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This paper starts with an analysis of the twin purposes of an examination reform programme originally launched in Kenya during the 1970s: first, to broaden the spectrum of cognitive skills being tested; and second, to set up a feedback system based on the performance profiles, providing schools and teachers with guidance as to how pedagogy and learning might be strengthened. Then, in a change of time perspective, the paper looks back over 30 years of implementation experience, examining the...

This research builds on several layers of meaning representing views from education officials, head teachers, teachers and pupils to investigate the discourse and implementation of official bilingualism policy in primary schools in Cameroon. While at the macro-level, the celebration of the "National Bilingualism Day" in schools has tended to suggest that the country's option for bilingualism is a success, at the micro-level, views from the participants researched indicate that the...

This study draws on the concepts of instrumental and expressive orders to analyse school practice in two Anglophone and two Francophone primary schools in Cameroon, and how micro processes of language socialisation in the schools studied instantiated Anglophone and Francophone education traditions and related to macro processes of systems of education. Using a multimodal method of data collection, including participant observation, focus group and individual interviews, the study adopts a...

Kenya’s language-in-education policy supports mother-tongue education as the ideal approach to developing language and literacy skills of young learners. The policy has been informed by findings of various past national education commissions as well as international declarations such as the UNESCO declaration on the use of Vernacular Languages in Education of 1953, the World Declaration on Education for All of 1990 and the Dakar framework of 2000. The country’s Constitution of 2010...

Abstract: There is a sound research base attesting to the importance of parental involvement and to the many potential benefits it can offer for children''s education. This study sought to examine differences in parental aspirations (as a mechanism of parental involvement in their children''s education) for their children''s educational attainment between slum and non-slum residing parents in Kenya. The study used cross-sectional household data for a sample of 4065 parents, collected in 2007...

Abstract: There is a sound research base attesting to the importance of parental involvement and to the many potential benefits it can offer for children''s education. This study sought to examine differences in parental aspirations (as a mechanism of parental involvement in their children''s education) for their children''s educational attainment between slum and non-slum residing parents in Kenya. The study used cross-sectional household data for a sample of 4065 parents, collected in 2007...

The article offers information on the Reading Club of the Kilimo Primary School in Kenya, which visited the Haven of Hope children's home on the Orphans Day on June 1, 2012. It states that the Reading Club has helped the children to improve their academic performance and reading skills. It mentions that the teachers of the school focus on stimulating the ordinary people to unusual effort towards reading.

In this study, we draw on three interrelated concepts, i.e. placed resources, multiliteracies and the carnivalesque, to understand how information and communication technology (ICT) resources are taken up within the context of a print-based journalism club. Our research participants attend an under-resourced girls’ residential secondary school in rural Kenya. We used ethnographic methods to document how the 32 club members (aged 14–18 years) used digital cameras, voice recorders and laptops...

The present paper investigates students’ experiences of being multilingual. Qualitative data have been collected during observation, focus groups, interviews and text writing in a public primary school in rural Kenya. The informants are students in standards one, three and eight whose mother tongue is the indigenous language called Nandi, which all these students use at home and with friends. The school languages are Swahili and English, and the use of Nandi is forbidden in school except in...

Abstract: Over the past 15 years, a range of alternative education programs have been launched in Burkina Faso. The programs have been developed primarily by international or national NGOs, within a supportive policy space provided by the national government. They aim to respond to the widely recognized inadequacy of the French-language écoles classiques to provide a meaningful primary education experience for most Burkinabè children. One of the values which these programs all espouse is...

With the increasing popularity of distance education, focus has turned to the role of libraries in distance learning process. It is widely agreed that like their campus-based counterparts, distance education learners need adequate library services if they are to gain quality education. This study sought to examine library utilization by students enrolled in the external degree programme of the University of Nairobi. The unit of analysis consisted of students from the school continuing...

This paper aims to improve the understanding of classroom-based gender differences that may lead to differential opportunities to learn provided to girls and boys in low and high performing primary schools in Kenya. The paper uses an opportunity to learn framework and tests the hypothesis that teaching practices and classroom interactions explain gender gaps in maths achievement in Kenya. The data used is obtained from a cross sectional study involving video recordings of 70 lessons in...

This paper focuses on the patterns of teaching styles and active teaching across subjects and between low and high performing schools in an attempt to examine what accounts for differences in performance between schools which are within the same locality. It uses data collected in 72 primary schools spread across six districts in Kenya. Video recordings of 213 lessons in maths (72), science (71) and English (70), and interviews with subject teachers in primary schools, were used to generate...

There is a growing public concern in Kenya over the persistent gap between those schools that are consistently ranked at the top and those ranked at the bottom of the annual Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination league tables. This has raised the issue of inequality in educational opportunity. Our primary concern in this paper is to understand some of the classroom–school factors that may explain the persistent differences in achievement between the top and bottom...

We report on a study that used observations, conversations, and formal interviews to explore literacy instruction in 24 lower-primary classrooms in coastal Kenya. Specifically, we report the ways literacy instruction is delivered and how that delivery aligns with practices understood to promote reading acquisition. We find (1) prioritization of developing oral language skills over teaching the relationships between sounds and symbols, (2) enablers to literacy instruction that are the result...

We report on a study that used observations, conversations, and formal interviews to explore literacy instruction in 24 lower-primary classrooms in coastal Kenya. Specifically, we report the ways literacy instruction is delivered and how that delivery aligns with practices understood to promote reading acquisition. We find (1) prioritization of developing oral language skills over teaching the relationships between sounds and symbols, (2) enablers to literacy instruction that are the result...