Literacy and Development: What Works for Whom? Or, How Relevant is the Social Practice View of Literacy Education in Developing Countries?

Excerpts from an id21 summary of this article, which was published in the International Journal of Educational Development, follow:

"Evidence from a recent literacy project in South Africa and from the National Literacy Programme in Namibia demonstrates that difficulties are likely to arise from differences between learners' everyday uses of literacy and their understanding of what it can offer them.

Literacy researchers have criticised the main model of literacy education for its narrow focus on income-related skills and on school-based literacy. They suggest that literacy education needs to look at the range of literacy practices learners engage with in their everyday lives. The Older People’s Literacy project (OPL) in Durban, South Africa was designed to reflect this vision, to be participatory, to use adult-centred teaching methods and to include the production of learning materials by learners themselves. However, local concerns and priorities led to considerable changes in its design.

Research on the National Literacy Programme in Namibia (NLPN) also offers insight into the connection between reading and writing in everyday life and the forms of literacy that are actually introduced into the classroom. The students in this study had little interest in the inclusion of everyday life literacy practices in their lessons. They expected a more formal educational setting and mainstream curriculum. Why is this?

• Learners' own understanding of literacy comes from formal education, from which they have historically and politically been excluded. This exclusion is used to explain their continuing subordination.
• Literacy is associated less with functional everyday needs and more with the idea of being ‘educated’. By attending a formal education setting, this gives participants a sense of pride and they feel more respected by their peers.
• Understanding bills and other everyday literacy tasks are less of a concern than the injustice of having to pay high costs for services and the struggle they face in settling bills.
• Trainers shared with learners an idea of formal schooling as the model for literacy programmes.

Both the NLPN and the OPL, despite being very different kinds of programmes, show similarities with regard to what learners and facilitators think about literacy, how they react to the classes and how they adapt them to suit their own needs and interests. Far from being passive recipients of an approach imposed on them, trainers and learners actively change the content and format of the literacy programmes in order to suit their needs and priorities.

To enable programmes to reflect and adapt to the learners' needs, programme designers and curriculum developers need to understand:

• the symbolic roles literacy and education play in people’s lives
• the particular social, historical and political context of the community that influence learners' perceptions of literacy and what they expect from literacy classes
• power in terms of who possesses what literacy skills and what these skills allow people to do and feel
• relations of power between the designers of programmes and those who put them into practice."

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