The Contextualization of 21st Century Skills: Assessment in East Africa
Another first from ALiVE is the publication of a book entitled, The Contextualisation of 21st Century Skills: Assessment in East Africa. This book provides readers with a pragmatic yet technically robust process for undertaking large scale assessment program designed to inform policy. It is a rich resource that demonstrates how to build agreed understanding of 21st century skills. It highlights the intersection of culture, values, and believes with the 21st century skills. Fundamentally, the book tells three stories:
The first 6 chapters of the book immerse the reader in the process of contextualisation adapted by the ALiVE program, the contextual definitions of the 21st century skills by East Africa and a comparison to the global understanding and conceptual frameworks.
From the contextual definitions, ALiVE developed scenario and performance-based tools and used the tools to assess 45,000 adolescents aged 13-17 years old in East Africa. The book investigates this journey of tool development while allowing the reader an opportunity to interact with a sample of the tasks and the findings of the assessment in East Africa.
The chapters help readers to appreciate how East Africa’s education systems have evolved to include the 21st century competencies, the challenges faced in the implementations but also the opportunities that exist from the ALiVE findings.
The book was officially launched at the Comparative International Education Society (CIES) conference 2024 in Miami, Florida. The CIES Conference brings together more than 4,000 participants annually, including education researchers, policymakers, multilateral agencies, non-governmental organizations, analysts, practitioners, and students from across the globe to share evidence and explore educational issues.
Conversations in the book cover early childhood and primary school to secondary and higher education, as well as non-formal education and lifelong learning.
For ALiVE, the climax of CIES 2024 conference was the launch of the ALiVE Book, Contextualisation of 21st Century Skills: Assessment in East Africa. The book seeks to share lessons from the ALiVE project implementation experience since 2020. The book is yet another milestone for a project which was seeks to check if and how values and life skills could be nurtured and assessed in the East African context. The ALiVE book also reports on the levels of these core competencies among some 45,000 adolescents, from a household-based assessment conducted in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. This may arguably be the largest such assessment ever carried out withing the East African context.
The results describe how adolescents vary in proficiency by region, age, and other factors, providing a resource for national education ministries to factor into policy decisions. This open access book is written for educators and policy makers who seek to empower young people with competencies necessary for meaningful lives in the 21st century. The book has been lauded as another first by ALiVE initiative. During its global launch, a participant noted, “ALiVE has done what no one else has accomplished in the world.”
In May of 2024, ALiVE team hosted a global X-space conversation around the book. Over 350 participants joined in and many more have since followed through the conversation which is also available via these links: https://youtu.be/uhIltJeYXHw and https://youtu.be/1HTmfjH9YVQ.
The ALiVE book was co-edited by Prof. Esther Care, Dr. John Mugo and Dr. Mauro Giacomazzi.
ALiVE Book was later honoured at the inaugural East African Community (EAC) Education Conference in Arusha, Tanzania. The conference took place in August 2024.
