Intercultural skills Key teaching competencies for MTB-MLE contexts
explain why these methods help children learn. They emphasise the need to combine theoretical and practical knowledge in order to develop reflective practice among trainees ibid., 9.
Teachers require a better understanding of how children acquire literacy skills, in particular the important role of constructing meaning from text, not simply decoding letters, syllables and words
Akyeampong, Pryor and Westbrook 2011a:10. Williams 2006 reports that in teacher training courses in Malawi, trainees are not trained to teach nor to expect reading for understanding in the first two years
of schooling and that teaching reading, either in English or local languages, relies on repetition and “look and say” methods ibid., 30. In Zambia, he found that teaching reading tends to be highly “text
bound” with a focus on reading aloud pronunciation and little attention to meaning ibid., 39.
In theory, teaching literacy skills via the L1 facilitates a range of techniques where meaning plays an important role. In practice, however, many teachers struggle with such a paradigm shift Chimbutane
and Benson 2012. Graham 2009 notes that a number of the ECD teachers she observed failed to implement whole-language techniques into their classroom practice, and subsequently grapples with how
to encourage them to reflect on and adopt new practices. She contends that “teachers... need to be able to engage with the ideas on a practical level, a process which requires a cyclical mix of practice and
reflection” ibid., 216.
Trudell and Schroeder 2007 call for reading methodologies to be adopted which respect the linguistic features and writing systems of African languages and the social realities within which these
languages are spoken. They argue that certain reading methodologies, popular for languages such as English or French, are simply not suitable in African contexts. For example, this could be due to an over-
reliance on whole word recognition activities or because they require an abundance of resources which are not available to the typical African teacher. They advocate activities with a focus on phonological
awareness, syllable recognition and morpheme spelling issues, coupled with an emphasis on reading connected text for meaning 2007:174. They recognise, however, that in practice, these new
methodologies will often be “blended” with the more traditional methods that teachers have learned in teacher training.
In summary, there appears to be a significant disjoint between the ideal and the reality with regards teachers’ pedagogical skills in multilingual African settings. The ideal would have teachers acquiring new
understandings of language and literacy acquisition and adapting their teaching methods to become more participative and learner-centered as a result. The practice of reading for meaning in literacy
development appears to be a particular preoccupation of researchers because of the link to developing higher-level cognitive skills. The reality, by contrast, is that many teachers do what they have always
done with the limited resources at their disposition. They rely on “old-fashioned”, repetitive, procedural methods learned during their own schooling or during subsequent teaching experiences. They fail to
demonstrate the ability to evaluate why these methods may or may not be best for children’s learning. The question of how to encourage teachers to move somewhat towards the middle ground, somewhere
between the ideal and the reality remains highly pertinent. How can teachers be encouraged to learn and implement new but realistic strategies for using multiple languages in the classroom?