Recontextualizing Education Reforms: Local Adaptation of Brazil’s Sobral Literacy Model in Kenya

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Towards effective scaling and systems-change: Lessons from implementation research on improving foundational learning in India, Kenya, Uganda, and Senegal

Proposal

As low- and middle-income countries grapple with learning poverty (World Bank, 2022), South–South cooperation and knowledge exchange have emerged as key avenues for sharing and adapting education policies and practices to address common challenges (Chisholm & Steiner-Khamsi, 2009; Crouch, 2020; Tikly, 2020; Mawdsley, Fourie, & Nauta, 2019). Among the most cited exemplars is Brazil’s Sobral education reform model, recognized for its use of structured pedagogy, sequenced curriculum, formative assessment, and performance-based incentives to drive foundational literacy gains (McNaught, 2022; Loureiro & Cruz, 2020). Yet, despite this influence, there is limited research on how such models are interpreted, recontextualized, and reshaped as they are transferred across borders within the Global South, into different political, economic, cultural, and educational systems.

This paper examines how educators, government officials, and civil society actors in Kirinyaga county, Kenya, have adapted the Sobral-inspired Napenda Kusoma (“I Love to Read”) program, piloted in 40 public primary schools. Prior studies show that educational reforms rarely transfer wholesale; instead, they are recontextualized within pedagogical, linguistic, political, and institutional landscapes (Anderson-Levitt, 2003; Cowen, 2006; Bold et al., 2018). We analyze how local actors in Kirinyaga make sense of the Sobral-inspired reforms, highlighting adaptation not only as a response to contextual constraints but also as an expression of professional and political agency. While we recognize implementation fidelity as a key indicator of success, our focus is on adaptation as a generative process, marked by negotiation, meaning-making, and recontextualization, and how this process shapes reform agendas and outcomes (Steiner-Khamsi, 2004; Phillips & Ochs, 2004). The broader study investigates three dimensions of Napenda Kusoma implementation: (1) how local actors adapt Sobral-inspired practices; (2) variation in uptake and delivery; and (3) conditions influencing readiness for scale-up. This paper focuses on adaptation.

We utilize a comparative case study approach (Vavrus & Bartlett, 2017) to trace the transfer of Sobral reforms to Kenya and examine horizontal and vertical dynamics of adaptation as understood and implemented by actors at the government, school, and community levels. We focus on 10 schools, five high-performing and five low-performing, selected from the 40 pilot schools. The study draws on interviews, classroom observations, focus groups and reviews of curriculum and policy documents. It is informed by an integrated conceptual framework that draws on theories of policy transfer and recontextualization (Steiner-Khamsi, 2004; Phillips & Ochs, 2004), decolonial perspectives on South–South educational cooperation (Tikly, 2019; Connell, 2007), and scholarship on local actor agency in policy enactment (Anderson-Levitt, 2003; Mawdsley et al., 2019). This framework enables us to examine how global models such as Sobral’s are not merely implemented but actively negotiated, reshaped, and localized by actors operating within distinct economic, cultural, political, and pedagogical conditions. This research contributes to scholarship on education policy transfer, South–South cooperation, and the politics of foundational learning reforms. In line with the CIES 2026 theme, the study engages with the intersection of education and peacebuilding, showing how inclusive foundational reforms and curricula can foster peaceful and just societies (Bush & Saltarelli, 2000; UNESCO, 2016).

Authors

• Maurice Sikenyi, University of Notre Dame

• TJ D'Agostino, University of Notre Dame

• Maurice Mutisya, Zizi Afrique Foundation

• Virginia Wanjiru Ngindiru, Zizi Afrique Foundation

• Fernanda Soares, University of Notre Dame