This handbook explores the evolution of African education in historical perspectives as well as the development within its three systems–Indigenous, Islamic, and Western education models—and how African societies have maintained and changed their approaches to education within and across these systems. African education continues to find itself at once preserving its knowledge, while integrating Islamic and Western aspects in order to compete within this global reality. Contributors take up issues and themes of the positioning, resistance, accommodation, and transformations of indigenous education in relationship to the introduction of Islamic and later Western education. Issues and themes raised acknowledge the contemporary development and positioning of indigenous education within African societies and provide understanding of how indigenous education works within individual societies and national frameworks as an essential part of African contemporary society.

How do we articulate the possibilities, limitations and challenges of inclusive schooling and education in African contexts? This book insists that inclusive education cannot be taken for granted. Inclusion is neither a natural nor a given educational practice. It must be struggled for. Bringing a critical perspective to inclusive schooling and education is imperative. This book adds to current educational debates with an African lens. It engages inclusive education from multiple lenses of curriculum content, classroom pedagogy and instruction, representation, culture, environment and the socio-organization life of schools, the pursuit of equity and social justice and the search for educational relevance. It is opined that Africa cannot be left behind in rethinking educational inclusion in ways that evoke critical questions of power, equity and social difference. The question of leaner’s identity in terms of class, gender, sexuality, (dis)ability, language, ethnicity and race are equally consequential for African schooling and education. When inclusion is understood as wholeness of education, then how schooling and education engage the complete learner – her/his body, mind, soul and spirit, as well as the use of local community and Indigenous knowledges in teaching and learning become relevant. Inclusion stands the risk of liberal educational agendas that simply tinker or toy with schooling and education and hardly embrace the challenge of educational change. What we need is a fundamental structural change that ensures schooling and education embraces difference while grappling with the teaching of Indigeneity, decolonization and resistance.

This edited volume provides a critical account of the theories and policies that have informed work in the field of early childhood and explores how they have operated in practice. Underpinning the theoretical debates are the familiar tensions between global norms and local contexts; increasing inequality alongside economic progress, and the increasing prominence of business and the private sector in delivering aid programs. The authors offer a profound critique on an increasingly important topic and discuss alternative models of policy and practice.

Teacher education is a known variable that impacts the quality of teaching and schooling, yet while research on practices in teaching and teacher education abound in other contexts, there seems to be no comprehensive reference work on teaching and teacher education in Africa. With Africa and the diaspora boasting rich, diverse political and educational contexts and practices, this gap in knowledge requires that attention be focused on investigating issues that shape the pace, course, and direction of teaching and teacher education in these contexts. Practices and Perspectives of Teaching and Teacher Education in Africa facilitates scholarly discussions among scholars and practitioners about practices, innovations, and future possibilities for educating the next generation of competent students and teachers in Africa. Covering topics such as educational reforms, equity, career progression, and curriculum development, this major reference work is ideal for administrators, industry professionals, researchers, academicians, scholars, practitioners, instructors, and students.

In this volume, African scholars engaged in research on the continent reflect on their recent and ongoing empirical studies. They discuss the strengths and limitations of research methods, theories, and interventions designed outside Africa to spur innovative research on the continent. And they explore how insights from African philosophical, theoretical, and empirical work can be combined with exogenous forms of knowledge to generate understanding of the processes of African children's development in ways that are responsive to local contexts and meaningful for indigenous stakeholders. A new field of African child development research is emerging in African societies, focusing on children as valued and vulnerable members of society and potential civic leaders of the future. Systematic inquiries are now designed to enhance our understanding of how African children think, to discover effective ways of communicating with them, and to inform successful strategies of promoting their health, education, and preparation for adult responsibilities in society. This is the 146th volume in this Jossey-Bass series New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development. Its mission is to provide scientific and scholarly presentations on cutting edge issues and concepts in this subject area. Each volume focuses on a specific new direction or research topic and is edited by experts from that field.

This book provides an analysis of children’s play across many different cultural communities around the globe. Each chapter discusses children’s play as an activity important for formal and informal education, mental health and childhood well-being, and children’s hobbies and past-times. Traditional, modern and postmodern play forms are discussed and probed for their meaning within a contemporary global community. Authors address the functions that this phenomenon serves for indigenous cultures and the problems that arise due to the globalization of educational and social resources. Issues that are covered include the importance of conceptualizing the relationship between play and culture, how play varies both within and between cultures, children’s non-play activities in relation to play activities, how play is learned and how adults, parents and teachers, as well as older peers and siblings, are all important influences on the play of children. Questions that are raised include: Is it fair to emphasize the importance of certain kinds of play, such as social pretense play? Is this ethnocentric? Is the mastery of certain forms of play (e.g. socio-dramatic play) during the early years critical in the acculturation process? How are different cultures incorporating literacy props in play, or otherwise developing early educational programmes that use play educationally to foster literacy acquisition? These and many other questions or issues are taken up in this volume. At the heart of the book is a focus on human rights, in particular the Child’s Right to Play as stated in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The book is committed to the principle of all children reaching their full potential and the enhancement of their families, communities, and cultures through play.

The Handbook of International Perspectives on Early Childhood Education provides a groundbreaking compilation of research from an interdisciplinary group of distinguished experts in early childhood education (ECE), child development, cultural and cross-cultural research in the psychological sciences, etc. The chapters provide current overviews of ECE in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, Africa, Europe, the US, and Canada, and convey how ECE is multi-sectorial, multi-cultural, and multi-disciplinary, undergirded by such disciplines as neuroscience, psychological anthropology, cross-cultural human development, childhood studies, and political science.

This book presents papers from the 9th Applied Research Conference in Africa (ARCA), showcasing the latest research on sustainable education and development. The conference is focused on applied research discussion and its dissemination, developing understanding about the role of research and researchers in the development of the continent. ARCA gathers papers which explain how key education is to transforming lives, eradicating poverty and driving sustainable development in Africa. Presenting high quality research about developing economies, construction, education and sustainability, this proceedings will be of interest to academics, postgraduate students, and industry professionals.

This book is written at a time of a paradigm shift in the African continent where dependence on western epistemologies and ontologies are giving way to African indigenous knowledge systems. Africa has been an importer of knowledge from the west since time immemorial and this book contributes to the body of knowledge on autism spectrum disorder (ASD) from the African perspective. As a result, decoloniality and Inclusive Education have gained traction within the academic discourse, with University of South Africa (UNISA) hosting decoloniality annual conference and a summer school to stimulate academic discussions and debates with a focus on African indigenous knowledge systems and theoretical lenses as opposed to the western epistemologies. The book also demystifies some of the misconceptions that children with ASD are a curse and punishment from God or gods. Among others, Ubuntu seems to be the dominant theoretical framework underpinning some of the research studies reported in this book.