Culturally Responsive Education

Reflections from the Global South and North

Elina Lehtomäki, Hille Janhonen-Abruquah, George Kahangwa

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351783453
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Economics

Culturally Responsive Education: Reflections from the Global South and North examines culturally responsive education's contribution to sustainable development and explores ways in which educational practitioners respond to cultures in and around educational contexts.

This book argues that cultural responsiveness in education is invaluable for sustainability in and throughout education, and explores methods with which to deepen the understanding of the values and intercultural dialogue constantly present in education. Using a number of international and multidisciplinary studies, the authors offer a novel perspective on to the consideration of diversity throughout education and provide a valuable contribution to the ongoing global and national debate surrounding the UN Sustainable Development Goal initiative.

With a focus on collaboration, this edited volume is vital reading for scholars, teachers and students of education, sociology, and development studies as well as education professionals. The book will also be of interest to education policy -makers and international and non-governmental organizations.

Part I

Focus on validating education

1 Implementing a language of instruction policy in diverse linguistic contexts in Ghana

Joseph Ghartey Ampiah, Christopher Yaw Kwaah and Christine Adu- Yeboah

The aim of the sixth education for all (EFA) goal is to improve all aspects of the quality of education and to ensure excellence for all students, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills. In many countries, though, the focus on access often overshadows attention to quality (UNESCO, 2004). However, the 2000 Dakar Framework for Action stresses the quality of education as a prime determinant of whether EFA is achieved. At present, in addition to making schools accessible to children, governments, especially in low-income countries, have been committed to providing quality basic education (Ampiah, 2011). The government of Ghana, for instance, has demonstrated its commitment to quality universal basic education through various initiatives aimed at making basic-school pupils literate. These initiatives include creating new schools, upgrading teachers’ qualifications, introducing capitation grants and providing free meals for schoolchildren. Learning achievement, which is one of the indicators of educational quality, though, has remained low at the basic-school level; for instance, many Ghanaian schoolchildren are not literate or numerate by third grade (Ministry of Education, 2014).

National standardized examinations, such as the National Education Assessment and School Education Assessment, have shown that basic-school pupils are “challenged by both English and mathematics” (Ministry of Education, 2014, p. 7). The national Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA), which assesses reading skills in 11 Ghanaian languages and the English language, and the Early Grade Mathematics Assessment (EGMA), which assesses the basic mathematics skills which need to be acquired in early grades, produced similar results. The 2014 EGRA results showed that: “by the end of P2 (grade 2), the majority of public school pupils [7–8 year olds] could not yet read with comprehension – neither in a Ghanaian language nor in English” (Ministry of Education, 2014, p. 11). Ghanaian primary-school students’ inability to read and perform basic mathematics is evidence that schools are failing to give children meaningful access to education.

Webley (2006) argues that education is power and that the language which is the medium of instruction in schools is the key to accessing that power. English is the language of the global economy and development and the official language in Ghana. However, in accordance with Article 30 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which asserts that all children have the right to learn and use the language of their family (Webley, 2006), the government of Ghana has instituted a national language policy for basic education. According to this policy, in the first three years of primary education, the most dominant of the 11 written languages (there are more than 79 spoken) recognized and recommended by the Ministry of Education for use in schools is to be used as the medium of instruction, while the English language is studied as a subject. Starting at primary 4 level, English replaces the Ghanaian language as the medium of instruction, and the Ghanaian language is then treated as just another subject on the timetable.

The language of instruction policy in Ghana is geared towards facilitating communication between the teacher and the child as, the better the communication is, the higher the chances are that the child will retain the educational content. The policy is also aimed at promoting the use of the language understood by the child in the first few years of education and to improve the quality of education from a cultural perspective. Again, the focus of the policy is to achieve reading fluency and comprehension in the child’s first language as a bridge to gaining literacy in English, thereby improving teaching and learning. This goal is informed by research in local and international contexts which suggests that pupils learn to read and write better and faster in a language they understand and speak well and that they can transfer the literacy skills acquired in that language to learning to read in a second language (Hartwell, 2010).

The Ghanaian language policy has been reinforced recently by the National Literacy Accelerated Programme (NALAP) policy, a bilingual biliteracy programme for early primary school started in the third term (May 2010) of the 2009/2010 academic year. It is aimed at helping pupils learn to read in a Ghanaian language while they learn to speak English, with the major Ghanaian language of each school community used as the medium of instruction until the primary 4 level. During implementation in the classroom, it is recommended that, of the 90-minute literacy lesson, 80 minutes should be used to teach literacy in the local language and 10 minutes in English at the kindergarten (KG) 1 level, and 70 minutes and 20 minutes in KG 2. This changes to 60 and 30 minutes in primary 1, 50 and 40 minutes in primary 2 and 45 and 45 minutes in primary 3.

Language policy in Ghana has had a chequered history. Owu-Ewie (2006) reveals that the use of the local language in traditional education dates to the Castle Schools and the missionary era before the introduction of formal education. He traces the development of the current language policy and shows that, with the opening of formal schools and the use of English as the medium of instruction, indigenous languages were seen as inadequate teaching media, and bilingual education was then begun (Owu-Ewie, 2006). According to Owu-Ewie (2006), the first legislation on the use of Ghanaian languages as the medium of instruction at the lower primary level, soon taken over by English, is believed to have come into effect when the British colonial government took on the administration of education in 1925. Owu-Ewie (2006) also points out that, since Ghana gained independence in 1957, the use of Ghanaian languages as the medium of instruction has been very inconsistent. For example, between 1957 and 1966, no Ghanaian languages were used; from 1967 to 1969, they were allowed only in the first year of elementary education; and from 1970 to 2002, a Ghanaian language was used in the first three years of schooling. However, the 2007 new education reform brought about shifts in policy, stipulating that, where feasible, schools should use a Ghanaian language for the acquisition of literacy and as a medium of instruction in lower primary school (Ghana Education Service, 2007). This shift was apparently based on the 2002 announcement by the then minister of education that the English language should be the only medium of instruction in primary schools (Hartwell, 2010). The minister advanced the following reasons for this stance, among others:

• Especially in rural areas, teachers never spoke English in class and used only the Ghanaian language.
• Students could not speak and write well in English even after secondary school.
• Teaching materials in the Ghanaian languages were lacking.
• There was a shortage of Ghanaian language teachers specifically trained to teach content subjects in the Ghanaian language.
  (Hartwell, 2010)

These factors notwithstanding, research evidence shows that the use of the English language as a medium of instruction has an influence on the patterns of classroom interaction and presents communication difficulties for both teachers and pupils (Brock-Utne, 2000). For instance, Brock-Utne (2000) reports on the difficulties both children and teachers in some African countries (e.g. Uganda, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Senegal) have mastering school subjects due to the use of English as the language of instruction when they have not mastered that language.

When English was the language of instruction, the children were silent, shy and did not participate if they were not spoken to. But when the instructor changed to mother tongue as medium of instruction, the children’s behaviour changed dramatically. The children who had not said a word previously were now eager to answer and their hands were constantly in the air, showing how much they wanted to answer the instructor’s questions.

(Brock-Utne, 2000, p. 9)

When the local language is used as the medium of instruction, it leads to what Chick (1996, cited in Brock-Utne, 2000) calls ‘safe talk’ by teachers as it is less demanding of the English skills of teachers and pupils, especially in the chorusing of responses. Resorting to such forms of talk allows for participation without loss of face by either teachers or pupils, whether through language errors or a lack of understanding.

The advantages of using African languages, in addition to the former colonial language, as the medium of teaching and learning are reported in the literature. Rubagumya (1997) refers to research studies in several African countries that show that maintaining and encouraging the connection between the language of the home and the language of the school has positive effects on the learning process. The use of the mother tongue, especially in the early years of schooling, has also been found to make the curriculum more relevant by connecting learning to pupils’ experiences, environment and culture, resulting in faster and better acquisition of knowledge (Dembele, 2003). The use of the mother tongue is also effective in helping children with acquisition of a second language (Hartwell, 2010).

Teachers are key in the use of the child’s mother tongue in teaching and learning. Obanya (2004) proposes the three-dimensional (input–process–output) model of education quality to show that, among other factors, teachers are fully devoted to the promotion of education when given adequate education and professional preparation to become pedagogically skilled. Obanya (2004, p. 5) contends that an important element in increasing or decreasing quality that has not been sufficiently taken into account is the role of the language used for and in learning (in addition to the language from which one is learning). Similarly, Hartwell (2010) points out that one factor contributing to the Quality Teaching Practice Index is teachers’ language competence. Teachers are fundamental to the implementation of language policies, and their experiences of language policy implementation are central in determining the risks of implementation failure, as they are responsible for day-to-day pedagogical decisions in the classroom (Fillmore, 2014). Teachers’ ability to speak, read and write the language of instruction in the early grades and to connect with pupils in ways that make them comfortable actively engaging in lessons contributes to the success of language policies. This is even more so the case in multilingual contexts where some pupils’ mother tongues might not be the dominant language.

Challenges and difficulties in learning tend to be common in multilingual classrooms. Especially when English is the official language, the policy of using the mother tongue in the early grades and switching to the English language exclusively in upper primary school is not fully respected, as both teachers and learners have problems communicating in that language and are forced to switch between the first and official language in the course of lessons (Fillmore, 2014; Ghimire, 2014; Obanya, 2004). In the linguistically heterogeneous context of Nepal, for example, Ghimire (2014) reports that teachers of early grades usually switch to the mother tongues (which might be the minority language) for pupils who cannot communicate in the school’s formal language, depending on their language proficiency. In Ghana also, an implementation study of the NALAP programme found that teachers and, in some cases, pupils were not fluent or literate in the Ghanaian language selected for the school, and that, in the given circumstances, teachers attempted to teach in that unfamiliar language (Hartwell, 2010).

Given the linguistic heterogeneity of many Ghanaian schools and the role of the teacher in facilitating learning, it is important to know how teachers manage teaching and learning using their language skills and pedagogical approaches. This study, therefore, explores some issues surrounding the implementation of the language of instruction policy in Ghana. The chapter presents a critical view of the role of teachers in achieving implementation success and highlights challenges which are likely to undermine the effective implementation of the language of instruction policy in Ghana. The study was guided by the following questions:

1. What are basic-school teachers’ ethnic and language backgrounds, and how different are these from the language of instruction they mostly use?
2. What are teachers’ perceptions of their local language competence?
3. Do teachers feel that training has prepared them to use the local language in teaching in primary schools?
4. What do teachers see as challenges to the implementation of the language policy in their schools?

Method

This study is exploratory in nature and uses basic-school teachers to investigate the implementation of local language policy in multilingual cultural settings in Ghanaian classrooms. The study was restricted to basic-school teachers, including teachers in private schools. Private schools were included in the study as there is a general perception that they offer higher quality education to pupils. Teachers from both urban and rural schools were recruited for this study to reflect the different cultural contexts in rural and urban settings. In this exploratory study, primary data were gathered using a questionnaire. The items in the questionnaire were chosen to reflect the multilingual context of basic-school classrooms and teachers’ training. The authors developed and validated the questionnaire through a pilot study involving basic-school teachers in the Cape Coast Metropolis. Teachers’ responses were analysed using frequencies and percentages and grouped under the themes which formed the basis of the questionnaire. Open-ended items were grouped into broad themes and quantified into percentages.

Participants

Participants in this study were drawn from three study centres hosting an upgrading programme of the Institute of Education, University of Cape Coast, for basic-school teachers from all ten regions of Ghana. These teachers had diplomas in education and had been trained at universities and colleges of education. The Institute of Education at the University of Cape Coast organized this sandwich programme for in-service teachers to upgrade their knowledge and skills to bachelor’s degree level. Questionnaires were administered to teachers who were at the study centres at the time of the researcher’s visits.

The respondents to the questionnaire were 526 teachers from public and private schools. The majority of teachers had been trained at two universities (38 per cent) and colleges of education (62 per cent). The participants were 44 per cent male and 56 per cent female. Approximately 87 per cent were primary-school teachers, and 13 per cent taught kindergarten. About 35 per cent...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Series introduction
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I Focus on validating education
• PART II Multidimensional and comprehensive approaches to learning
• PART III Transforming, empowering and emancipatory experiences in learning
• Index