Reconceptualising the Learning Crisis: Multi-dimensional Pedagogies of African Accelerated Learning Programmes

This book offers a powerful, postcolonial rejection of the socalled global learning crisis that offers deficit models of the experiences, knowledges, identities and relationships of African children, eroding their agency and dignity and undermining their learning opportunities and potential. Three case studies of three accelerated learning programmes (ALPs) for outofschool and lower achieving children in Ethiopia, Liberia and Ghana illustrate multidimensional models that reenvision the purposes and pedagogies of basic education, reconnect with the lived experiences of African children and teachers and promote the role of communities in improving childrens learning. Drawing on diverse social theory, the chapters reveal the use of childrens funds of identity and knowledge, a material engagement with their natural environment, and highlight the transformative use of local languages. This book ultimately proves that a holistic approach to learning, based on the relational and communityrooted African philosophy of Ubuntu, produces vital personal and academic benefits for African children. This book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of international and comparative education, postcolonial studies, African education, education policy and transformative pedagogy. It will also appeal to development strategists and NGOs working with the Education for All agenda.