Adult Literacy Teaching and Learning at Community Learning Centers in Afghanistan : A research study of adult literacy teaching and learning - challenges and opportunities from the facilitators and learners’ points of view at Community Learning Centers.

Abstract: In 2003, the concept of Community Learning Centers (CLCs) was introduced in Afghanistan, and based on an agreement among the Ministry of Education (MoE); National Federation of UNESCO Association in Japan (NFUAJ) and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) CLCs started working in the country. One of the key responsibilities of CLCs is to reduce illiteracy in the country, and to establish literacy courses for adults who are 15 years old and above and remained illiterate. This study was conducted to know the main challenges and opportunities with literacy teaching and learning at CLCs in Afghanistan. In addition, the study has focused on the main dropout reasons from literacy teachers’ and students’ point of views. This was a quantitative research. Two questionnaires were developed for data collection. The questionnaires were distributed to five CLCs. Totally 101 persons responded the questionnaires, out of 101 persons, 29 of them were CLC teachers and 72 of them were CLC students. This study found that there are some challenges faced by both literacy teachers and learners at CLCs. In addition, it was found that there are some opportunities as well, provided by CLCs for literacy learning. The challenges are mostly in the process of teaching and because of lack of learning materials, and beside of that adult literacy students have no enough time for learning and they are busy in other daily routine activities. Both CLC teachers and students have complained from the current literacy text books. Some of them considered the current textbooks very easy and some of them think the books are very hard. There are some opportunities provided by CLCs. All CLCs have building, classes, and teachers. There are female teachers for female students; all of them have textbooks and initial learning materials such as chalks and blackboards. Dropouts are seen in literacy courses at CLCs, and there are many reasons behind that. Adults are engaged in other daily activities; especially women are engaged to take care of their children so they cannot continue literacy courses. Beside of that, there are some traditional barriers in front of women which impede the way of their literacy promotion.