CEMASTEA And Zizi Afrique Foundation Host Kenya’s First Numeracy Co-Creation Workshop
CEMASTEA And Zizi Afrique Foundation Host Kenya’s First Numeracy Co-Creation Workshop
The Centre for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education in Africa (CEMASTEA), in collaboration with Zizi Afrique Foundation, successfully
hosted Kenya’s first numeracy co-creation workshop. The theme of this workshop was, Foundational Numeracy in Kenya: Status, Challenges and Opportunities.
This event brought together many education actors including policymakers, educators, development partners,
researchers, and civil society organisations to interrogate the numeracy low performance in
lower grades.
The essence of this workshop was to understand the root causes of the common errors and develop an action plan to improve the numeracy learning outcomes in Kenya.
The workshop provided a fertile platform for teachers, researchers, development partners, and policymakers to engage in meaningful discussions on error analysis with the teachers bringing
in the classroom experiences which could be vital in reshaping classroom practices.
These experiences have been brought alive through the error analysis proof of concept phase currently ongoing in Bungoma County. During the recent assessment conducted in five schools
in Bungoma West reaching 405 learners, the results revealed that only 3% of the learners were able to solve all addition and subtraction tasks correctly (6 tasks). 17% of the learners got all the addition tasks correct while only 7% got all the subtraction tasks correct.
This signifies that addition was performed better than subtraction.
Furthermore, only 2% of boys got all the tasks correct while 5% of girls got all the tasks correct.
Generally, girls performed better than boys in the assessment which is a unique trend. This demystifies the myth that girls perform better in humanities than mathematics.
Additionally, most girls made procedural and conceptual errors in both grades which suggests that girls are more engaged in applying methods while majority of boys made factual errors, particularly in Grade 3.
This points to gaps in basic knowledge retention rather than method application.
Speaking at the event, Dr. John Mugo, the Executive Director at Zizi Afrique Foundation, emphasized the critical role of the acquisition of foundational numeracy skills in shaping the
long-term academic success for learners.
CEMASTEA And Zizi Afrique Foundation Host Kenya’s First Numeracy Co-Creation Workshop
“By working together with teachers, policymakers, civil society organizations, development partners, and other actors, we can identify the most common errors that learners make and come up with practical solutions to support them,” Dr.
Mugo stated.
The co-creation workshop highly recommended more emphasis on retooling teachers on pedagogical skills that enhance numeracy acquisition such as error analysis.
The approach emphasized the importance of diagnostic approach on what the learner can do and supporting
them to improve on the areas they struggle with and interrogating the method to explore differentiated teaching approaches.
Through this approach, the teachers can understand the actual reasoning of the child and plan for individual support So far, 12 teachers in Grades 2 and 3, five (5) heads of institutions, and five (5) curriculum support officers have benefitted from the Error Analysis training to improve classroom delivery
of numeracy instruction in lower mathematics in Bungoma West Sub-County.
CEMASTEA and Zizi Afrique Foundation remain committed to creating platforms for dialogic partnerships that advance quality education for all children.
The two institutions applauded all the stakeholders present and asked them to join hands to support all children in acquiring foundational numeracy skills.
Supporting early mathematics education today means empowering future engineers, scientists, and innovators tomorrow.
