Download or read book Everyday Literacies in Africa written by Alemayehu Hailu Gebre and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2009 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyday Literacies in Africa: Ethnographic Studies of Literacy and Numeracy Practices in Ethiopia is a product of Learning for Empowerment Through Training in Ethnographic Research (LETTER) programme conducted in Ethiopia. It outlines the story of a journey towards a clearer and more focused understanding of what literacy and numeracy mean. LETTER was intended to build more effective learning programmes for adults who wish to develop their literacy and numeracy skills and practices, through designing better learning programmes, preparing more relevant teaching-learning materials and training literacy instructors. This approach was designed on the understanding that adults learn differently from children mainly because adults bring to their learning a great deal of experience and knowledge. It is from this knowledge that facilitators must start.
Download or read book Everyday Literacies in Africa written by Kingsley Y. Amoako and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Social Uses of Literacy written by Mastin Prinsloo and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1996-10-08 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book details the findings of a research project investigating the social uses of literacy in a range of contexts in South Africa. This approach treats literacy not simply as a set of technical skills learnt in formal education, but as social practices embedded in specific contexts, discourses and positions. What this means is made clear through a series of fine-grained accounts of social uses and meanings of literacy in contexts ranging from the taxi industry in Cape Town, to family farms, urban settlements and displacement sites, rural land holdings, and various sites during the 1994 elections, and among different sectors of South African society, Black, Colored and White. Since the view of literacy presented here is so dependent on context, the book provides not only descriptions of literacy practices but also rich insights into the complexity of everyday social life in contemporary South Africa at a major point of transition. It can be read as a concrete way of understanding the emergence of the New South Africa as it appears to actors on the ground, focused through attention to one central feature of contemporary life — the uses and meanings of literacy. “Using fascinating and carefully documented case-study material, this book raises vital questions about literacy and illiteracy, and about adult education. Above all, it questions the efficacy of any literacy programme which fails to acknowledge the many ways in which uneducated and so called ‘illiterate’ people already use reading, writing and numeracy in their everyday lives.” Jenny Maybin, The Open University, Milton Keynes
Download or read book Africa s Hidden Histories written by Karin Barber and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Africa's Hidden Histories' takes a private and personal look into the world of everyday Africans, as they put pen to paper. As it explores the innovative, intense, and sociable interest in reading and writing, the text opens new avenues for understanding a rich and hidden history of Africa's creative expression.
Download or read book Everyday Literacies in Semi Rural Gambia written by Mark Peters and published by LAP Lambert Academic Publishing. This book was released on 2010-08 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The human being is a very intriguing 'object' to study. Everywhere in the world, human beings live in different circumstances. In these circulstances, they all have unique habits which suit their culture. When zooming in on these different circumstances, communication is important to continue important cultural habits. Language is one of the ways to accomplish this. In the past, there have been a lot of researches conducted on language in relatively rich as well as crowdy areas. More pover and sparsely populated regions are less intensively studied. My study was carried out in Africa, more specific in a semi-rural Gambian area. My goal was to find out how literacy was practiced in an ordinary semi-rural Gambian area. What I found was that unless one might not expect a big role of literacy in such a family, literacy is very important for them. The family members had a very positive attitude towards being literate. In the course of my research I saw that literacy is practiced by them in several ways, such as; expressing identity, continuing ancient cultural habits and the fact that people are proud to show their literacy skills. Unique was my study of the local language Mandinka.
Download or read book African Literacies written by Ashraf Abdelhay and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-10-02 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Africa is often depicted as the continent with the lowest literacy rates in the world. Moving beyond this essentialising representation, this volume explores African literacies within their complex and diverse multilingual and multiscriptal histories and contexts of use. The chapters examine contexts from the Maghreb to Mozambique and from Senegambia to the Horn of Africa and critically analyse multiple literacy genres and practices – from ancient manuscripts to instant messaging – in relation to questions of language-in-education and policy, livelihoods, Islamic scholarship, colonialism, translocal migration, and writing systems. As a whole, the book serves as an advanced introduction to language and society in Africa seen through the lens of literacy, and marks a unique contribution to scholarship in literacy studies offering a convenient collection of perspectives on and from Africa.
Download or read book Sustaining literacy in Africa developing a literate environment written by Easton, Peter and published by UNESCO. This book was released on 2014-06-23 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This publication contributes, in the critical context of Africa, to the conceptual development of the notion of the literate environment--an essential element for the promotion of literacy. It brings knowledge and insights about literate environments, highlighting inter-related issues such as its definitions, previous undertakings, methods of assessment as well as interactions between the supply and demand sides of environments.--
Download or read book Local Languaging Literacy and Multilingualism in a West African Society written by Kasper Juffermans and published by Multilingual Matters. This book was released on 2015-09-14 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book aims to enhance and challenge our understanding of language and literacy as social practice against the background of heightened globalisation. Juffermans presents an ethnographic study of the linguistic landscape of The Gambia, arguing that language should be conceptualised as a verb (languaging) rather than a countable noun (a language, languages). He goes on to argue that sociolinguistics should not be defined as the study of ‘who speaks what language to whom, and when and to what end’ (as Fishman defined it), but as the study of who uses which linguistic features under particular circumstances in a particular place and time. The book is therefore in part an exercise to unpluralise language, which Juffermans argues is necessary for a more realistic understanding of what language is, what it does, and what people do with it. The book will be of interest to sociolinguistics researchers, especially those focusing on Africa and the global South.
Download or read book African Literacies and Western Oralities written by William A. Coppedge and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2021-11-03 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do twenty-first century Christians communicate the Bible and their faith in today's mediascape? Members of the International Orality Network (ION) believe that the answer to that paramount question is: orality. For too long, they argue, presentations of Christianity have operated on a printed (literate) register, hindering many from receiving and growing in the Christian faith. Instead, they champion the spoken word and narrative presentations of the gospel message. In light of the church's shift to the Global South, how have such communication approaches been received by majority world Christians? This book explores the responses and reactions of local Ugandan Christians to this "oral renaissance." The investigation, grounded in ethnographic research, uncovers the complex relationships between local and international culture brokers--all of whom are seeking to establish particular "modern" identities. The research conclusions challenge static Western categorizations and point towards an integrated understanding of communication that appreciates the role of materiality and embodiment in a broader religious socioeconomic discourse as well as taking into account societal anticipations of a flourishing "modern" African Church. This book promises to stimulate dialogue for those concerned about the communication complexities that are facing the global church in the twenty-first century.
Download or read book Rural Community Libraries in Africa Challenges and Impacts written by Dent, Valeda F. and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2014-01-31 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book investigates the relationship between local libraries and community development, from the historical roots of rural libraries to their influence on the literacy, economy, and culture of the surrounding region"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Literacies Power and Identities in Figured Worlds in Malawi written by Ahmmardouh Mjaya and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-02-24 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is based on an in-depth ethnographic study of the National Adult Literacy Programme (NALP) in Malawi. It highlights the significance of exploring power and identity in literacy studies. Employing the concept of 'figured worlds' to study literacy as a social practice, the book focuses on understanding power relationships and identities in literacy practices. It illustrates how literacy identities and power relationships of some local community members continuously vary from one context to another and, in some cases, even within the same context. Using notions such as agency, artefact, resistance, shame and positioning, the book demonstrates the potential of the concept of figured worlds to address some of the questions raised within the New Literacy Studies – especially those concerning power and identity. The book also illustrates the value of an ethnographic approach in adult literacy studies, by exploring the challenges faced by the researcher in gaining access to community members' activities, and the opportunity to experience first-hand what instructors go through in facilitating adult literacy lessons.
Download or read book Everyday Youth Literacies written by Kathy Sanford and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-07-24 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Testifying to the maturity of the youth literacy education field, this collection of papers displays the increasing sophistication of research on the subject, and at the same time offers pointers to its potential for development in the next decade. The contributors track the rapid proliferation of youth literacies in today’s digital age, from video games to social media and film production. Drawing on detailed research and an intimate knowledge of youth communities in nations as diverse as Canada and Uganda, they provide notable examples of digital literacies in situ, and challenge conventional wisdom about literacy education. The chapters do more, however, than merely offer reportage of a crisis in literacy education. The authors embrace the core challenge faced by educators everywhere: how to incorporate and utilize new modes of literacy in education, and how to realize the potential benefits of heterogeneous modern media in youth literacy education, especially in marginalized, remote, and disadvantaged communities. This volume expands our view of digital communications technologies and digital literacies to include complex understandings of how media such as translated videos can serve as learning tools for youths whose access to literacy education is limited. In particular, a number of contributing scholars provide important new information about the praxis of teachers and the literacies adopted by young people in Africa, a continent largely neglected by literacy researchers. This book’s global perspective, and its ground-level viewpoint of youth literacy practices in a variety of locations, problematizes normative assumptions about researching literacy as well as about literacy itself.
Download or read book Hidden Literacies written by Alan Rogers and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This booklet presents a summary of contemporary understandings of adult literacy in the context of development. It suggests that literacy is best seen as one of a number of different means of communications rather than a single essential basic skill; that learning literacy is not essential to development (many non-literate persons are already fully engaged in development activities); that the issue of access to literacy skills may be more important than the universal development of such skills; that most adult literacy learning programs have failed to help the participants to use these skills in their everyday lives; and that "post-literacy" seems to be most effective when seen as a separate program of assistance (like extension) for adults to use their everyday literacies outside of the classroom. (28 references) (Author/YLB).
Download or read book New Language Bearings in Africa written by Margaret Jepkirui Muthwii and published by Multilingual Matters. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The collection of papers in this special volume discuss issues and challenges that are pertinent in understanding present-day moves and tendencies in the use of languages in the African contexts. The volume's major asset lies in the diversity of topics, the range of languages and the African geographical areas covered. Not only do the contributors come from different nations in Africa but also many of them are established scholars who interact with and interpret the unique situations in their nations on a daily basis.
Download or read book Children s Voices from the Past written by Kristine Moruzi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores a central methodological issue at the heart of studies of the histories of children and childhood. It questions how we understand the perspectives of children in the past, and not just those of the adults who often defined and constrained the parameters of youthful lives. Drawing on a range of different sources, including institutional records, interviews, artwork, diaries, letters, memoirs, and objects, this interdisciplinary volume uncovers the voices of historical children, and discusses the challenges of situating these voices, and interpreting juvenile agency and desire. Divided into four sections, the book considers children's voices in different types of historical records, examining children's letters and correspondence, as well as multimedia texts such as film, advertising and art, along with oral histories, and institutional archives.
Download or read book Spirits and Letters written by Thomas G. Kirsch and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies of religion have a tendency to conceptualise 'the Spirit' and 'the Letter' as mutually exclusive and intrinsically antagonistic. However, the history of religions abounds in cases where charismatic leaders deliberately refer to and make use of writings. This book challenges prevailing scholarly notions of the relationship between 'charisma' and 'institution' by analysing reading and writing practices in contemporary Christianity. Taking up the continuing anthropological interest in Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity, and representing the first book-length treatment of literacy practices among African Christians, this volume explores how church leaders in Zambia refer to the Bible and other religious literature, and how they organise a church bureaucracy in the Pentecostal-charismatic mode. Thus, by examining social processes and conflicts that revolve around the conjunction of Pentecostal-charismatic and literacy practices in Africa, Spirits and Letters reconsiders influential conceptual dichotomies in the social sciences and the humanities and is therefore of interest not only to anthropologists but also to scholars working in the fields of African studies, religious studies, and the sociology of religion.
Download or read book Grassroots Literacy and the Written Record written by John Trimbur and published by Multilingual Matters. This book was released on 2020-04-08 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how asbestos activists living in remote rural villages in South Africa activated metropolitan resources of representation at the grassroots level in a quest for justice and restitution for the catastrophic effects on their lives caused by the asbestos industry. It follows the Asbestos Interest Group (AIG) over a fifteen-year period through its involvement in grassroots research, in legal cases and in the compensation systems for asbestos-related disease. It examines how the AIG became grassroots technicians of translocal paperwork, moving texts back and forth between periphery and center, pushing documents through the textual mazeways of the courts, medical institutions, the compensation system and various government agencies. The book addresses rhetorical mobility and the extent to which, given the AIG’s position on the periphery, it has been able to enter the voices and interests of villagers into formerly inaccessible forums of deliberation and decision-making.
