Teacher Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes Related to Literacy and Language in Sub-Saharan Africa

One of the key challenges in improving learning outcomes is ensuring that teachers are prepared to effectively teach. For countries implementing bilingual and multilingual education, this entails teachers having the appropriate pedagogical skills and knowledge, literacy in the languages of instruction (LOIs), and willingness to teach in a local language. Multiple challenges exist for effectively implementing bilingual and multilingual education. It is common to find a mismatch between teachers having the appropriate pedagogical skills and knowledge, ability to read and write in the LOI, and willingness to teach in a local language. This could be due to several factors, including potential resistance to teaching in the local language and pressure from parents to teach in the regional or ex-colonial language instead of a local language. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) continues to put significant investment and effort into improving early grade literacy in sub-Saharan Africa and recognizes the need to examine critical issues on teacher effectiveness for early grade reading. This report responds to that need by examining and synthesizing the literature base on the relationship between teacher knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSA) regarding LOI and early grade reading outcomes in multilingual contexts in sub-Saharan Africa. The report aims to better understand the challenges in language policy planning and implementation, as well as to provide recommendations and identify research gaps. Specifically, the report examines three primary topics: 1) Teachers' Language and Literacy Skills, 2) Teacher Pedagogical Knowledge and Skills, and 3) Teachers' Attitudes and Beliefs Towards Local Language Instruction. An integrative literature review approach was conducted that used key search terms to retrieve peer-reviewed literature and grey literature according to established criteria. A total of 77 articles were retrieved by the search terms and an additional 32 by other means. The 109 identified articles are included in a summary table and assessed based on inclusion criteria for relevance and quality standards. The review ultimately included 74 sources. Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa have LOI policies that promote the MT as the first language of instruction (L1) and the ex-colonial language as the second language of instruction (L2). However, there is often a gap between the official policy and its implementation, resulting in teachers not being equipped to teach in the designated LOI. Findings revealed widespread limitations in teachers' local language capacity for teaching in bi/multilingual programs. Teachers may have oral language skills in a local language, but they frequently lack opportunities to become fully literate in a local language and to attend teacher preparation programs that use a local language as the medium of instruction. In many countries, entry and/or graduation requirements for teacher preparation programs are not rigorous enough to ensure teacher proficiency in a local language. A systematic review is needed of efforts across countries to strengthen institutions and mechanisms for improved teacher local language capacity, as well as research on how to best support teachers with limited LOI language skills. Data on teachers' local language proficiency across sub-Saharan Africa is extremely limited.