Role of Knowledge and Culture in Child Care in Africa: A Sociological Study of Several Ethnic Groups in Kenya and Uganda
Author: | Okwany, Auma |
Year: | 2012 |
Pages: | 176 |
ISBN: | 0-7734-1583-1 978-0-7734-1583-6 |
Price: | $159.95 |
| |
This book examines early childhood development (ECD) in Africa. The authors study the positive and negative cultural practices of ethnic groups in Kenya and Uganda and their influence on ECD. While emphasizing the positive, the authors argue that negative local practices such as female genital mutilation, child marriage, and child labor must be challenged because they may violate human rights and are detrimental to the well-being of children. Significantly, the authors conclude that while the forces of globalization have begun to transform education and have led to cultural dissociation in Africa, positive ECD strategies must strengthen rather than supplant the natural and local realities for children.
Reviews
“The groundbreaking work presented in this book is bound to stimulate further research on past, current, and changing ways of ‘dancing’ the African child, and I commend the authors for this important contribution.”-Prof. Kofi Marfo, University of South Florida
“The book is a significant contribution to scholarship and is mandatory reading not only for academic researchers but also for policy makers and practitioners. It should induce any child-oriented organization to hold an internal house-wide workshop so as to make it the intellectual property of all their staff.”-Prof. Nico van Oudenhoven, International Child Development Initiatives
“Through a thematic presentation of issues such as gender roles in child care, participatory pedagogies including learning by doing, mentoring, contextually appropriate child rights among others, the book markedly covers vast ground in the area of child development in Africa.”-Prof. Maurice N. Amutabi, Catholic University of Eastern Africa
Table of Contents
Foreword by Kofi Marfo
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Leveraging Indigenous Knowledge for Child Care
Chapter Two
Doing Research on Indigenous Knowledge
Chapter Three
The Village Still Raises the Child
Chapter Four
Promoting Contextually Relevant Child Rights
Chapter Five
The Silenced Narrative of Child Participation and Resilience Building
Chapter Six
"Re-membering" Indigenous Knowledge in Child Care
Bibliography
Index