25 April, 17:00-18:30 BST
Parents in education: Holistic and indigenous perspectives around schooling and learning in Northcentral Nigeria
With Bukola Oyinloye, University of York
EH19, Essex House, University of Sussex (Campus Map)/ Zoom
This seminar shares findings from a study of rural African parents’ perspectives on, and involvement in, schooling in two rural Yorùbá primary school-communities in North central Nigeria. The study employed an ethnographic approach, embedded within a situated Ọmọlúàbí moral ethics framework, and applied thematic and capabilitarian analyses within a Sen-Bourdieu conceptual framework.
The seminar focuses on parents’ perspectives and reveals parents’ articulation of ethnotheories, or cultural beliefs about children’s lives, which transcended schooling and integrated other valued forms of learning: learning at home, Islamic schooling, and informal apprenticeships. Various capabilities were desired from these diverse forms of learning, and some limitations identified. Specific to schooling, parents constructed theirs and teachers’ roles in similar and notably different ways.
The seminar invites participants to reflect on parental (and carer) ethnotheories, and the implications of the findings on schooling in rural African contexts.