Browsing by Author "Kapito, Patrick Mavuto Stranger Paul"

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    Scripted curriculum and the quest for improving reading for meaning: Conceptions of language and literacy in Malawi's Grade 4 English scripted curriculum and amongst Grade 4 English teachers
    (2021) Kapito, Patrick Mavuto Stranger Paul; Kell, Catherine
    Various scholars in education have argued that policy, practice and opinions about language and literacy teaching are consciously or subconsciously underpinned by particular conceptualisations of language and literacy (Ivanic, 2004). These conceptions about language and literacy teaching are usually reflected in curriculum documents and teachers' views and practices about the teaching of language and literacy. In the quest to mitigate dwindling standards in language and literacy in education, governments and their development partners have embarked on literacy projects/programs. A key feature of these programs, in recent times, is the quest to promote reading for meaning through the use of a scripted curriculum. Malawi's Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, through its National Reading Program (NRP) has been implementing a scripted curriculum for Grades 1-4 English and Chichewa. My study aimed at exploring the conceptions of language and literacy which underlie the approach to the teaching of Malawi's Standard/Grade 4 English scripted curriculum and how the teachers conceive language and literacy, as they engage with the scripted lessons, and whether such conceptions promote the NRP's aim of ‘reading for meaning'. The analysis of conceptions of language draws on Blommaert's ‘artefactual ideology of language' (2008) and Makoe and McKinney's (2014) ideology of languages as bounded entities, while the analysis of conceptions of literacy draws on the concepts of autonomous and ideological models of literacy (Street, 1991). To explore the conceptions of language and literacy that underpin the scripted lessons and inform the teachers' views of language and literacy, the study focussed on the Standard/Grade 4 English Teachers Guide (TG) and Learners Books (LB), related documents of the Malawi's National Reading Program (NRP), and Standard 4 teachers of English's accounts of their conceptions and practices in relation to the Standard 4 English scripted curriculum. The study established that though the social nature of language and literacy is acknowledged by the NRP and teachers, both the TG and teachers' conceptions of language and literacy are strongly informed by the view of language as an abstract system that has forms independent of their social uses, and that literacy is conceived as consisting of decontextualised skills. Thus, despite the NRP's emphasis on and calls for a greater focus on reading for meaning, meaning is largely abandoned/neglected as the ideologies/conceptions of language and literacy do not allow teachers to teach reading for meaning. The implication is that if the social nature of language and literacy continues to be backgrounded, with the structural view of language and the view of literacy as decontextualised skills being foregrounded, efforts to improve education standards through promoting literacy levels might be futile and waste of resources.