Examining the secondary effects of mother-tongue literacy instruction in Kenya: Impacts on student learning in English, Kiswahili, and mathematics

Benjamin Piper, Stephanie Simmons Zuilkowski, Dunston Kwayumba and Arbogast Oyanga

International Journal of Educational Development, 2018, vol. 59, issue C, 110-127

Abstract: Limited rigorous evidence is available from sub-Saharan Africa regarding whether children who learn to read in their mother tongue will have higher learning outcomes in other subjects. A randomised controlled trial of mother-tongue literacy instruction, the Primary Math and Reading (PRIMR) Initiative, was implemented in Kenya from 2013 to 2014. We compared the impacts of the PRIMR mother-tongue treatment group in two languages with those of another group that did not use mother tongue, but utilised the same instructional components. Results showed that assignment to the mother-tongue group had no additional benefits for English or Kiswahili learning outcomes beyond the non-mother-tongue group, and that the mother-tongue group had somewhat lower mathematics outcomes. Classroom observational analysis showed that assignment to the mother-tongue group had only small impacts on the usage of mother tongue in other subjects. Advocates for mother-tongue programmes must consider such results alongside local implementation resistance in programme design.

Keywords: Literacy; Mother tongue; Local language; Mathematics; Numeracy; Randomised controlled trial; Language transfer; Learning outcomes; Africa; Kenya (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0738059317302225
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:injoed:v:59:y:2018:i:c:p:110-127

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2017.10.002

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Educational Development is currently edited by Stephen P Heyneman

More articles in International Journal of Educational Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().