Foundational skills development through an online reading community in South Africa

• In Event: Highlighted session: Literacy, language and foundational skills in Africa: learning in unexpected places

Proposal

In the arena of youth and skills development, the importance of learning foundational skills has been recognized as key to sustainable success in the workforce. These foundational skills include social skills, personal and character features, and learning skills, as well as pre-technical skills such as literacy, numeracy and facility with IT.

Given their centrality to young people’s ability to find and keep jobs, the question of how these skills may be acquired is highly relevant. The formal education system, built as it is on the academic curriculum, is not generally an adequate delivery system for many of the non-technical skills. Even technical and vocational training curricula are inadequate to deliver many of the “softer” skills such as managing emotions, discernment, empathy, communication, or critical thinking. Indeed, the case could be made that many of these skills are gained in community, through intentional interaction with others in non-school contexts.

This study examines the skills acquisition outcomes linked to an online reading community based in South Africa, called FunDza (www.fundza.co.za/). Survey input from more than 1200 members of the FunDza online community in late 2017 indicates that skills development in important areas such as literacy and oral language use, information processing and higher-order thinking takes place as these young people engage regularly with the stories, online courses and other text on the site. The survey data also indicates that participation in this reading community helps to provide a positive, enabling context for these young people to face the world of work with confidence.

Perhaps most interesting, more than 10% of the survey respondents voluntarily commented that participating in FunDza was a source of hope, motivation, encouragement and inspiration for them – significant contextual features that serve to facilitate acquisition of the skills described above.

One important “lesson learned” feature of this study for the field of youth and skills has to do with the context in which the skills are being learned. Participation in FunDza is entirely self-directed, dependent on the “draw” that participants feel to the community and to the learning opportunities available. This belies the common assumption that formalized programming is needed for skills development.

The study has already proven helpful to the FunDza program, since skills acquisition had not been a central focus of the program up until now. Analysis of the survey outcomes in this study has given a new understanding of the skills that can be taught in such a program. The findings of this study are thus shaping FunDza’s future activities, including increased intentionality in the development of certain skills, and revision of the annual FunDza survey to provide more clarity on the impact that the FunDza program is having on skills development among its members.

Authors

• Barbara Trudell, SIL Africa

• Gary Cowman, SIL Africa