Presenting at the World Congress of Comparative Education Societies

Angeline Barrett presented a paper co-authored with Lizzi Milligan, Eliakimu Sane and Rachel Bowden at the XVIII World Congress of Comparative Education Societies, 22-26 July 2024

Angeline presented in the online programme of the conference, which was held at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA. The paper was titled:

• Multilingual education for sustainable development in sub-Saharan Africa: Towards epistemic inclusion

Abstract

Multilingual education is necessary for epistemically inclusive education for sustainable development. Sustainable development requires education that transgresses boundaries between schools and other communities for social learning.  We argue that in multilingual societies, where the language of education is not widely spoken in the local community, this is contingent on using learners’ familiar language in the classroom. Our argument is made particularly in relation to lower secondary education, now defined by the Education Sustainable Development as the final stage of basic education, which should be free and compulsory for all. Across sub-Saharan Africa, with a very few exceptions, official policy mandates use of a dominant, European language, for learning and teaching in secondary school, even when this means using a language that is unfamiliar to the majority of learners. Additive multilingual education that develops learners’ familiar language(s) alongside introducing more dominant high status languages for academic learning enhances epistemic access to the specified curriculum. However sustainable development requires social learning that opens up new epistemic and ontological possibilities for the re-contextualization and reinterpretation of knowledge(s) for sustainable development sustainable development. Within the paper, we expand on our conceptualization of epistemic inclusion in relation to participation in classroom meaning making processes. The evidence basis for our argument is drawn from a recent configurative literature review, which took in over 160 documents, including peer-reviewed papers, book chapters and grey literature, which were mainly but not exclusively concerned with school education in East Africa, Southern Africa and the Horn of Africa. Arguments are illustrated with specific examples of classroom practices and learners' experiences from our own recent research in secondary schools in Rwanda and Tanzania as well as examples from the literature.