Supplementary reading: definition and role
School libraries in Africa
Other access modalities
Case studies
Preliminary workshop
Problems and limitations
References
Diana Rosenberg
One of the fundamental requirements of all educational systems is the adequate provision of relevant and appropriate reading and other instructional and learning materials for use by teachers and their pupils. Such provision entails the authorship and publication of the materials. But also essential to the process is their distribution into the hands of the users, either directly or indirectly, via storage, organization, control and dissemination by an information centre. Whereas course textbooks can be distributed through retail outlets and individual purchase, reference and general reading materials require some form of organization for shared use. Books are too expensive for any but those which are compulsory reading to be purchased. It is not feasible to expect an individual to buy a book for reference or for once-only reading.
It is the aim of this study to examine some of the modalities through which the school population in Africa gain access to supplementary reading materials and to reach some conclusions on which are the most effective.
Textbooks are written to support a specific course and relate directly to the syllabus of that course. Reference and general books supplement course textbooks by offering alternative approaches, additional information and knowledge of subjects not directly covered by the school curriculum. The importance to the educational process of access to a wide variety of reading materials is widely recognized. Without it, what is taught in the classroom is not reinforced and the quality and permanence of the benefits of education are endangered. Such access:
· develops the ability to read and extends the vocabulary;· develops a teaching force which is capable of moving beyond the confines of set books and textbooks;
· supplements and enriches work done by pupils in the classroom;
· encourages independent access to information and arouses the interest of pupils in matters outside the curriculum;
· provides training in the use and retrieval of information, a skill which is essential for higher education and lifelong learning.
The establishment of school libraries has always been the traditional and preferred solution to providing access to supplementary reading material. These not only have the capacity to acquire, organize and make general reading materials available for the use of teachers and school pupils, but can also organize collections of multiple copies of textbooks for loan, when purchase is not possible.
But in Africa (and developing countries in general), whilst the need for education has been recognized, the need for libraries has not. Governments and Ministries of Education have not accepted that library and book provision should be a component of educational investment. The establishment and maintenance of school libraries has been relegated to the last place on the scale of priorities. The majority of schools possess no library. Where some semblance of a school library does exist, it is often no more than a few shelves of outdated and worn out material, inadequately staffed and thus marginal to the teaching-learning process.
The situation is, in fact, little changed since Independence. The 1960 Hockey report on the Development of Library Services in East Africa surveyed seventy-five mainly secondary school libraries and found book stocks inadequate and unsuitable, accommodation poor and teachers uninterested. The intervening years provide examples of a number of initiatives: school library policies, standards and centralized school library services. But a 1990 World Bank report on Zambia reported a very similar situation as at Independence: school libraries were said to be mainly passive elements, with outdated and irrelevant books and in run-down buildings. And that situation pervades most of Africa.
Nevertheless, school libraries remain on the agenda. A recurrent theme of school library literature in the 1980s and 1990s was the necessity to look for innovative solutions to the inadequate state of school libraries in Africa. IFLA decided to examine the problem in a pre-session Seminar in 1993; its aim was to examine the philosophy and operation of school libraries and look for ways to motivate authorities and agencies. In 1995 a seminar in Uganda was held to again generate interest in the establishment of school libraries. There is an increased interest in resource-based education. Mali is an example of a country which has recently and for the first time established a school library programme at the basic level. Tanzania now has a similar policy.
In recent years there have been some initiatives in Africa aimed at improving the availability of reading materials in schools, without actually re-establishing school libraries in their traditional form. The rationale for this trend is illustrated by the debate that is taking place in South Africa. Whilst it is recognized that the provision of relevant resources to basic education learners is a state responsibility, lack of finance makes the prospect of providing every school with a library a pipe-dream. There is a necessity to consider the alternatives to the model of 'one school one library'. This necessity can also be viewed as an opportunity: the alternatives may prove more appropriate to the new education philosophy that is being evolved.
One alternative is the setting up of community resource centres, which aim to provide reference and referral services to the whole community. These centres are often located in schools and tend to be mostly used by school children and their teachers. Notable examples are found in the rural areas of Botswana and Zimbabwe; they also exist in most other African countries. South Africa has a pilot project involving the establishment of Learning and Education Centres. Ghana has its Community Libraries Project. Another is the establishment of teachers' resource centres, now found throughout Africa. They are set up to serve a number of schools and stock a variety of textbooks both at the teacher and pupil levels, reference books and sets of books for use in the classroom. There has been a resurgence of interest in the use of classroom libraries and book box libraries; examples are found in Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa. Increasingly NGOs (rather than Government) are providing support in the provision of reading materials; there is the Ghana Book Trust; READ in South Africa is well known; BLD (Bibliothèque-Lecture-Développement) is a recent arrival in Senegal.
There is therefore a proliferation of access modalities now in existence across Africa. But little research has yet been carried out into their operations and use. This study was therefore set up with the objective of understanding which work best and in which circumstances and to recommend what strategy or strategies are affordable and sustainable. Given the lack of published data, it was decided that a case study approach was the most feasible and practical. By examining and evaluating in depth a different modality in a different country, it is hoped that the resulting information will provide some indication of how successful (or otherwise) the various modalities are in providing access to supplementary reading materials and point the way for further research.
Available finance limited the case studies to six:
· school library services (Ghana, Tanzania)
· school libraries (Mali)
· classroom libraries, NGO-supported (South Africa)
· book box libraries (Mozambique)
· teachers resource centres (Kenya)
· community resource centres (Botswana)
Nationals, employed in the information field and with a record of research and interest in school level information provision, were recruited to undertake the case studies in Botswana, Kenya, Mali, Mozambique and South Africa. The case study on school library services (mainly of historical significance) was to be undertaken from an examination of the published literature.
Before the local researchers started their case study research, a workshop was held in London in September 1997. The purpose was to establish a common approach and methodology, so that all case studies would be undertaken long the same lines and the resulting data would be comparable. Specifically the aims of the workshop were:
· to discuss and identify the factors that determine information provision and delivery, in the context of access modalities at the school level;· to explore and discuss concepts and methods of evaluation and their appropriateness for assessing the performance and impact of access modalities;
· to provide researchers with the opportunity to develop, present and discuss their research strategies;
· to develop and agree:
- a common methodological framework on which to base each case study;
- a timetable for completion;
- details of data presentation.
One day was spent on issues in case study strategy, including objectives of providing access, factors in providing access, ways of modality analysis, ways of evaluation, types of data and methods of data collection. Researchers then prepared and presented a research strategy for their particular case study. Finally a common framework and timetable for the case studies was agreed and common data collection instruments designed.
It was agreed that each case study would be submitted by the end of December 1997 and would cover the topics listed below:
· country context: socio-economic situation; educational policies and practices; information provision modalities in general and in particular at the school level;· background of modality: stakeholders/objectives/CSFs; origins, history, development; functions; governance; target user populations;
· methodology: choice and rationale; methods used in data collection and analysis; sample; problems;
· analysis: collection development; staffing; physical facilities; finance; use;
· evaluation: measures of cost, effectiveness and user satisfaction; assessment of effectiveness; impact;
· conclusions: overall assessment; future prospects; future strategies.
The overall methodology of this research, based as it is on the labour of local researchers working in relative isolation, inevitably resulted in case studies which vary greatly in depth and quality. The findings are not easily comparable. Although the preliminary workshop went some way towards lessening this limitation by providing a common framework and designing common data collection instruments, greater consistency could only have been achieved through much closer co-operation and coordination in both data collection and data analysis. Once the case studies had been submitted, it was not feasible to request any further data collection. One case study - that of community resource centres in Botswana - has never been completed and submitted. Therefore it has not been possible to consider the relative effectiveness of this modality.
Local researchers met with time and funding constraints. Two months maximum was allowed for planning and gaming authority for the research, as well as collecting the data. Funding was restricted to covering stationery and a small amount of travel. Researchers had to fit in the research with their normal work load. Data collection had to be limited to small and local samples; for example the researcher in South Africa could only sample three districts in the Pietermaritzburg area. In Mozambique, neither time nor the available budget allowed travel to Cabo Delgado, the location of one of the projects examined, in the far north of the country. And these constraints were sometimes exacerbated by events in-country. In Kenya the teachers went on strike; there was little time left for data collection when they returned and it was therefore restricted to only one district (instead of the two planned) and to Teachers Advisory Centres at the primary level. In South Africa, the data collection time coincided with school examinations; therefore not a lot of time could be expected from the teachers. In Mozambique the schools were closed in December and January, another reason why data collection could not be extended to Cabo Delgado. Mali suffered from student strikes, which resulted in the closure of schools during October and November.
All researchers met with a lack of existing hard data, in particular statistics of cost and use. The intention had been to rely as much as possible on published (for example annual reports) and unpublished sources (such as records of income and expenditure, of purchase, of stock, of loans and visits) and to concentrate on finding out about user satisfaction and perceived impact of the modality during any interviews. But such records had not been maintained. In the school library services case study, where it had been hoped to rely on the journal articles and books already published, it was found that information was only available for the period of first establishment, with nothing on the succeeding years. (Local researchers were then employed to gather data, but even so operational details were hard to come by, particularly in relation to costs.) In Kenya, those in charge of Teachers Advisory Centres did not maintain records on the use or size of collections. In Mozambique, the complete archive documenting the 'mobile' book box libraries had been destroyed. All case studies therefore suffer from incomplete data, especially where costs are concerned.
The intention had been to cover on the provision of educational materials at both the primary and secondary level. In the event three of the case studies are restricted to the primary level: book boxes, classroom libraries and teachers' advisory centres. (In Kenya, it had been planned to also study the very similar learning resource centres that operate at the secondary level, but time did not allow.) Only that of Mali examined school libraries at both levels, whilst the school library services of Ghana and Tanzania only served secondary schools. Although the Mali study concluded the problems facing school libraries were much the same at both levels and one of the recommendations from teachers interviewed in South Africa was that the classroom library programme be extended to secondary schools, the level of education addressed by each modality must be born in mind when general conclusions are reached. Some, but not necessarily all, will be applicable to both levels of education.
During the preliminary workshop, it was agreed that the assessment of the various modalities would be on measures of effectiveness, whether of their performance or their impact on the education process as a whole. Effectiveness assessment within the context of defined educational objectives and learner outcomes provides a strong argument for the value of programmes, this being the kind of information that decision makers want when they ask for accountability. Attempts were therefore made to gather information on the size, sufficiency, relevance and costs of collections, their services and the use made of them. For impact, changes were sought in areas like pupil abilities and examination pass rates.
However this approach does have integral problems. There is no agreement on the definition of effectiveness nor techniques for its measurement in the information field. It seems far easier to identify problems that inhibit success than to identify elements that enable successful programme implementation. Impact is a particularly elusive concept. In education, it is difficult to link an outcome to a particular input, such as provision of books. Various other factors like teacher quality and facilities have also to be considered. One has to rely on perceptions rather than actual cause-to-effect evidence.
Using any form of cost-benefit or cost-effectiveness analysis proved even more problematic. These methodologies were discussed during the Workshop and it was agreed that it might be feasible to examine the cost-effectiveness of a modality by developing cost indicators and then weighing these against the efficiency and effectiveness of the service. Such indicators could be the cost per item or the cost per user. However this form of analysis is very demanding in terms of data requirements. It could only be used if the cost data was already available; in the event very little cost data was obtained by researchers.
The chapters that follow are each devoted to a case study of one modality of access from one country in Africa. More details about the individual methodologies used are included and any data collecting instruments used can be found in the Appendix. References follow each chapter. The final chapter attempts to reach some conclusions.
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