LILIEMA : Language-independent literacies for inclusive education in multilingual areas

Abstract

This chapter introduces the innovative educational programme LILIEMA, a repertoire-based and language-independent method for achieving and nurturing culturally anchored literacy in multilingual contexts. Unique in kind, LILIEMA is the first programme that introduces literacy not based on a particular language but by drawing on the entire repertoire of learners present in the classroom. The flexible and adaptive design principle underpinning the method is inspired by multilingual oral and written communicative practices that are widespread throughout West Africa. LILIEMA has been jointly created, piloted and further developed by us – a team of teachers, trainers, researchers and community members from the Global South and the Global North. We introduce the motivations for developing LILIEMA, present the syllabus and teaching materials of the method and describe its implementation in the Casamance region in southern Senegal, drawing on examples from LILIEMA classrooms. We end the chapter by making a case for its potential to contribute to the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals in the domain of education in multilingual settings characterised by mobility and migration.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 38 citations exist upstream.