The Power of Protest: Embedding 21st Century Competences in Education Systems in East Africa

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

The dawn of the 21st century has brought rapid and sweeping technological and cultural changes to the entire world. As a result, we are facing more numerous and complex problems that require a radically different set of competencies and way of thinking. In a constantly changing world, it is difficult to anticipate the knowledge or skillset necessary for professional success, since it is increasingly challenging to predict the types of jobs we will be doing. We do know that there is an ever-growing need for individuals who can process data, evaluate concepts, and develop arguments. This kind of skillset belongs to individuals who possess the high levels of social understanding and critical thinking skills needed to make intelligent judgements about public issues.
Employers are concerned about young people’s preparedness to face challenges in the workplace, as well as society’s ability to respond to the social and economic issues of the 21 st century. By 2030, the youth workforce will be over 40 percent of the population in developing countries, with approximately 11 million young people entering the labour market each year. This could potentially stimulate the economic development of these countries and reduce poverty, but young people must acquire the necessary skills to access and retain productive jobs. While employers value academic skills in young people, they are increasingly prioritising life skills and good values.
Sustainable Development Goal 4.7 (SDG) emphasises the importance of ensuring that all learners acquire not only knowledge but also skills to promote sustainable lifestyles and a culture of equity and excellence. Education systems worldwide are adapting to demands from civil society and the workforce to better equip young people to function effectively in the 21st century world. The lag from awareness to aspiration to policy and to practice requires communities to contribute to building knowledge, developing tools, and representing society’s needs to government. Three countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, are benefiting from the efforts of a network of civil society organisations working together with academia and government, to enhance education provision.
In the East African context, recent labour market surveys highlight the demand for a workforce that possesses ‘soft skills’ and higher-order thinking skills. The 2019 Echidna Giving Life Skills and Mindset Change Project conducted a study that recognised that for several decades, ministries of education and civil society organizations in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda acknowledged the effectiveness of life skills, especially in combating HIV/AIDS and sexual and gender-based violence, as well as resolving conflicts, promoting peace, nurturing leaders, empowering girls, advancing gender equality, and changing mindsets. However, limited evidence on how this happens, and there is no consensus on the correct approach to fostering these skills from the child’s experience in family and community and through the education system.
Driven by a commitment to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4, the education systems of the three countries of Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda have sought to broaden their curricula and teaching as a means to prepare their learners to better respond to a changing world socio-economically, as well as to concerns about the attitudes and values of youth, discontent with current education provision and student learning, concerns about environmental and sustainability issues, and aspirations for development of the individual. In the face of continuing concerns about the directions and implementation of education provision world-wide, the visibility of curriculum reform stands as an acknowledgement of the need to broaden the nature of that provision. Such acknowledgements are an essential step to stimulating wider discussion of new directions, with potential reforms in pedagogy and in assessment.
In response to these concerns, the Regional Education Learning Initiative (RELI) established the Values and Life Skills (VaLi) thematic group to develop localized assessment tools under the Assessment of Life Skills and Values in East Africa (ALiVE) Project. The project brought together 47 local experts, including curriculum developers, assessment specialists, education ministries, researchers, and academic institutions. Guided by a global facilitator experienced in cognitive and social-emotional learning assessments, the team focused on developing measurements specifically designed to assess life skills (such as problem-solving, self-awareness, and collaboration) and values (particularly respect) among adolescents aged 13 to 17 in the East African context. An outcome of these processes is an increasingly skilled professional workforce, which has the capacity to translate learning goals into assessment tools, instructional strategies, and policy guidance. The process and product of ALiVE, including the opportunities created by this assessment, provide a useful lens for viewing the mainstreaming of assessment of these competences in the region.
This panel explores the context and processes of developing a contextually relevant, open-source tool for assessing life skills in the East African region. The panel will discuss how confronting the global learning crisis, and modernizing Africa’s education to embrace 21st Century skills and learning can only be achieved through protest. Protest against education that focuses on academic competences only, protest against the walls that have been erected between families and schools, teachers and parents, and protest against the disuse of research evidence in education systems. The emphasis on ALiVE’s exploration of life skills and values education as being distinct from recommendations by some global agencies that literacy and numeracy are what constitutes ‘learning’ and accounts for ‘learning poverty’ in low- and middle-income economies will be elaborated. Finally, using evidence generated from the work of ALiVE, the panel will elaborate on how the use of research evidence points to the need for more than just disseminating evidence, to a larger spectrum of activities that include translation of evidence to speak to decision makers, aligning evidence to social and economic contexts, up to the active engagement and capacity support to the users of evidence. The implications of this work for policy and practice with a specific emphasis on the conditions necessary for the evidence generated through the ALiVE initiative to inform policy and practice in context will be discussed to the ultimate aim of stimulating a system-wide change capable of catalysing reasonable levels of the development of 21st century competences by the year 2030.

Sub Unit

• Teacher Education and the Teaching Profession SIG

Organizer

• Mauro Giacomazzi, Luigi Giussani Institute of Higher Education

Chair

• Joyce M Malombe, Collective Rising Leadership Institute

Individual Presentations

• The ‘breadth of skills’ phenomenon: Visibility in East Africa - Esther Care, University of Melbourne

• The ALiVE Way: Collaborative Action in the assessment of life skills and values in East Africa - Khadija A Shariff, Zizi Afrique Foundation

• Implications of the ALiVE process and evidence on policy and practice in East Africa - John Mugo, Zizi Afrique Foundation

Discussant

• Erin Ganju, Echidna Giving