CHAPTER ONE: Introduction
1.8 Organisation of the thesis
In this section, I am providing not only the organisational structure of this thesis but also the logic of this organisation. For that reason, overviews of each of the remaining chapters are provided separately with their rationale.
In Chapter Two, I present a review of related literature for this study. This covers the theoretical framework within which this study is situated. This is presented against the backdrop of other theories of literacy to facilitate positioning this study in the major debates that are currently going on in the field of literacy study, and to define the contribution this study makes to this debate. Two contesting models of literacy, the autonomous and ideological, which are informed by the cognitive and social practices theories of literacy respectively, are particularly discussed in detail because they are the basis of the main arguments that run through this thesis. The ideological model, informed by the social practices theory of literacy, is presented in more detail because it is the theoretical perspective taken in this study of literacy practices in the context of rural community life in Bweyale. These details include the key concepts that make up this social practices theory of literacy.
Related to this social practices perspective of literacy, other concepts like community literacy practices, ‘social contexts’ and ‘community’ are also presented. These concepts are important when discussing literacy from the social practices perspective. The chapter ends with a review of seminal and major studies of literacy that used the social practices approach to investigate different aspects of literacy in use in different communities.
Chapter Three provides a comprehensive description of the ethnographic research methods used in collecting data for this study. This comprises of a description of the data collection methods like participant observations, in-depth/biographical interviews,
collecting documents, visual ethnography and documentary photography. The grounded theory method used to analyse the information collected is explained.
The purpose of this study was to understand how rural people use literacy in their daily lives with a view to using this information to improve the provision of adult literacy education in Uganda. In Chapter Four, I provide information about literacy generally and adult literacy education in Uganda. The information on the current adult literacy
education programme is based on a documentary study of the existing curriculum and the primers used in the provision of adult literacy education in Uganda. The objective of this chapter is to provide the information for making the implications of this study to adult literacy education in Uganda clearer. This includes a review of the history of literacy and adult literacy education, the policies, the curriculum and the primers used in adult literacy education in Uganda.
Following this discussion on literacy and adult literacy education in Uganda, I provide a description of Bweyale as the context within which this study was conducted in Chapter Five. A good understanding of this context is important because this study is about understanding the social and economic uses of reading and writing in a community. This understanding cannot be achieved without a clear understanding of this community.
Therefore, Chapter Five provides information on the history, growth, and development of this community. The present social and economic lives of the people in this community and the different social groups that make up Bweyale and how they live their daily lives are presented. These factors have a bearing on understanding how literacy is presently used in this community.
In Chapter Six, the findings of the study are provided according to the major domains of literacy identified in rural community life in Bweyale. These are livelihoods, school education, religion, bureaucracy, the homestead, and personal literacy practices. Each of these comprises a wide range of diverse literacy practices that correspond with different activities related to that particular domain. The findings reveal a very rich and diverse use of reading and writing that is often discounted by both literacy programme planners and the local people themselves. This discounting is based on an understanding of literacy that is not consistent with how rural people are using their reading and writing skills.
The conclusions, discussion and recommendations from the findings of this study are presented in Chapter Seven. This is done by bringing together the various arguments that were developed from the beginning of this thesis to the end. In this chapter, I start by making general conclusions of the findings of the study. This is followed by a review of
the different chapters as a basis for presenting and discussing the highlights of the major findings of the study. This overview provides the background needed for outlining the implications of the findings for adult literacy education policies in Uganda. The chapter ends with proposed models of provision that could be used to overcome the difference noted in this study between current adult literacy education curricula and everyday literacy practices in the life of the community.