Cross-Age Reading Buddies and Cultural-Sensitive Literature: Student-Centered English Language Instruction in an Ethiopian Budget School

Abstract

The Ethiopian government has called for educational improvement, emphasizing the employment of active, student-centered pedagogy. One way of maximizing an interactive learning approach involves blending a cross-age reading buddies program with high-quality, culturally relevant children's literature. Employing descriptive, mixed-method research, this study explored the effectiveness of books and buddies on English language use, motivation, and active learning in an underresourced, "budget" school in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The report includes a comparison of traditional workbook exercises to the reading of real books. It gives criteria for choosing literature for children of poverty in a developing country, and it describes a process for preparing older students to share second-language books with younger schoolmates. The results of the study suggest that a limited number of well-chosen books used in the context of cross-age reading buddies can have a positive impact on the frequency of English language usage, as well as on students' motivation to learn English.

A systematic review of the implementation of learner‐centred pedagogy in low‐ and middle‐income countries

“…Although not explicitly carrying out an experimental study, in Ethiopia, Cianca (2012) compared the frequency of interactions between the workbooks of students who had received a ‘traditional’ approach compared to those who had participated in the ‘reading buddies’ (p. 411) programme, and reported that there were more examples of English language use in the reading buddies group. The most robustly designed quantitative studies in the review all focused on science teaching, and used larger samples to compare LCP outcomes (in the treatment groups) with traditional teacher‐centred outcomes (in the control groups).…”

“…A commonly cited outcome of LCP implementation, reported by 28 studies, involved teachers becoming more positively disposed towards LCP after having taken part in an LCP‐related reform (e.g., Akello et al, 2016 in Uganda; Cianca, 2012 in Ethiopia; Wahyudi & Treagust, 2004 in Indonesia). Survey results (e.g., Isikoglu et al, 2009 in Turkey; Jennings, 2012 in Jamaica; Joong, 2012 in China) indicated that teachers had gained more favourable views of LCP over the course of implementation of an LCP‐related change.…”