Why is this theme important?
The statistics we hear about children’s learning in low- and middle-income countries are always shocking. Every year, 200 million children leave school unable to read or do basic maths. A recent report from the World Bank claims that globally, 70 percent of children are unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10. In Sub-Saharan Africa, this rises to 90 percent. The pandemic has exacerbated drop-out, which in many cases has been sustained. But even children who are back in school are struggling to meet expected targets. If education is a human right, then this is clearly a huge problem for ethical as well as economic reasons. When faced with these numbers, it is unsurprising that the word ‘crisis’ is used to describe the situation.
However, the terminology around the learning crisis focuses attention on classrooms and teachers, at the expense of ignoring connections between education systems and bigger structural and systemic issues. If frames both learners and teachers within a deficit narrative without considering broader socio-emotional, socio-cultural and socio-political contexts in which learning does – or could – take place. Additionally, the learning crisis narrative has sprung up around the increasing reliance on standardised international assessments. These are held up as gold-standard markers of education quality, but are rooted in an economic, human capital model of education, test a relatively narrow set of skills, and have been criticised for being exclusionary. As the global community places increasingly high value on performance in these tests, but concurrently demands acquisition of complex combinations of contextually specific 21st century skills, more nuanced, democratically determined understandings of what kinds of learning are important and valued are needed. More locally-rooted and contextualised understandings of how valued learning can be supported are essential.
What kinds of papers are we encouraging?
African voices – whether those of researchers or the learners themselves – are rarely heard in the global discourse about the learning crisis. In this sub-theme we would like to encourage submissions that explore or interrogate the learning crisis narrative and the impact this narrative has had on schools and systems across Africa. We welcome proposals that consider and critique the learning crisis from empirical or conceptual perspectives. We welcome proposals that consider alternative ways of framing and capturing learning, as well as more creative ways of researching it.
What are we looking forward to in the submissions?
We are really looking forward to submissions that ‘look behind’ the prevailing learning crisis discourse, in order to suggest new ideas on how to move beyond it.
Sub-theme Convenors: Professor Seth Asare Danso (University of Cape Coast, Ghana) and Dr Alison Buckler (The Open University, UK)
Submit your abstract by Monday, 29th May 2023 through https://www.icerdaafrica.org/abstract-submission
