Open educational resources: Education for the world?

Education is widely seen as an important means of addressing both national and international problems, such as political or religious extremism, poverty, and hunger. However, if developing countries are to become societies that can compete properly with Western industrialized countries, not only is a fundamental shift in thinking with regard to the value of education and more/better provision of teaching required, but strong support from other countries is needed as well. This article explores questions such as whether Western policymakers can avoid a repetition of some of the failures of the past few decades in terms of providing foreign aid; how educators and providers of educational scenarios and learning contents can foster and manage the creation of a worldwide knowledge society; and in particular, if the provision of open educational resources (OER) can realistically overcome the educational gap and foster educational justice

Language endangerment and language documentation in Africa

Non peer reviewe

Linguistic Diversity, Pluralism and National Development in Africa

In the quest for national development in Africa, how are the facts oflinguistic diversity to be reconciled with pluralism, the African Union’sideological option for nation building? From the perspective of languageplanning theory, we motivate, justify, rationalise and propose a tierstratification model of language planning predicated on an adaptationof Jurgen Habermas’s 1965 notion of the public sphere. Concretely, thebifurcation of the public sphere into the public and private domains anda principled stratification of languages of the nation-state into thesedomains, leads to a rational planning process. The process ischaracterised by the maintenance and consolidation of the linguisticand cultural identities of ethno linguistic communities at the microplanning level while constructing a pluralistic national identity at the macro-planning level. The efficacy of the interaction between the two domains is mediated by two principles. The Principle of FunctionalComplementarities (PFC) requires that all languages be assigned (bythe state) some valorising functions, i.e. functions that procure economic, social, and political advantages, thereby contributing to elevating the status of the ethno-linguistic communities. The Principle of Attitude Engineering (PAE) is expected to effect a positive change of attitude, culminating in a change of mindset congruent with the paradigm shift of national development anchored on pluralism. This model of Language Planning ensures the empowerment of linguistic minorities, provides for a reduction of ethno linguistic dominance and ipso facto, ensures the democratisation of access to knowledge, especially developmentr elevant knowledge for the national development enterprise

Breaking the Silence: Exploring the Narratives of Survivors of Female Genital Cutting in Kenya.

As an African woman who was born in Cameroon which is in Western Africa, then grew up in Kenya, an East African country, I grew up hearing stories of different cultural practices that African women in any of the African countries that I have lived in and

Multilingualism and Bilingualism

Research in the area of bilingualism and multilingualism invariably produces fascinating insights. In the Europe of yesteryears, the paradigm of one nation one language was dominant and fashionable as a nation-building ideology that multilingualism was considered a curse, a demon that had to be exorcised. Today, the avalanche of empirical evidence of research findings has established multilingualism and pluralism as an ideal for national development. The nine chapters of this book provide further elucidations of the issue of benefits of bilingualism and multilingualism and also provide original research findings on developments in the areas of psychological dimensions of bilingualism and bilingualism in information retrieval systems. The book by its illuminating description and insightful analysis of issues of bilingualism will be of significant interest to scholars, researchers, and all concerned with bilingualism and multilingualism from whatever perspective