PhD VIVA

Qualifications attained:

Ms. Nyang’anyi Mariam John obtained a Grade-A Certificate in Education (1990-1992) and Diploma in Education (1998-2000) from Morogoro Teacher’s Training College. She also holds a Bachelor of Education in Adult Education from the University of Dar es Salaam and a Master’s Degree in Education (MA-Education) from the University of Dodoma. Currently is a PhD Education (coursework and Dissertation) candidate in the Departments of Educational Foundations, Management and Lifelong Learning (EFMLL) of the School of Education, University of Dar es Salaam.  Since 1994 she was working as a primary school teacher under the Ministry of education. Moreover, Ms. Nyang’anyi was employed by the University of Dodoma since 2007 to date and works in the Department of Educational Foundations and Continuing Education as an Assistant Lecturer.

ABSTRACT

This study explored the engagement of parents in developing children’s literacy skills in selected primary schools in Tabora Region. The study examined the roles performed by parents in developing literacy skills among their primary school children, explored parents’ background characteristics and their influence on their engagement in developing literacy skills among primary school children and found out the approaches employed to engage parents in developing literacy skills among their primary school children. The qualitative approach was employed in this study with a sample size of 50 participants including parents with children in primary school, teachers and education officers. The study adopted a case study design guided by the Family Literacy and Ecological System Theory whereby a purposive sampling technique was used to obtain research participants. The data were collected through interviews, focus group discussions and documentary reviews. The study used Thematic Analysis and data were analysed by using NVivo-12 software. The findings indicated that the roles performed by parents at home and school influenced children’s development of literacy skills in various ways such as providing exposure to children before joining schools and parents’ awareness of what is going on in schools. The findings also showed that parental engagement in developing children’s literacy skills is influenced by various parents’ backgrounds such as parents’ marital status, social-economic status, level of education and employment status. It was further shown that various parental engagement approaches such as delivering specific and direct information from schools, parent-teacher cooperation, parent-teacher encouragement, parent-teacher support and parent-teacher trust influenced children’s literacy skills development and impressed the majority of parents. These findings reveal that home and school contexts variously influence children’s development of literacy skills. The children’s development of literacy skills was influenced by their parent’s background. Besides, the parental engagement approaches supported children’s development of literacy skills. Based on these findings, it is recommended that home and school contexts should be well deliberated to influence children’s development of literacy skills, teacher-parent partnership programmes should be strengthened to facilitate successful children’s development of literacy skills, parents should work collaboratively to support their children’s learning and  MoEST should support and encourage education stakeholders to employ effective parental engagement approaches for effective children’s development of literacy skills. Notwithstanding, further studies are required to examine the contribution of other factors including parents’ background influences on parental engagement in developing literacy skills among primary school children along with the intervention study on establishing parental engagement approaches in the development of children’s literacy skills.