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Highlights: [ • ] The PRIMR Initiative aimed to improve primary literacy instruction in Kenya. [ • ] PRIMR led to significant improvements in English and Kiswahili oral reading fluency and reading comprehension. [ • ] Uptake was better among nonformal school teachers than formal school teachers. [•] Classroom observation and instructional support was an essential element to improving instruction.

We welcome you to the International Conference on Education and New Developments 2014, taking place in Madrid, Spain, from 28 to 30 of June, 2014. Education, as an important right in our contemporary world, began since we exist. Knowledge and skills were passed by adults to the young, and cultures began to extend their experiences through various forms. Schools and academies were formed since the most ancient civilizations. Although between innumerous difficulties, these experiences were...

Highlights: [•] Recitation style and teaching aids account for inter school differences in academic performance. [•] Visual teaching aids such as illustrative charts are important to learning when used effectively. [•] High performing schools had larger class sizes than low performing schools. [•] Large class sizes did not lead to low test scores. [•] Teacher in-servicing is necessary to rejuvenate teacher's pedagogical knowledge.

Primary school enrolment in low-income countries has increased in recent years. The quality of education is, however, still a cause for concern. Better measurement of early reading progress has been suggested as a means of improving education quality. Benchmarks based on the number of 'words per minute' (WPM) students are able to read correctly have been proposed as a basis for assessment and comparison, even where languages and orthographies differ. This paper explores the extent to which...

Primary school enrolment in low-income countries has increased in recent years. The quality of education is, however, still a cause for concern. Better measurement of early reading progress has been suggested as a means of improving education quality. Benchmarks based on the number of 'words per minute' (WPM) students are able to read correctly have been proposed as a basis for assessment and comparison, even where languages and orthographies differ. This paper explores the extent to which...

This paper investigates the perceptions of teachers from one Sabaot dominated primary school in western Kenya regarding the medium of instruction (MoI) policy in different class levels. While their ‘ideal’ MoI policy bears some resemblance to the official policy which advocates mother tongue (MT) as medium in lower primary and English in upper primary, it also has significant differences because of the teachers' desire to move learners as quickly as possible from MT to Kiswahili and English....

This paper investigates the perceptions of teachers from one Sabaot dominated primary school in western Kenya regarding the medium of instruction (MoI) policy in different class levels. While their "ideal" MoI policy bears some resemblance to the official policy which advocates mother tongue (MT) as medium in lower primary and English in upper primary, it also has significant differences because of the teachers' desire to move learners as quickly as possible from MT to Kiswahili and English....

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...

Primary school enrollments have increased rapidly in sub-Saharan Africa, spurring concerns about low levels of learning. We analyze field experiments in Kenya and Uganda that assessed whether the Reading to Learn intervention, implemented by the Aga Khan Foundation in both countries, improved early-grade literacy as measured by common assessments. We find that Ugandan literacy (in Lango) increased by 0.2 standard deviations. We find a smaller effect (0.08) on a Swahili literacy test in...

Mother tongue education (MTE) has been a subject of rigorous debate for more than half a century, in both industrialised and developing societies. Despite disparate views on MTE, there is an uneasy consensus on its importance in educational systems, especially in the foundational years. Using the Language Management Framework, the article provides a critical appraisal of MTE discourses in relation to primary teacher education and the quota system of student teacher selection and teacher...

In East Africa, there is great effort directed toward ensuring that there is learning and value for money invested in universal education policies initiated over the past decade. Kenya and Uganda are two countries that typify this effort. The effort includes the work of research organisations such as Uwezo, which assess learning levels; RTI, which assesses language and early grade reading; and the work of African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC), which looks at schooling...

In East Africa, there is great effort directed toward ensuring that there is learning and value for money invested in universal education policies initiated over the past decade. Kenya and Uganda are two countries that typify this effort. The effort includes the work of research organisations such as Uwezo, which assess learning levels; RTI, which assesses language and early grade reading; and the work of African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC), which looks at schooling...

JiFUNzeni blended learning approach is a sustainable approach to provision of professional development (PD) for those in challenging educational contexts. JiFUNzeni approach emphasizes training regional experts to create blended learning content, working with appropriate technology while building content repositories. JiFUNzeni approach was field-tested though a design-based research intervention conducted in rural western Kenya. The field test included design, development and implementation...

There is a dearth of literature that use research design for causal inference that estimate the effect of information and communications technology (ICT) programs on literacy outcomes in early primary, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. There are several programs that have used ICT at a large scale, including Los Angeles, Peru, Nicaragua, Rwanda and an ongoing program in Turkey. Seldom have the studies directly estimated the effect of the ICT program on learning, as the measures used have...

Language policy is generally seen as a national-level decision regarding which languages the state will support, and in which public domains. However, the reality is that language policy plays out at regional and local levels as well. In fact, it could be argued that the most important instantiations of language policy are those which directly determine local-language behaviors in institutions such as schools, government and civil society. Using data drawn from Kenya, this article examines...

Language policy is generally seen as a national-level decision regarding which languages the state will support, and in which public domains. However, the reality is that language policy plays out at regional and local levels as well. In fact, it could be argued that the most important instantiations of language policy are those which directly determine local-language behaviors in institutions such as schools, government and civil society. Using data drawn from Kenya, this article examines...

Language policy is generally seen as a national-level decision regarding which languages the state will support, and in which public domains. However, the reality is that language policy plays out at regional and local levels as well. In fact, it could be argued that the most important instantiations of language policy are those which directly determine local-language behaviors in institutions such as schools, government and civil society. Using data drawn from Kenya, this article examines...

If children do not learn how to read in the first few years of primary school, they will struggle to complete the cycle and are at greater risk of dropping out. It is therefore crucial to identify and test interventions that have the potential of making a large impact, can be implemented quickly, and are affordable to be taken to scale by the Kenyan government. This is the goal of the PRIMR Initiative--to test various options for improving learning outcomes and instruction in Kenyan schools,...