New Way of Research in Literacy

ANEC representative participated in “New ways of researching literacy” workshop on 14-18th of January 2018 at Kabul Intercontinental Hotel which was hosted by UNESCO and Literacy Department of Ministry of Education. The workshop was led by Professor Allan Rogers and the other key members were Mr. Ahmadi and Mr. Omari from UNESCO and around 30 people from different universities and organizations across Afghanistan participated in the workshop.

It was emphasized throughout the workshop that every learner who attends a learning adult course, comes with lots of knowledge and shouldn’t be expected as ignorant. But unfortunately according to Rogers’ experience there have not been any class to ask the learner about their previous trainings since 1973. Moreover, people are working to make non-literate people as part of the society while they are unaware that these non-literate people are the society themselves.

The objectives were introduction of literacy, literacy as social practice, informal learning, ethnography and learning and teaching LSP. Literacy was presented as universal skill and social practice and was mentioned as a process to be shared rather than being possessed. Literacy event and literacy practices, development discourses, social imaginary and types of research such as quantitative, action research and qualitative research were discussed. Lastly, Ethnography was introduced as the new method of researching, because other old methods could fail due to echo effect, meaning of terms, mediation, gap between sayings and doing and tacit knowledge and skills.