This study aimed at establishing and analysing the literacy practices in the rural and urban communities and their effect on the academic achievements of learners. It also aimed to establish the impact of other factors, such as the exposure to the language of examination, the level of parents formal education and the quality of parental mediation in the their children's academic work, which could be responsible for the imbalance between the rural and urban learners academic achievements. This study endeavours to established that the literacy practices in urban areas prepare learners for schooled and global literacies while the literacies in rural areas are to localised and thus impoverish the learners initial literacy development. This study also seek to determine the extent to which the current language policy in education in Uganda favours the urban learners at the expense of the rural learners as far as the acculturation into and acquisition of the schooled and global literacies are concerned.

This research study, in its efforts to discuss the consequences of the introduction of literacy among the Zulu people in Umbumbulu, will embody the social and educational aspects of the oral Zulu people before and after the introduction of writing. People have been made to believe that by learning to read and write, they would be empowered: literacy and education would enable them to get decent jobs and earn more money. Western civilization which has been adopted by many African peoples, attaches great value to money economy than subsistence economy, hence there has been a shift from orality to literacy. It is assumed that the acquisition of literacy skills may not change the intelligence quotient of an individual. This work will therefore investigate if the Zulu people did have a form of civilization before they met with the Whites. One will further investigate if the oral life of the Zulu man without the knowledge of reading and writing, was miserable and imbalanced. I shall then look into the method of how literacy was introduced among the Zulu people in Umbumbulu and lastly, check on the impact of literacy and education on the social life of Umbumbulu people. This project falls within the orality-literacy debate and will compare some often conflicting theories. Finally, one would propose suggestions of how school going pupils in Umbumbulu would improve their school performance by applying teaching methods and content that has relevance to their oral culture. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1997.

This study aimed at establishing and analysing the literacy practices in the rural and urban communities and their effect on the academic achievements of learners. It also aimed to establish the impact of other factors, such as the exposure to the language of examination, the level of parents formal education and the quality of parental mediation in the their children's academic work, which could be responsible for the imbalance between the rural and urban learners academic achievements. This study endeavours to established that the literacy practices in urban areas prepare learners for schooled and global literacies while the literacies in rural areas are to localised and thus impoverish the learners initial literacy development. This study also seek to determine the extent to which the current language policy in education in Uganda favours the urban learners at the expense of the rural learners as far as the acculturation into and acquisition of the schooled and global literacies are concerned.

The introduction of the new curriculum in South Africa has introduced a new approach to literacy in the early years of the Foundation Phase (Grade R – 1), which has a strong emphasis on emergent literacy. The National Curriculum Statement (NCS) for English – Home Language describes this approach as balanced “because it begins with children’s emergent literacy, it involves them in reading real books and writing for genuine purposes, and it gives attention to phonics”. For many teachers in South Africa, this means moving away from the “reading readiness approach” which held that children were not ready to read and write until they were able to perform sub-skills such as auditory discrimination and visual discrimination, and had developed their fine and large motor skills to a certain level. The purpose of this study was to trace and document children’s emergent literacy development in a Grade R class over a period of two months. More specifically, the intention was to investigate whether it was possible for trained, motivated teachers who have access to everyday resources in otherwise ordinary South African schools, to achieve the Assessment Standards set out in the NCS for Home Language in Grade R. In this school-based case study, the sample consisted of 4 children from 1 preschool in Queenstown, South Africa. The participants were selected according to gender and language because these appear to be significant factors in literacy development. The interpretive approach was used to collect and analyse data. Data were gathered from three main sources; (1) a research journal, (2) semi-structured interviews with the parents of the 4 participants, and (3) samples of the participants’ spontaneous writing. These were then triangulated to give credibility, objectivity and validity to the interpretation of the data. The findings revealed that: (1) Social class, language and to a lesser extent gender emerged as factors which impacted significantly on the children’s literacy development, resulting in some children progressing more quickly than others. In South Africa, language is an indicator of social class. The English-speaking children had a socioeconomic and language advantage which enabled them to make considerable strides in their literacy development. In contrast, the Xhosa-speaking children were disadvantaged by their socioeconomic and language circumstances, which made their literacy progress much slower. (2) The disparities between the English and Xhosa-speaking children in terms of the stability and structure of their families, had a considerable impact on their literacy performance. (3) Finally, teachers in English medium classes need to be aware of these factors. They need to design strategies and interventions to help those children who are learning in their additional language to achieve at similar levels to their English-speaking peers. If this is not done, the gap between the literacy achievements of the English-speakers and speakers of other languages will get wider and wider as time goes by.

This study describes the social practices involved in the situated activity of report writing in an engineering automotive discourse community in South Africa. In particular, the study focuses on the subjectivity of predominantly English Second Language (ESL) engineers writing reports by determining what literacy means to them and what meanings they give to dominant literacy practices in report writing, especially feedback in text production. In the South African engineering workplace, because of the diversity and complexity of language and identity issues, the appropriation of the required literacy skills tends to be multifaceted. This context is made more complex as English is the business language upon which engineering is based with engineering competence often related to English proficiency. Therefore, the study is located within the understanding that literacy is always situated within specific discoursal practices whose ideologies, beliefs, power relations, values and identities are manifested rhetorically. The basis for this critical theory of literacy is the assertion that literacy is a social practice which involves not only observable units of behaviour but values, attitudes, feelings and social relationships. As the institution’s socio-cultural context in the form of embedded historical and institutional forces impact on writer identity and writing practices or ways of doing report writing, notions of writing as a transparent and autonomous system are also challenged. As critical ethnography is concerned with multiple perspectives, it was selected as the preferred methodology and critical realism to derive definitions of truth and validity. Critical ethnography explores cultural orientations of local practice contexts and incorporates multiple understandings providing a holistic understanding of the complexity of writing practices. As human experience can only be known under particular descriptions, usually in terms of available discourses such as language, writing and rhetoric, the dominant practices emerging in response to the report acceptance event are explored, especially that of supervisor feedback practices as they causally impact on report-writing practices during the practice of report acceptance. Although critical realism does not necessarily demonstrate successful causal explanations, it does look for substantial relations within wider contexts to illuminate part-whole relationships. Therefore, an attempt is made to find representativeness or fit with situated engineering literacy practices and wider and changing literacy contexts, especially the impact of Higher Education and world Englishes as well as the expanding influence of technological and digital systems on report-writing practices.

Critical pedagogy asserts that in education there is regressive politics of knowledge that is inculcated as “infallible” information to passive students through all kinds of texts that conceal the power, inequality and injustice in human relationships. Education has thus degenerated into becoming techinicist and consequently oppressive. Techinicist education aims at maintaining the status quo. The creators of texts that are used in oppressive education systems and society in general focus on the question, “How do we best get knowledge that serves our interests into the heads of our young people?” Thus critical literacy which encourages consumers of texts to read, reflect and react is now indispensable to learners who nowadays are exposed to various texts with hidden agendas. This research focused on perceptions of critical literacy of teacher education students in Masvingo province in Zimbabwe. The research participants were third year diploma students in their final residential phase of teacher education. The mixed methodology was employed bearing in mind its principal role that it provides strengths that offset the weaknesses of both quantitative and qualitative research. The research instruments used were the questionnaire and the interview guide. The questionnaire was administered to convenience samples of one hundred teacher education students per each of the three institutions studied and the interview guide was used to generate data from ten participants per college. The research findings reveal that there are some socio-cultural and political influences on perceptions of critical literacy of the teacher education students. In this thesis it is recommended that the teacher education curriculum in Zimbabwe should have a formal programme for the promotion of critical literacy in teacher education students. / Educational Studies / D. Ed. (Philosophy of Education)

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This study aimed at establishing and analysing the literacy practices in the rural and urban communities and their effect on the academic achievements of learners. It also aimed to establish the impact of other factors, such as the exposure to the language of examination, the level of parents formal education and the quality of parental mediation in the their children's academic work, which could be responsible for the imbalance between the rural and urban learners academic achievements. This study endeavours to established that the literacy practices in urban areas prepare learners for schooled and global literacies while the literacies in rural areas are to localised and thus impoverish the learners initial literacy development. This study also seek to determine the extent to which the current language policy in education in Uganda favours the urban learners at the expense of the rural learners as far as the acculturation into and acquisition of the schooled and global literacies are concerned. / South Africa

This study sought to investigate the involvement of parents in the development of their children’s literacy. The study was conducted in a rural school in the Omaheke region of Namibia, a school selected for reasons of representativeness and convenience. The research took the form of an interpretive case study focussing on a study sample of nine parents, their children, and one teacher in the Ngeama community. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and then subjected to comprehensive descriptive analysis. The findings of the study indicate that parents in the Ngeama rural community have not been effectively involved in their children’s acquisition of literacy, for a number of reasons. These include the parents’ not feeling appropriately empowered to influence the development of their children’s literacy, the absence of environmental literacy programmes within the community, and the shortage of literacy materials such as newspapers and magazines. Perhaps the most important factor is that there is no public or school library in the Ngeama community. In view of these findings, the study recognizes a need for parental empowerment in terms of knowledge, skills, understanding and resources allocation regarding the education of their children. It recommends that a relationship of trust and understanding be built between the school and the community to ensure the sound development of literacy skills. The study further recommends the establishment of a library in order to enhance the literacy levels of teachers, parents and children alike.

M.A. (Applied Linguistics) / Despite a worldwide drive to eradicate illiteracy, the numbers of illiterates are still soaring. Southern Africa is no exception to this. Even though statistics regarding illiteracy may be misleading, there are an estimated 400 000 illiterate mother tongue speakers of Afrikaans in South Africa. This study tries to establish the reasons for this situation within a historical-political framework. It further provides a sociocognitive basis for mother tongue literacy teaching, relying on the discipline of sociolinguistics. Literacy skills form part of the language user's communicative competence; this study, therefore, endeavours to situate literacy teaching within the communicative approach to language teaching with its emphasis on the needs of the language learner, the functionality of the acquired skills and the active participation of the language learner in the teaching activities. From this perspective a selection of literacy material in Afrikaans, representative of both the mainstream "establishment" type and the more "radical" school, is discussed to arrive at a theoretical and practical rationale for the teaching of literacy to Afrikaans mother tongue speakers, stripped of political undertones which so often direct literacy programmes. The main critique on Afrikaans literacy material is that it is either too behaviouristically structured or that no planned progressive structuring has been built into the courses. Both types of material can lead to dissatisfaction amongst literacy students if the respective course does not fulfil their need for literacy. This situation is often the result of an incomplete needs analysis and the creation of literacy material without a clear image of the target group. The unstructured manner in which literacy material is created and distributed is due to the lack of a national literacy strategy, as well as the nature of adult literacy teaching where specific needs of specific groups of illiterates dictate the type of material. A way of counteracting these problems would be to establish a national organisation to coordinate, amongst others, the development and distribution of literacy material. In this material the needs of the learner will be in a central position with the interaction between the learner and the teacher taking place in meaningful contexts. A thorough knowledge of andragogy and applied linguistics can therefore help to develop literacy material that will benefit Afrikaans illiterates, be they mother tongue speakers of the language or second language users who need to be literate in Afrikaans.

Becoming literate isn't something that happens in a single year, classroom, or experience. Drawing on case studies of ten children's writing practices across the years from grade one to middle and high school, this study examines literacy development from the perspective of the learner: as a stream of experiences unfolding across time and space. Rather than limiting the conceptual frame to notions of 'school literacy' as a function of 'home literacy', the researcher examines how children learn to write by and through participation in multiple 'communities' or 'cultures' of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Brown et al., 1988). The research aim is to build an understanding of how learning takes place through long-term encounters with multiple communities whose boundaries and composition can be at times fluid and permeable. Using life history methods (Gergen, 1988; Gluck & Patai, 1991; McCall & Wittner, 1990), collective memory work (Haug, 1987), collaborative writing sample analysis (Taylor, 1990; Atwell, 1987; Tierney et al., 1991), and 'side-by-side' assessment (Atwell, 1987) the researcher engaged student writers in a five-year series of 'power sensitive conversations' (Haraway, 1988). Acting as 'legitimate peripheral participant' (Lave & Wenger, 1991) the researcher entered the students' multiple worlds of literate practice through participant observation in significant literacy events (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1983), open-ended interviews (Briggs, 1986) with concerned others, and collaborative analysis of institutional documentation available in school records (Potter & Wetherell, 1987). Drawing on these 'biographic literacy profiles' (Taylor, 1990) participants traced their trajectories through the multiple communities of practice that shaped them as literate persons over extended periods of time. Moving from an activist stance (Fine, 1992), researcher and participants collaboratively constructed narratives of literacy-learning aimed not to 'freeze' their findings, but to move them beyond the text as agents of possible futures (Fine, 1992). Research of this nature re-politicizes writing and literacy pedagogy in terms of the socio-cultural contexts that both enable and constrain student writers. Its implications extend beyond writing instruction into research, theory-building, curriculum redesign, literacy assessment, teacher training, and community resource planning and policy-making. / Ph. D.