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

Group Submission Type: Highlighted Paper Session

Proposal

Skills acquisition has become a central issue in the discourse of learning for sustainable development and economic success. Skills development is of interest in both the global North and the global South (Aring 2012), and forms the core of the United Nations’ agenda for attaining the Sustainable Development Goals. On the economic side, research shows that skills are a better predictor of employment and wage growth than is educational level (Acemoglu and Autor 2011).

Two types of skills are distinguished: the vocational or technical skills specific to a given task, and a range of foundational skills (also called “soft” or “life” skills), which are relevant to any working context and which prepare a learner for effective participation in workforce or entrepreneurial contexts. The role of foundational skills in enhancing workforce outcomes and development is under-researched so far, particularly questions related to how such skills lead to workforce outcomes, how they relate to technical skills, how they vary from culture to culture, and how they can be measured (Child Trends Inc. 2015).

Foundational skills are grouped in various ways. For example, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) focuses on literacy, numeracy and information-processing skills (http://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/). The OECD also describes “high-performance work practices” such as cooperating with others, organizing one’s time, and the ability to change the speed and sequence of one’s work. The US-based National Education Association (http://www.nea.org/home/34888.htm) describes four “21st century skills”: communication, critical thinking, collaboration and creativity. Room to Read’s “life skills” include self-confidence, perseverance and creative problem-solving (Beggs and Hebert 2018).

However, two surprises appear in these various typologies of foundational skills. One surprise is that the place of literacy as a central foundational skill is not universally acknowledged. This omission could be due to assumptions about the universality of skills such as literacy, which typify the global North more than the global South. Documentation of “21st century skills” often describes literacy as a “20th century” skill that everyone already has. As any educator in the global South can attest, this is a mistaken assumption. More accurate approaches to literacy see it as a foundation for any learning in the 21st century, whether formal or nonformal.

The second surprise is that language proficiency rarely features in these descriptions of foundational skills, perhaps because fluency in the language of skills acquisition is also assumed. Examination of 18 organizational lists of foundational skills, written between 2006 and 2018, reveals only two references to language - one of which refers to the importance of understanding “text-speak”. This omission of language proficiency skills speaks to a lack of understanding of the important role of the learner’s language and cultural context, again possibly because foundational skills are (inaccurately) seen as knowledge universals without any specific local features.

Yet in linguistic environments of the global South, where one’s home language may not even be a written language and the language of formal learning may not be well understood, issues of literacy and language skills are highly relevant. Given the central role of thinking in acquiring strong reading and other foundational skills, gaining those skills obviously requires use of whatever language the learner thinks in. Not only so, but the role of international language fluency, both oral and written, is also incontestable in skills development for the workforce (Pinon and Haydon 2010).

To address this literacy-and-language gap in the conceptualization of skills development, SIL Africa researchers recently carried out four community-based research studies on the links between literacy, language and skills acquisition in sub-Saharan Africa: 1) an examination of how local-language adult literacy programs in rural Ghana have resulted in foundational skills acquisition; 2) a pilot numeracy program for women in southern Senegal that features local language-mediated knowledge (including literacy and language) for gaining numeracy and other foundational skills; 3) an examination of the foundational skills developed through local language-medium reading programs in a pilot pre-school program in rural Kenya; and 4) investigation of the self-reported skills-development outcomes among an online reading community of young people in South Africa.

Taken together, these program evaluations shed light on the ways in which a range of foundational skills are being developed, among a range of African learners. The four papers highlight the central place of literacy in skills development in each of the programs, as well as the roles that language and cultural practices are playing in enhancing project impact.

Findings such as these help to clarify and inform current conceptualizations of skills development, especially in international contexts. The studies are particularly relevant in the current exploratory environment surrounding skills acquisition, since they draw attention to the role of literacy and language skills in development of other skills, and so contribute to increasing the impact of skills-acquisition efforts around the world.

Sub Unit

• SIG: Global Literacy

Individual Presentations

• Local-language adult literacy and skills that matter in rural Ghana - Joel Trudell, SIL Africa

• Numeracy and literacy programming for women in Senegal: Local knowledge for successful skills development - Elisabeth Gerger, SIL Africa

• Acquisition of foundational skills through the local language in a rural preschool in Kenya - Angela BECKER, SIL Africa

• Foundational skills development through an online reading community in South Africa - Barbara Trudell, SIL Africa; Gary Cowman, SIL Africa

Discussant

• Nancy Taggart, US Agency for International Development (USAID)