Empowering Homes and Communities to Question, Deconstruct, and Inform Futuristic Education Policies

• In Event: Language and Literacy - Policies and Practices

Proposal

Background: Parents and caregivers play a critical role in fostering a child's learning and wellbeing by being engaged and informed from the child's earliest years through adolescence. However, for a number of reasons, educational officials have not actively sought out their opinions and suggestions on how to enhance community service access while ensuring that children receive the best education possible. Until recently, decisions, regulations, and practices regarding education were kept within ministries and government offices before trickling down to schools, parents, and children. However, after the unprecedented COVID-19 school closures, there is growing awareness that homes (including parents, carers, and their children) are indispensable for supporting children’s learning and may hold the key to the most effective and efficient learning practices. The prolonged closure placed parents and their children in control over what, how, and when children learn. The most impacted groups include the very young (preschoolers and first graders), the most disadvantaged (ethnic minorities & children with disabilities), and adolescents. This understanding will consequently require a change in who we listen to as we define, create, and improve education policies and choices; is it the local community leaders or powerful office decision-makers?

There is little focus on home- and community-focused programmatic interventions and research that can impact educational policies as a result of the limiting way we approach policy-level educational decision-making. The time has come to acknowledge the crucial value of the home environment as a setting for education and literacy development. This in turn necessitates the deliberate attention of educational researchers to the evidence gap impeding grass-roots policy. Such a strategy might have a significant impact on education since it would be driven by need and reality rather than a set of universal best practices. Talking to parents and caretakers with disabilities about each child's unique needs is one example.

Evidence that shows positive relationship between children’s home experiences and their performance on learning outcomes already exists (Bus, vet al (1997); Dickinson et al (2012); Hart & Risley (1995) Mol, et al., 2008; Sénéchal, (2006); Sénéchal & LeFevre, (2014); Sénéchal et al (2017). However, most evidence has not made it to policymakers’ tables hence it is not reflected in how children learn or are taught. The future of effective and empowering education systems lies in allowing homes and communities the liberty to speak out, inform and define grassroot policies that are grounded on locally generated knowledge. The grassroots policies should then find their way into national and global level policies. That way, the communities would then take ownership, drive, and take responsibility of actualising ‘their’ policies.

Against this background, this presentation will highlight findings from a baseline study commissioned to “collect and analyze quantitative and qualitative data in targeted homes and communities in Rwanda” to provide the USAID-funded Uburezi Iwacu (UI) project with sufficient contextual information to inform a community-informed and community-driven literacy activity.

Methods: A mixed methods approach was adopted to collect data on baseline values as well as contextual information from targeted households and stakeholders to inform rollout of the UI activity. A total of 1,137 caregivers (862 female and 275 male caregivers) and 1,137 children, 3-9-year-old (576 girls and 561 boys) were interviewed to generate the information. Additionally, 71 people were interviewed in FGD, and 7 key informants. The study also sought to explore issues faced by children and parents living with disabilities using the Child Functioning Module. The choice of who to interview was based on who was present at the time of the interview. IDELA assessment was also administered 294 children aged 3.5 - 6.5 years old.

Results & Recommendations: The study highlighted some important findings, challenges, and suggestions on how homes and communities can be empowered to support literacy development for children especially the most vulnerable. For example,

• Children with disabilities were found to be at a greater disadvantage given the lack of appropriate books and the limited capacity of their parents to engage them in literacy activities. Only 38% of children with disabilities reported having adequate learning opportunities in their communities. Additionally, qualitative data indicated that lower expectations and overprotection of children with disabilities were factors which affected literacy acquisition and are believed (by respondents) to result in a lifetime of underachievement and failure to reach their full potential. Recommendations include providing resources (such as audio textbooks, sign language storybooks, braille etc.) for children with disabilities in existing Community Literacy Resource Centers. Additionally, equip the reading club facilitators with skills to work with children with disabilities.
• 75% of caregivers or older siblings engaged in two or more direct actions to promote learning in the past week. Recommendations include intensifying empowerment of caregivers to be more involved in their children’s learning. This may involve working with communities to strengthen engagement, and bolster caregiver confidence to support the learning of their children through developing appropriate and passing on tailored content to various groups in the communities.
• 71% Percent of parents with children with disabilities can confidently support their child's learning. However, limited parental awareness of the importance of reading, child stimulation and availability of age-appropriate reading materials were cited as barriers by caregivers during FGDs. Parents, especially of children with disabilities, indicated they have limited knowledge and skills to engage their children in reading activities.

Most parents reported that they lack appropriate and accessible reading materials - textbooks and storybooks both at home and in the communities. Recommendations include subsidizing the costs of reading books so that they can be widely available (in rural and urban areas) and affordable for those households with limited financial means. Ensure that school and community libraries are stocked with sufficient books that can be borrowed by families.


Conclusion: Key recommendations and suggestions derived from the findings and learning from this study are being used to enhance the rollout of UI -a community-informed and community-driven literacy activity. Following a full cycle of implementation, an impact study will be conducted to establish impact on children’s learning, recommendations and lessons that be transferred to inform national level policies.

Authors

• Shelly Hartman Sunyak, World Vision Inc.

• Ann Munene PhD, WVI