Browsing by Subject "Literacy"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Open Access
    Implementation of an electronic monitoring and evaluation system for the antiretroviral treatment programme in the Cape Winelands district, South Africa: a qualitative evaluation
    (Public Library of Science, 2015) Myburgh, Hanlie; Murphy, Joshua P; van Huyssteen, Mea; Foster, Nicola; Grobbelaar, Cornelius J; Struthers, Helen E; McIntyre, James A; Hurter, Theunis; Peters, Remco P H
    BACKGROUND: A pragmatic three-tiered approach to monitor the world's largest antiretroviral treatment (ART) programme was adopted by the South African National Department of Health in 2010. With the rapid expansion of the programme, the limitations of the paper-based register (tier 1) were the catalyst for implementation of the stand-alone electronic register (tier 2), which offers simple digitisation of the paper-based register. This article engages with theory on implementation to identify and contextualise enabling and constraining factors for implementation of the electronic register, to describe experiences and use of the register, and to make recommendations for implementation in similar settings where standardisation of ART monitoring and evaluation has not been achieved. METHODS: We conducted a qualitative evaluation of the roll-out of the register. This comprised twenty in-depth interviews with a diverse sample of stakeholders at facility, sub-district, and district levels of the health system. Facility-level participants were selected across five sub-districts, including one facility per sub-district. Responses were coded and analysed using a thematic approach. An implementation science framework guided interpretation of the data. Results & DISCUSSION: We identified the following seven themes: 1) ease of implementation, 2) perceived value of an electronic M&E system, 3) importance of stakeholder engagement, 4) influence of a data champion, 5) operational and logistical factors, 6) workload and role clarity, and 7) importance of integrating the electronic register with routine facility monitoring and evaluation. Interpreting our findings through an implementation theory enabled us to construct the scaffolding for implementation across the five facility-settings. This approach illustrated that implementation was not a linear process but occurred at two nodes: at the adoption of the register for roll-out, and at implementation at facility-level. CONCLUSION: In this study we found that relative advantage of an intervention and stakeholder engagement are critical to implementation. We suggest that without these aspects of implementation, formative and summative outcomes of implementation at both the adoption and coalface stages of implementation would be negatively affected.
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    Individual and contextual factors associated with low childhood immunisation coverage in sub-Saharan Africa: a multilevel analysis
    (Public Library of Science, 2012) Wiysonge, Charles S; Uthman, Olalekan A; Ndumbe, Peter M; Hussey, Gregory D
    BACKGROUND: In 2010, more than six million children in sub-Saharan Africa did not receive the full series of three doses of the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine by one year of age. An evidence-based approach to addressing this burden of un-immunised children requires accurate knowledge of the underlying factors. We therefore developed and tested a model of childhood immunisation that includes individual, community and country-level characteristics. Method and FINDINGS: We conducted multilevel logistic regression analysis of Demographic and Health Survey data for 27,094 children aged 12-23 months, nested within 8,546 communities from 24 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. According to the intra-country and intra-community correlation coefficient implied by the estimated intercept component variance, 21% and 32% of the variance in unimmunised children were attributable to country- and community-level factors respectively. Children born to mothers (OR 1.35, 95%CI 1.18 to 1.53) and fathers (OR 1.13, 95%CI 1.12 to 1.40) with no formal education were more likely to be unimmunised than those born to parents with secondary or higher education. Children from the poorest households were 36% more likely to be unimmunised than counterparts from the richest households. Maternal access to media significantly reduced the odds of children being unimmunised (OR 0.94, 95%CI 0.94 to 0.99). Mothers with health seeking behaviours were less likely to have unimmunised children (OR 0.56, 95%CI 0.54 to 0.58). However, children from urban areas (OR 1.12, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.23), communities with high illiteracy rates (OR 1.13, 95% CI 1.05 to 1.23), and countries with high fertility rates (OR 4.43, 95% CI 1.04 to 18.92) were more likely to be unimmunised. CONCLUSION: We found that individual and contextual factors were associated with childhood immunisation, suggesting that public health programmes designed to improve coverage of childhood immunisation should address people, and the communities and societies in which they live.
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    Studying literacy as situated social practice : the application and development of a research orientation for purposes of addressing educational and social issues in South African contexts
    (2005) Prinsloo, Mastin; Spiegel, Andrew
    This is a study of the application in South Africa of a social practices approach to the study of literacy. A social practices approach conceptualizes literacy practices as variable practices which link people, linguistic resources, media objects, and strategies for meaning-making in contextualized ways. These literacy practices are seen as varying across broad social contexts, and across social domains within these contexts, and they can be studied ethnographically. I examine how this approach is applied across four critical themes of study in South Africa, namely: the uses and valuations of reading and writing by adults without schooling; the historical circumstances whereby literacy comes to be identified as a resource of European culture in colonial South Africa; children's early engagement with literacy informal and informal contexts; and reading and writing in relation to electronic and digital media. I review examples of ethnographic research in each case, in which I have participated as a researcher, and examine how the approach has been applied, tested and modified in each case of its application. The research in each case showed literacy's incorporation in complex and variable ways in situated, located human activities. Whereas the first application of the social practices approach, that of the SoUL project detailed how literacy operated as everyday practice amongst people with little or no schooling, the research lacked a theoretical perspective to explain how these practices came to take the form and status that they did, as regards the influences upon them from outside the immediate settings that were studied. Over the subsequent studies I developed a revised approach to the study of literacy which detailed the explanatory usefulness of studying how literacy practices that network across larger domains than the local have effect on the construction of local practices, in both historical as well as contemporary examples. Literacy practices were not simply the products of local activity but involved rather the particular local application of communication technologies, language and artefacts that originated from outside the immediate social space. However, local applications involved original, indeterminate and varied uses of those resources. Includes bibliographical references (p. 203-223).
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    Teaching television literacy in South African secondary schools
    (1992) Woodward, Robert; Fielding, Michael
    This dissertation develops a syllabus for the study of television literacy in South African secondary schools. There are two natural divisions in the development of the thesis; the section which explores epistemological issues and the section which describes the strategic issues. The first section examines the nature of print literacy. This consists of four elements: mastering the basic language of the medium; being able to decode this language; using the medium for personal creative ends; and having the capacity for critical reflection. It is possible to talk in terms of a language of television and so this definition of literacy can be extended to television as well. There are three main areas for the study of television literacy. These are: the production techniques and effects of television; the conventional forms of the medium; and the nature of television as a mass medium. Once this has been established the dissertation explores the strategic issues of a methodology and areas of knowledge for teaching television literacy. Although there are many methodologies for the study of the mass media, the British Cultural Studies approach, together with Hall's three moments of encoding and decoding, seems to offer the methodology most suitable for teaching critical literacy. Within this theoretical framework it is possible to describe a syllabus for teaching television literacy. This syllabus involves studying the encoding and decoding of television messages within the context of the technical infrastructure of television; the internal and external relations of production, and the frameworks of knowledge which determine the form and content of television.