It Takes a Village to Raise a Reader: The Untapped Potential of Enabling Communities to Support Children's Learning in Developing Countries

• In Event: 42.023 - How Educational Research and Assessment Can Be Used to Address Educational Inequities: An International Perspective

Abstract

Despite widespread access to primary school, reading assessments indicate a learning crisis across the developing world: improved achievement has not accompanied improved access. To address the crisis, educators have turned to school-focused interventions, including curricular revisions, improved teacher training, and enhanced school accountability mechanisms.
These approaches, however, miss a critical point: the institution of schooling, largely imported from the developed world, ignores the unique cultures of the populations enrolled in school. Therefore, efforts to improve the service delivery of schooling are unlikely to ameliorate low learning rates. In contrast, interventions that provide communities, families, and students with learning experiences that complement or enhance their cultural and social capital are likely to have much greater potential for impact.
The objective of this paper is to present evidence on the urgent need to better engage families and communities in children’s academic learning. The data to be reported will illustrate the far greater potential of holistic approaches to address the learning crisis than school-based approaches alone.

Authors

• Elliott Friedlander, Stanford University

• Claude N. Goldenberg, Stanford University