Assessment in a Rwandan higher education institution: a quest for aligned assessment to promote socio-economic transformation

Assessment in institutions of higher learning has been researched worldwide. However, there are gaps in research exploring the implications of assessment practices for learners’ access to the kind of knowledge enabling them to participate in their communities’ socio-economic transformation. This is the case in the African Great Lakes region, including Rwanda. This paper investigated the assessment practices at the University of Rwanda-College of Education to establish whether they enable students to access powerful knowledge for socio-economic transformation, which promotes critical thinking and creativity, or the knowledge of the powerful, which promotes memorization of knowledge produced by experts. The study adopted mixed methods, where 361 questions from 20 examinations papers for 2014/2015 and 2015/2016 academic years were analysed using Bloom’s revised taxonomy. Interviews with lecturers and group discussions with students were conducted. The findings revealed that assessment practices heavily encourage the knowledge of the powerful, with limited focus on the socio-economic transformative knowledge. Such practices are unlikely to lead to national socioeconomic transformation, which the government expects from education. The paper recommends revisiting assessment practices in Rwandan higher education to instil in the graduates the required knowledge for active contribution to socio-economic transformation.     

Using transformative models of adult literacy in conflict resolution and peacebuilding processes at community level: examples from Guinea,Sierra Leone and Sudan

This paper draws on the experience in Guinea, Sierra Leone and South Sudan, to explore how the methodology and modalities of community based participatory literacy can interrelate and combine with those of conflict resolution and peacebuilding. The paper considers how transformative models of literacy, such as those of Freire, REFLECT, the ActionAid literacy programme, and ‘New Literacy Studies’, along with the self‐expression and creative writing these generate, can contribute to the processes of forgiveness, reconciliation and reconstruction. It argues that adult literacy programmes constitute an important element in post‐conflict reconstruction.     

Gender Roles at Home and School

Parents of 116 first‐year pupils at an urban comprehensive school were studied by questionnaire and interview. They were asked about their educational and occupational aspirations for their children, their views on sexual equality and their children's out‐of‐school activities. Educational aspirations were found to be high, with little differentiation between the sexes. Parents were enthusiastic about their daughters studying physical science and neutral about craft subjects. Occupational aspirations were also high and although they tended to be sex‐stereotyped, parents were found to be generally supportive of non‐traditional choices. Class differences were few. Most parents were in favour of working mothers, equal pay and men helping with housework. However these egalitarian attitudes coexisted with more traditional assumptions about male breadwinners and a woman's main responsibility being to her children. Parents’ own domestic labour and that which they required of their children was strongly sex‐stereotyped. The messages which children receive about gender from their homes are contradictory, but not as uniformly traditional as many teachers assume.