The exciting early literacy development course AfLIA and NBA are working together to develop, seeks to:
“Train public and community librarians to understand and practice techniques for teaching children vocabulary development, print and phonemic awareness in mother tongue and English. The course is also expected to lead the participants to a deeper understanding of how to prompt the creativity of children as well as how to use open licensing to increase appropriate reading resources for the target age group through the translation of existing stories into mother-tongue languages.” – AfLIA
As a starting point, AfLIA and NBA surveyed librarians and library staff in 18 English-speaking countries in Africa, asking a number of pertinent questions about how public library staff see their existing roles and responsibilities when it comes to early literacy, and how they’d like to engage and interact with children in their communities going forward.
The surveys were championed by representatives from each country, and as a result the response rate was incredible.
Data from the surveys is being used to inform the course development, and once complete, the openly licensed course will be piloted with a select number of library staff; following that it will be made available for free, with translation into other languages and adaptation encouraged.
AfLIA’s Dr Nkem Osuigwe and Kirsty von Gogh (NBA) discussed the course and the situation in African libraries at the mEducation Alliance symposium on Thursday, 30 September in a discussion titled: The Role of Librarians in Early Literacy Practices in Africa.
You can view the discussion here.
Visit the Early Literacy Resource Network website for more on the fascinating survey results and course development.
