Teacher Education as Cultural Re-appropriation
ABSTRACT
Teacher education is weak in South Sudan, and the dilemma is how this can be improved when leaders and executives in South Sudan are characterised by incompetency, autocracy, continued conflicts, and a lack of vision to drive the national development agenda? This chapter argues that teacher education can be enhanced through indigenous knowledge education (IKE) because of its relevance and has been a critical source of information as it enlightens the current generation on how Indigenous communities interact with their environment and resources.
The purpose of this chapter is to explore the current situation of teacher education in South Sudan and to argue for a new approach that embraces IKE. The discussion will take into account the advantages and
disadvantages of such developments. I will also propose some key education policies versus the current education practices. Part 1 presents the context of teacher education in South Sudan, and Part 2 explores teacher education and the way forward by touching base on professional development and training, language and teaching materials, teacher motivation, and pedagogy arguing for the interaction of IKE with modern teacher education and the relevance of IKE practices in an improved teacher education.
Teacher education in South Sudan has been weakened because of the prolonged context of conflicts, instability, and poor teaching conditions. 1 At the time of writing, teachers in South Sudan have not been paid for more than 14 months. The teacher training colleges are not functional with the exception of the faith-based
institutions, although these too have inadequate resources. The teaching profession no longer attracts the young cadre to enrol on the training colleges because it is considered an unpaid career. The dearth of qualified teachers makes education unavailable for many children across the country. Moreover, the wider social and economic situation in the country is dire. Local communities and internally displaced persons (IDPs) are subjected to ongoing conflicts and displacements, severe economic instability, devastating floods, and droughts. Many locations are unsafe, without homes, and their livelihoods (food, water, and infrastructure) are inadequate or absent. South Sudanese refugees living in the camps are not willing to return home because of the absence of basic needs, and the deteriorating political and economic situation. These issues influence the development of teacher education and contribute to the discussion in this chapter.
Parents and community agency in early childhood education and development in rural Ghana: towards an indigenous home-based early learning model.
Abstract
Introduction:
This study addresses a critical gap in Ghana’s efforts to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4.2 by exploring how indigenous, play-oriented pedagogies support children’s holistic development across 12 rural communities in northern and southern Ghana. Despite Ghana’s early childhood education (ECE) policy, which emphasises scaling evidence-based best practices to strengthen the capacity of parents and communities to deliver ECE, scalable culturally grounded practices remain underexplored.
Implications:
The findings reinforce the roles of families and communities as co-creators of culturally responsive, play-based pedagogies. The study underscores the need for ECE policies and curricula to integrate community-led indigenous pedagogies, ensuring that formal systems are enriched rather than disconnected from the sociocultural contexts in which children develop and learn.
Methods:
Using a heterogeneous sample, the study engaged parents, community members, and traditional leaders through individual face-to-face interviews and focus group discussions.
Results:
Thematic analysis revealed that parents, primarily mothers, creatively use locally available materials and indigenous resources to facilitate traditional games and storytelling, embedding early literacy, numeracy, problem-solving, and emotion regulation in everyday play. Fathers highlighted indigenous play as a means of strengthening parent-child bonds, fostering emotional intelligence, and creating safe spaces for emotional expression. These practices, informed by prior volunteer play-based teaching experiences, demonstrate a dynamic interplay between local knowledge and broader ECE goals.
SIHELI Gender Study Report
SIHELI is a 33-month project led by researchers from Uganda, Ghana, and Liberia that runs home-based early learning centers for children aged 3–6 in rural areas without formal kindergartens, blending indigenous culture-based teaching with literacy and numeracy while engaging parents as center managers and instructors; in Ghana, where the project operates in five Nanton District communities, a baseline study found strong community support for the model and a preference for mother-tongue instruction, a follow-up gender study revealed that childcare remains sharply gendered with fathers facing stigma for direct nurturing but finding the centers a legitimate space to engage as teachers, and a health assessment of roughly 150 children found most in good health but flagged needs like hearing issues, physical disabilities, and epilepsy, together pointing to recommendations around policy funding, father-inclusive programming, and stronger referral and specialist support systems.
SIHELI Health Assessment Report
This report covers a health screening of roughly 150 children across five SIHELI communities in Ghana’s Nanton District, conducted by Associates for Change with Ghana Education Service and Ghana Health Service between October 20–25, 2025, assessing general pediatric health, vision, and hearing to identify disabilities and conditions affecting learning; while most children were in good general health, the screening found four with physical disabilities, two with epilepsy, twenty with respiratory infections, eight with anaemia, one case of nystagmus, and — most significantly — 27 children flagged for possible hearing problems ranging from earwax blockage to infections to potential central processing issues, with some children showing overlapping conditions that highlight the need for integrated care amid a near-total absence of local specialists, prompting recommendations to prioritize specialist referrals with family support, train caregivers to spot early warning signs, share findings with district authorities, and adapt teaching methods for children with sensory or physical needs.
Understanding the Evidence Base: Community Engagement, Play-Based Learning, and Home-Based Early Childhood Education in Ghana
This literature review, conducted by Associates for Change (November 2024), examines existing research on community engagement, play-based learning, and home-based early learning initiatives to build the evidence base for the SIHELI model, drawing on a systematic search of Scopus, Google, and other academic sources followed by thematic analysis; it finds that active stakeholder participation — particularly from parents and community leaders — helps address infrastructure, personnel, and resource gaps in under-resourced settings, that incorporating indigenous games and play-based pedagogy significantly boosts children’s academic, physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development while preserving cultural identity, and that children in both home-based and center-based early childhood care consistently show holistic gains in literacy, numeracy, and social-emotional skills, though educators often lack adequate training to implement play-based methods effectively; the review concludes that combining centre- and home-based approaches, grounded in local culture and materials, produces the strongest outcomes for young children, and calls on the Ministry of Education and Ghana Education Service to expand access to high-quality community-based ECE — especially for disadvantaged children — while training both teachers and parents to weave indigenous strategies into everyday teaching and learning.