Education for All and Multigrade Teaching: Challenges and Opportunities

Multigrade teaching poses a challenge to learning. Millions of learners worldwide are taught by teachers who, at any one time, are responsible for two or more school grades/years. These are the invisible multigrade teachers who struggle to provide learning opportunities for all within curriculum and teacher education systems designed for monograded classes. In many countries multigraded classes arise out of necessity and are regarded as second class education. Yet in some parts of the world learning and teaching in multigraded settings is embraced as the pedagogy of choice, offering equivalent, and sometimes superior, learning opportunities. Multigrade teaching provides an opportunity for improved learning.

This book is based on original research on challenges and opportunities in Colombia, England, Ghana, Malawi, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Peru, Turks and Caicos Islands and Vietnam. Its purpose is to raise awareness among educational policymakers and practitioners worldwide of the realities of multigrade classes in the context of Education for All, and to explore the implications for teachers, teacher educators, curriculum developers and educational planners.