Literacy and learning at home and school in a rural Zimbabwean community
Marriote Ngwaru
This thesis explores the literacy and learning of children in a rural community in Zimbabwe, both at home and at school and focuses, in particular, on the interplay between these two domains.
It uses a critical ethnographic methodology, combining an insider perspective with that of a trained outsider, to document the worlds and lives of the research participants. This approach questions the assumption that responsibility for poor educational outcomes should be placed on children and their families and is underpinned by various theoretical perspectives, including community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991), funds of knowledge (Moll et al, 20030), ruling passions (Barton and Hamilton, 1998) and transformative pedagogy (Cummins, 2001).
Observation, interview and focus group data were collected in an attempt to answer three key questions: (1) how do parents and teachers perceive the role of parents in their children’s formal schooling? (2) to what extent are children’s socio-cultural funds of knowledge employed in children’s schooling and (3) how can dialogue be encouraged between school and community in order to improve the achievement of children’s literacy?
At the outset, parents perceived that they had no role to play in the formal schooling of their children and that this was the sole responsibility of the school. Similarly, the teachers saw parents as having no part to play. At one level, these perceptions reflect underlying negative coercive relations of power. They also need to be seen, however, within the context of extremely difficult circumstances of life in a rural community in Zimbabwe and the ruling passions – food insecurity, the desire to be good family providers, and the health and acute morbidity – which have to be addressed before they can participate more effectively in their children’s formal schooling.
The students’ socio- cultural knowledge (funds of knowledge) and ways of knowing were scarcely acknowledged or utilized. Teachers depend almost entirely on the textbook which perpetuated an outdated notion of culture. They tried to stage ‘all-English lessons’ even though this stifled classroom interactions; lessons were subdued and there was evidence that both teachers and pupils had limited mastery of the language of instruction.
The data show that there is need for greater appreciation of the embeddedness of larger social practices in the pedagogic enterprise. By adopting the role of critical literacy ally, I was able to share reflections on what was taking place at home and in school parents and teachers. As a result of these interventions, teachers and parents not only showed greater awareness of the complementary roles they could play, but also pledged to continue working together to promote home, school interaction around the child.