with the support of the Jesuit Refugee Service, an international non-governmental organization. The research examines how mother tongue education impacted teaching and learning during one academic term. The article discusses the reasons for mother tongue education...

This paper reports on an ethnographic case study which was carried out in a Kenyan first-grade classroom. The classroom had 89 students with their 2 teachers who taught at different times. The classroom was very crowded and had a high paucity of literacy materials. The study was guided by sociocultural and dialogic frameworks which maintain that social and dialogic interactions have important roles to play in a child's literacy and language development. Thus, the social life of the observed...

This paper reports on an ethnographic case study which was carried out in a Kenyan first-grade classroom. The classroom had 89 students with their 2 teachers who taught at different times. The classroom was very crowded and had a high paucity of literacy materials. The study was guided by sociocultural and dialogic frameworks which maintain that social and dialogic interactions have important roles to play in a child's literacy and language development. Thus, the social life of the observed...

This study was an ethnographic case study that investigated oral and written language learning in a first grade classroom in Kenya. The languages used in this classroom were Swahili and English only. Kamba the mother tongue of the majority of the children, was banned in the entire school. In this classroom there were 89 children with two teachers, one a teacher of English, the other a teacher of Swahili. The children's ages ranged from five to eight years. The main participants were six...

A study examined how primary school quality influenced school dropout rates among girls and boys in Kenya. The data were gathered through school and household visits in rural areas of three districts in the country. Results revealed that girls' retention is discouraged in schools in which boys are provided with a more supportive environment than girls in terms of advice, in which boys are free to harass girls, in which teachers take the importance of difficult subjects like math less...