Browsing by Author "Barrow, Abdou"

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    Child Marriage and Its Impacts on the Education of Girls in the Rural Gambia : Focus on Niani District
    (Universitas Islam Internasional Indonesia Press, 2022-12-28) Barrow, Abdou; Bah, Yahya Muhammed; Sanneh, Mbassi
    Twenty-one percent of young women married before the age of eighteen. Approximately 650 million girls and women are married before their 18th birthday (UNICEF, 2020, 2021). States member of the United Nations, through its Sustainable Development Goals, has committed to ending child marriage globally through laws, legislation, and other means. Though the practice of child marriage is declining globally, it remains prevalent in Africa and Asia, particularly in the Gambia. This study looks at the impact of child marriage on girls' education in rural Gambia and the factors that encourage it. The researchers conducted qualitative case study research through documentation, Focus Group discussion (FGD), observation, and interviews to collect data. The study's findings indicate that child marriage has negative impacts on girls' education in rural Gambia. This reveals the fact that the percentage of girls enrolled in schools, especially high school, is lower than boys. Girls also face more difficulties than boys to complete, retain and transit to secondary or higher education. This leaves them with no future and excludes them from social or economic advantages. The factors that encourage child marriage are included: religion, poverty, culture, lack of meaningful opportunity, older men's desire for younger women to marry, and the failure of law enforcement. These factors mentioned repeatedly perpetuate the practice of child marriage, and undermine the educational opportunities for the majority of girls in the Niani district of Gambia. Therefore, the researchers recommend that the Gambian government enforce the existing laws and regulations to protect children’s fundamental rights and put into practice the necessary regulations on the prohibition and elimination of this phenomenon.
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    Education Sector COVID-19 Response Plan and Its Implication on Inclusive Education in the Gambia
    (Language Center of Universitas Teuku Umar, 2022-09-23) Barrow, Abdou
    During the early hours of 2020, COVID -19 terrorized the world by forcing many countries to close their borders and restrict internal movement by imposing a state of national emergency which was geared toward lockdowns for months in some areas for years. The Gambia was not an exception to this trajectory and one of the sectors heavily stroked by this lockdown was education. As a result, “the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education (MoBSE)” designed a Response framework to curb learning loss across the country. This study aimed to analyse the policy and describe the implication it has on inclusive education. The qualitative research method was used imploring the interpretive approach in the analysis. Despite the nobility and ambitiousness of the policy, the findings from the analysis revealed that the policy had a serious blind spot in the area of inclusion because many children are left out because of their inability to access the mediums where lessons are delivered. Many households in rural Gambia did not have a stable electricity supply or even own a television or radio set, therefore it was impossible for children in these communities to benefit from the program. In addition, children with special needs are also excluded particularly does who are visually or hearing impaired.
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    The role of school leadership in improving the quality of teaching and learning : the case study of the Gambia's basic and secondary education
    (Universitas Islam Internasional Indonesia, 2023) Barrow, Abdou; Didin Syafruddin; Lukman Nul Hakim
    Quality in education has been the central tenant in most educational policies in the globe, including the Gambia. Thus, leadership has been perceived as a critical agency for ushering in that quality through various means. As a result, scholars in education and related fields have extensively explored the parallel between the two, including this study. Hence this thesis investigates the role of school leadership in improving the quality of teaching and learning, focusing on the Gambia’s Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education as a case. Schools in the lower basic category under this ministry were selected as participants hoping to understand leadership at the elementary level. The study aims to contribute to leadership discussion in the educational leadership discipline by providing Gambian context. Given that school leadership in connection to teaching and learning needs to be studied more in the Gambia, I hope to add to the existing literature on leadership through this thesis. I hope to provide a context for MoBSE on the nature of school leadership in elementary schools and how it relates to teaching and learning. In addition, I propose a framework that could help school leaders in their quest for school improvement. Furthermore, the study adopts a multidisciplinary approach using a sociological lens to explore the case. In doing so, I viewed schools as a social system encompassing agents and structures. As a result, I used the Realist social theory to guide the analysis process. This theory enables the researcher to explore the interplay between agency and structure (structure and culture). In light of this, the study used a qualitative research approach based on a case study design in order to investigate and provide comprehensive information on the context and dynamics of school leadership in the chosen primary schools. A purposive sampling technic was used to carefully select the participating schools in this study in consultation with the Regional Education Directorate Five South. The directorates database was accessed to identify performing and underperforming schools in the region using NAT and BTA as a yardstick. Furthermore, various data collection method was used, including interview, focus group discussion, observation, and document review. These methods allow me to comprehensively explore school leaders' and teachers’ experiences, perspectives, and practices in relation to teaching and learning in the selected schools. To analyze the data collected from the above sources, the study adopts thematic analysis to identify and interpret key themes connected to school leadership and its contribution to teaching and learning. Based on the evidence gathered through different data sources, I came up with the following conclusion. First, school leadership contributes immensely to improving quality teaching and learning coupled with the involvement of relevant stakeholders like SMC, mothers’ clubs, parents, and RED through cluster monitors. This suggests that, despite leadership having the potential to improve quality in the instructional process, they will be limited if they exclude the above mention partners in the process. Second, professional development is essential to equip teachers with more sophisticated and advanced pedagogies for improved instructional processes. Schools offering regular and required professional development opportunities have registered success in their instructional practices, eventually resulting in better performance. Third, organizational structures developed by the leadership were more helpful in addressing existing structural and cultural problems, while those inherited could not effect meaningful changes. Finally, several factors informed the leadership orientations and decision-making process of leaders in the participating schools, including cultural, social, and religious. Given that the study includes only four schools using a qualitative approach as the investigative method, the study’s findings are limited to the participating schools. Therefore, the study’s findings cannot be generalized, which is considered one of the limitations of this study. As a result, I recommend that future researchers use more generalizable methods to provide a broader context to the subject. This could be done by choosing a more diverse sample; preferably, a quantitative approach would suffice. By adopting a quantitative approach, they could take samples across the board and examine leadership roles relating to teaching and learning. Yet still, if they wish to maintain a qualitative approach, I recommend adopting an ethnographic method. This will give them more time to directly observe the participants to gather in-depth information for more relatable conclusions.