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16 - Sensitivity to Contextual Factors in Literacy Interventions in the Global South

from Part II - Neurobiological and Ecological Markers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2023

By
Yonas Mesfun Asfaha  and
Sonali Nag
Edited by
Ludo Verhoeven ,
Sonali Nag ,
Charles Perfetti  and
Kenneth Pugh
Ludo Verhoeven
Affiliation:
Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
Sonali Nag
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Charles Perfetti
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
Kenneth Pugh
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
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Summary

This chapter goes into the sensitivity to contextual factors in literacy interventions in countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and other countries that together have been called the Global South. Over the past decades, the measurement of children’s learning has been maturing as a field and has therefore come to be valued as an indicator of success for educational interventions. These have identified literacy and communication as a learning domain and the ability to read as one of the areas of measurement for global tracking. Moreover, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, with the aim of quality education for all by 2030, hashighlighted the need for sensitivity as to what constitutes "quality" and to whom. It is against this background that experiments with literacy interventions in the Global South were reviewed in this chapter. In this review, the focus was on the sensitivity of literacy and foundation learning in developing countries to contextual and cultural factors. The chapter starts with a description of the perspectives that led to the identification of the focus areas in our qualitative analysis. In addition, the methodology of using cultural probes to examine interventions and their evaluation is explicated. Finally, a narrative synthesis of findings and a discussion about the implications for evaluation of the next generation of literacy interventions is provided.

Keywords

literacy interventionGlobal Southevaluationdeveloping countriesglobal tracking
Type
Chapter
Information
Global Variation in Literacy Development , pp. 353 - 373
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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