The Resources Available at Home in Windhoek Urban Settings in Namibia And Their Implications for Early Literacy Learning at School
Dr Job Uazembua Hengari
Abstract
The study explores data of a larger ethnographic-style research that followed three children in Windhoek urban pre-and primary schools and at home in Namibia to examine their early encounters with literacy and the implications of these encounters for their later development as readers and writers in schools, at home and in their communities. As parents and older siblings occupy home as a social space, they engage each other in literacy events, during which literacy learning is encouraged as a culturally valued activity. This paper presents a ‘slice’ of that larger study that followed three pre-and primary school home literacy encounters over a period of one year, focusing on the primary school phase. The writer suggests that the reading and writing practices of literacy are only one part of what children are learning at home in order to be literate. Home creates other literacy practices that cut across reading, writing and other forms of semiotic forms of communication. I want to suggest that Namibia endorse the sociocultural approach to literacy learning by way of a paradigm shift in order to create room for other literacy practices outside of school, in homes and in communities, to become recognized and made legitimate as they already are broadening what counts as literacy.