Perceived Socio-cultural Barriers to Children’s Acquisition of Kiswahili Pre-Reading Skills in Rural Pre-primary Schools in Tanzania

Abstract

This paper explores socio-cultural barriers to children’s acquisition of Kiswahili pre-reading skills in rural public –pre-primary schools in Tanzania.  Purposive sampling was used to obtain 48 pre-primary school teachers, head teachers and parents. Data were collected through semistructured  interview and focus group discussion methods. Thematic analysis was utilised in data analysis using NVivo-12 software for qualitative and non-structured  data. The findings revealed that mother-tongue interference, limited parent-teacher collaboration and community beliefs about children’s  education were the perceived socio-cultural barriers to children’s acquisition of Kiswahili pre-reading skills. The paper concludes that children’s  acquisition of Kiswahili pre-reading skills was hampered by the presence of various socio-cultural barriers. The paper recommends that pre-primary  school learning environments in rural areas should be improved for children’s successful acquisition of pre-reading skills.