Transforming People’s Lives?

This PhD will be linked to the Fostering a Social Practice Approach to Adult Literacies for Improving People’s Quality of Life in Western Rwanda project. This project aims to translate, adapt and implement into the Rwandan context a social practice approach to adult literacies.

The main project is a four and half-year collaboration involving capacity building of teacher educators and tutors at Teacher Training Colleges in Western Rwanda to implement adult literacies courses including research into how people use literacies skills in their daily lives. The Government of Rwanda identified the Western Province of Rwanda as an area of immediate need for the implementation of the project. To address the identified challenge in literacy in Western Rwanda, we have proposed an adult literacies project drawing from a social practices approach, which would build the capacity of the Rwandan education sector to respond to the needs of adult learners. There is currently training for teachers for primary and secondary level schooling but none for adult education.

The project involves developing and sustaining an adult literacies personnel - through professional development and ongoing support - who will work with adult learners in ways which enable them to develop the literacies practices required to thrive in a contemporary developing society, as required by the Rwanda Adult Education Policy 2014. The project will contribute to Rwanda’s stride towards Sustainable Development Goal 4 by, ensuring that “a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women [in Western Rwanda], achieve literacy and numeracy”.

In terms of research on the project, a mixed methods approach involving surveys and qualitative ethnography (interviews and observations) will be utilised. Project stakeholders such as educators from the College of Education, adult literacies tutors from Teacher Training Colleges, adult learners, among others, will provide data at different stages of the project implementation. Data collected will include a literacies survey, transcripts of interviews with key informants, transcripts with community members describing how people use literacies in their daily lives, transcripts of focus group discussions with beneficiaries of the programme, focus group discussions with learners before they join a programme, learner feedback and notes from participant observation. The overall project research aims at understanding how people use social literacies in their lives and how literacies capacity improves the quality of people’s lives. We will also be researching the actual process of developing and implementing the project in Western Rwanda.

The PhD student will be expected to explore how adults use literacies in their daily lives in Rwanda and how literacies education founded on the social practices approach can extend the scope that people have to live a life that they value including improving their livelihoods. The theoretical framework for the project derives from, on the one hand, modernisation theory, which argues that education is a key driver of social and economic development and on the other from Amartya Sen who argues that education empowers people so that they can make choices about how they live their lives. The project will use a mixed methods approach combining quantitative and qualitative data.

Candidates should apply for a PhD place in the normal way, stating:
o ‘Elphinstone PhD Scholarship’ in the Intended Source of Funding section
o The name of the lead supervisor in the Name of Proposed Supervisor section
o The title of the specific research project (subject to any agreed modifications in discussion with the lead supervisor) in the Outline Summary section