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The present post-modern society has witnessed a growth spurt in technology, and with the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), mobile text messaging (texting) is now seen as the norm among the youth. For these late-modern languagers (Lytra and Jørgensen 2008: 5), it has become a common if not almost natural process to send and receive an SMS (Short Message Service) in different languages. Although some studies have examined the transformation and modification of...

The main purpose of this research work was to examine the effect of age, gender and students' attitude towards the study of Economics in some selected secondary schools in Calabar municipality of Cross River state of Nigeria. The sample for this study was 120 senior secondary two students selected from four secondary schools in Calabar municipality, thirty students were randomly selected from each of the four schools using simple random sampling technique. Four hypotheses were postulated as...

This article addresses the divergent cultures of silence and memorialisation about the civil wars in Sierra Leone and El Salvador, and examines the role that sites of remembering and forgetting play in crafting post-war citizens. In the formal education sector the ministries of education in each country have taken different approaches to teaching the history of the war, with Sierra Leone emphasising forgetting and El Salvador geared towards remembering war history. In both countries...

The extent to which differences in family background characteristics explain differences in learning outcomes between children captures the extent of equality in educational opportunities. This study uses large-scale data on literacy and numeracy outcomes for children of school age across East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda) to investigate the contribution of family background to learning differences. We find that learning differences between children from less-advantaged households and...

ABSTRACTThis paper presents findings from the third stage of a longitudinal, qualitative study involving nine female participants from a class cohort in a secondary school in rural Uganda. Since 2004–05, this study has tracked the progress of these young women's lives, and the present aspect of the study explores the ways in which they have found that post-primary education has impacted their adult lives, particularly with respect to employment-related factors. I draw upon the conceptual...

Twenty years after democracy, the legacy of apartheid and hitherto unmet challenges of resourcing and teacher development are reflected in a severely inequitable and underperforming education system.This paper focuses on second language writing in the middle years of schooling when 80% of learners face a double challenge: to move from 'common sense' discourses to the more abstract, specialised discourses of school subjects and, simultaneously, to a new language of learning, in this case...

This article uncovers the views of Zimbabwe Integrated National Teacher Education Course (ZINTEC) graduate teachers regarding their music teaching competence, as gauged through their capacity and ability to deliver music lessons based on the training they received. The study solicited their views on the kind of training they received, as well as school heads’ and education officers’ perceptions and expectations of a music educator's role. These views are critical to the music teacher's...

Background: Strengthening primary health care in South Africa is a prerequisite for the successful introduction of National Health Insurance. Primary care doctors from both the public and private sectors are an essential contributor to achieving this goal. In order to prepare these doctors for their future role, a national diploma training programme is being developed. This study aimed to evaluate the learning needs of primary care doctors and to assist with the design of the diploma.

Droughts remain the number one disaster in Africa; drought is responsible for over 88% of all the types of disasters that people are affected by. An effective drought early warning system can support appropriate mitigation and preparedness strategies and hence minimise these effects. Existing systems tend to ignore the ‘at risk’ community and are faced with a number of implementation challenges; their utilisation is very low. This paper describes an innovative drought early warning system...

ABSTRACTABSTRACTFrom the late 1990s, education in East Africa started to be appraised on the basis of enrolment. The universalisation of primary education that started in Uganda in 1997 – and peaked in Tanzania in 2002, as well as in Kenya in 2003 – was politicised as the epitome of education reform. Yet, alternative voices called for consideration of improving quality and looking beyond numbers. Uwezo, an East African initiative, aims at contributing to the focus on learning outcomes for...

(2015). PROVIDING BASIC EDUCATION FOR ALL IN AFRICA: WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED. Africa Education Review: Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 1-6.

This paper focuses on accounts of how having a disability and being HIV-positive influences experiences of work among 21 people (12 women, 9 men) in Lusaka, Zambia. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted in English, Bemba, Nyanja, or Zambian sign language. Descriptive and thematic analyses were conducted. Three major themes were generated. The first, a triple burden, describes the burden of having a disability, being HIV-positive, and being unemployed. The second theme,...

This study analyses the perspectives of teachers on English as a language of learning and teaching in the context of government recommendations that Shona and Ndebele be used alongside English as languages of learning and teaching in Zimbabwean secondary schools. Through a questionnaire survey, open interviews and classroom observation, it was found that the teachers regard English as a language of learning and teaching in a positive way though they are aware of the difficulties associated...

We have clearly come a long way from the time when translation’s principal role in the classroom was as a tool for language acquisition. This has been a positive development in many respects but, as we hope to demonstrate, the insights gleaned from this specific case-study – viewed through the prism of a Foucauldian approach to the archaeology of the disciplines – illustrate the need for a more general reassessment of the educational and scholarly potential of the dual-language text, a...

This paper reflects on the state of educational language policy two decades into a post-Apartheid South Africa caught between official multilingualism and English.The focus is on the national language-in-education policy (LiEP) that advocates additive bi/multilingualism, and a provincial counterpart, the language transformation plan (LTP).Using Ricento and Hornberger's onion metaphor, the paper seeks to uncover the meanings of policy realisation in education at legislative, institutional,...

This paper reports on the classroom languaging practices of a group of science teachers in rural and township schools in South Africa where the majority of learners learn through the medium of English, despite the fact that it is the home language of only a small minority; and learners’ poor English proficiency frequently restricts their access to the curriculum. The purpose of the study was to explore how these science teachers utilised the linguistic resources of the classroom – the...

This paper reports on the classroom languaging practices of a group of science teachers in rural and township schools in South Africa where the majority of learners learn through the medium of English, despite the fact that it is the home language of only a small minority; and learners’ poor English proficiency frequently restricts their access to the curriculum. The purpose of the study was to explore how these science teachers utilised the linguistic resources of the classroom – the...