Re-Sourcing Dholuo in Early Childhood Education: Navigating Indigenous Children's Songs, Dances, and Poems

• In Event: Indigenous Knowledge of Social Justice Education: Lessons on Decolonization From Luo Language and Literature

Abstract

This study draws on remarks based on data from a completed research study regarding the assessment of an Early Childhood Education (ECE) teacher: ‘good delivery except for too much dholuo’. Is dholuo taboo? The tension elicited interrogates the silencing of dholuo in ECE assessment of teachers and children. Children enter ECE centers as cultural and artistic entities with a heritage that deserves leveraging rather than exclusion. Overreliance on mainstream assessment perspectives overlooks indigenous ways of knowing and doing. Luo language and culture is embedded in cultural artistic resources and can be re-sourced to enhance assessment in ECE. This study seeks to: determine mainstream and indigenous assessment praxes and discourses, analyze dholuo indigenous children’s songs, dances and poems in order to generate a framework to expand space for dholuo in ECE assessment. The study assumes the Africa-centric lenses of Sankofa theory which posits that: ‘there is no taboo in moving forward while validating and reclaiming one’s heritage.’ The research design hinges on action research methodology to link the simultaneous process of research and taking action through critical reflection of data from the ongoing research and the completed study. One ECE center in West Ugenya Ward from which the above remark was drawn will be purposively sampled. Teachers, children and parents in the sampled ECE center will be engaged in knowledge production through, interview, Focus Group Discussion and Observation. Data will be analyzed according to themes relevant to the objectives and collated with data from the completed study to enable determination of appropriate interventions. From the analyses and interpretations, a framework foregrounding dholuo in ECE assessment will be developed.

Author

• Lilian Akoth Odero
  Presenting Author