Empowerment Practices through working with small Groups in Primary Schools in Burkina Faso

Empowering children through education is seen as a means to reduce poverty in developing countries, because it is assumed to lead to social change and to augment school attendance. Group work is viewed as an empowering practice in education. There is evidence that group work is more likely to contribute to positive outcomes, when it is situated in a Child Centered environment. Child Centered approaches in education are strongly associated with children’s empowerment. A research has been executed in the period from February until April 2012, to explore empowering Child Centered practices, executed through a certain group system in primary schools in Burkina Faso. This was purchased by having interviews with seven headmasters, seven teachers and 17 pupils of seven primary schools. Also seven study groups and two key informants had been interviewed and three class observations had been executed. Data were analyzed by focusing on Child Centered practices, which could be placed in one of the four distinguished categories of practices: 1. Practices which let children actively participate in their own learning. 2. Practices which teach children how to organize themselves. 3. Practices which take children’s learning contexts into account. And: 4. Practices which provide children a safe social learning environment. Empowering practices appeared to be carried out by all of the participants. A number of 11 different empowering practices were commonly used. Especially practices which took children’s learning contexts into account were common. The extend and way how empowering practices were put into practice seemed to depend on the teacher and the context of group work. Differences were also found in the application of empowering practices among students; group leaders were more involved in active participation- and self-organization practices than other group members. Most practices were directed by the teacher, but group leaders also appeared to have a considerable influence on the use of empowerment practices within groups. This influence, however, was only practiced by few group leaders