Hope for rebuilding language foundations: part 1: following a cohort into a second year

Abstract

This current Part-1 report serves as an extension report for Cohort 1 over a two-year period (2013-2014/5). The companion report for the replication group of 2014 appears as the Part-2 Report (Cohort 2, over one year) (Harvey & Prinsloo, 2015). The Part-1 report, therefore, now covers longer-term benefits, outcomes and sustainability issues. It extends the initial one-year impact report released a year ago (Prinsloo & Rogers, 2014) into a two-year report with the emphasis on determining if the original strong results could be maintained over time. What changed in the second year of the study is that the number of schools and geographical areas doubled to two circuits. That also meant that an additional language community of Tshivenda-speaking learners and their homes became involved, in addition to the former Xitsonga-speaking learners and homes. Such changes might have posed challenges in relation to maintaining the impetus of the first year because of increased layers of coordination, employing more facilitators, and producing and using more learning materials. The details of these are covered in the subsequent pages. A deliberate attempt has been made not to repeat information that appeared in the one-year Cohort 1 impact report of last year, but to keep the present Part-1 extension report as short as possible. The Part-2 companion report for the replication group of 2014 (Cohort 2, over one year) was kept even more concise. In the process, only points deserving re-emphasis have been repeated. In summary, on completion of the intervention period on 30 June 2015, two part-reports were written. This was determined by the intervention and evaluation design straddling two cohorts. The original (first) cohort commenced in 2013 and experienced its second year in 2014. The second cohort of schools and learners was introduced at the beginning of 2014.