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Growth and application of literacy skills by rural Zambian mothers with assistance from their children

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Abstract

The main objective of this case study was to use children as models to assist their parents in acquiring literacy with the help of a phone-based literacy game. Eight women in rural Zambia were loaned phones with GraphoGameTM, a digital literacy game, to use as a resource for literacy learning, with the assistance of their children. The participants were given literacy tests before the intervention and after their exposure to GraphoGame to determine the impact of the intervention. Analyses using t-tests and a Mann-Whitney U test found that the parents’ performance on the literacy tests improved significantly after the intervention period, compared with their pre-intervention performance. Furthermore, key informants indicated that the parents who participated in the study improved their literacy skills in various social and community interactions, as compared with parents within the same community who were not exposed to the game. Thus, the study showed that it is possible to use literacy technology to teach literacy to illiterate rural adults with the help of their children. The study concluded that literacy can play an important role in increasing community participation and consequently community improvement for rural women.

Résumé

Développement et mise en pratique d’acquis de lecture par des mères zambiennes rurales aidées de leurs enfants – La présente étude de cas avait pour objectif principal d’élever des enfants au rang de modèles pour qu’ils aident leurs parents à s’alphabétiser au moyen d’un jeu d’alphabétisation sur le téléphone. Le jeu d’alphabétisation GraphoGameTM avait été téléchargé sur des téléphones prêtés à huit Zambiennes dans une zone rurale afin qu’elles les utilisent avec l’aide de leurs enfants pour s’alphabétiser. Les participantes ont passé des tests d’alphabétisation avant et après avoir utilisé GraphoGame pour déterminer l’impact de l’intervention. Des analyses reposant sur des tests de Student et sur un test de Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney ont révélé que, par rapport à la situation de départ, les résultats aux tests d’alphabétisation s’étaient considérablement améliorés après la période d’intervention. En outre, des informateurs clés ont indiqué que le niveau de littératie des parents qui avaient pris part à l’étude avait progressé dans différents domaines d’interaction sociale et dans la collectivité par rapport aux personnes de la communauté qui n’y avaient pas participé. Ainsi, l’étude a montré qu’il est possible d’utiliser la technologie d’alphabétisation pour alphabétiser des adultes illettrés dans zones rurales, avec l’aide de leurs enfants. Elle conclut que l’alphabétisation peut jouer un rôle important pour accroître la participation à la vie de la collectivité et par conséquent pour améliorer la communauté pour les femmes rurales.

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Notes

  1. Some researchers argue for a replacement of the somewhat rigid literate–illiterate dichotomy with the notion of a continuum from low to high literacy (see for example Hanemann and Robinson 2022).

  2. According to Ethnologue, Zambia currently has 38 living indigenous languages. In addition, 9 living non-indigenous languages are spoken in the country, one of which is English, Zambia’s official language (Eberhard et al. 2023). “[W]hen Zambia gained independence from Britain in 1964 it declared English as the country’s only official language. The government policy permitted seven Zambian languages to be used as well … namely Bemba, Kaonde, Lunda, Luvale, Lozi, Nyanja and Tonga … as school subjects, for functional literacy and public education” (UNICEF 2017, p. 2).

  3. MDG 2 aimed to “ensure that by 2015, children everywhere – boys and girls alike – will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling” (UN 2000).

  4. “Phonics involves matching the sounds of spoken English with individual letters or groups of letters. For example, the sound k can be spelled as c, k, ck or ch” (NLT n.d.).

  5. Details are available on the CAPOLSA webpage: http://capolsa.blogspot.com/2017/07/home.html [accessed 28 October 2023].

  6. The ten selected chiNyanja words were kutamba (playing); codabwisa (amazing); wosangalala (happy); kusakila (hunting); nyama (meat); kalulu (rabbit); mutengo (tree); mvula (rain); moto (fire); and galimoto (car).

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the parents and their children who made the case study possible. We would also like to thank the community leaders and the whole community of Mkangazi Village for allowing us access to their village and interacting with us.

Funding

This case study received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zambia, Lusaka, Zambia

    Jacob Chomba Nshimbi

  2. Department of Psychology, Centre for the Promotion of Literacy in Sub-Saharan Africa (CAPOLSA), University of Zambia, Lusaka, Zambia

    Robert Serpell

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  1. Jacob Chomba Nshimbi
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Contributions

Both authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Jacob Chomba Nshimbi. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Jacob Chomba Nshimbi. Supervision of the study was performed by Robert Serpell and both authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jacob Chomba Nshimbi.

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The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationship(s) that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.

Ethics statement

This study was initially part of a project entitled Piloting Efficient Distribution of GraphoGame (PED-GG), which was led by CAPOLSA, a unit in the Psychology Department of the University of Zambia (UNZA)’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS). The involvement of all participants was done with total observance of informed consent and high confidentiality of the information they provided. The research proposal for this study passed through the University of Zambia Research and Ethics Committee (UNZAREC).

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Nshimbi, J.C., Serpell, R. Growth and application of literacy skills by rural Zambian mothers with assistance from their children. Int Rev Educ 69, 795–822 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-023-10028-8

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