Towards a reconceptualisation of family literacy: exploring religious literacy learning and practices in two communities in Nepal

ABSTRACT

For many centuries, intergenerational literacy learning outside formal educational institutions has been an important part of everyday family life in Nepal. Yet, educational policy continues to focus on promoting ‘schooled’ approaches to literacy for both adults and children, overlooking informal learning and indigenous literacy practices in many communities today. Through exploring intergenerational religious literacy learning in Nepal, this paper develops new understandings of ‘family literacy’ and proposes how these could be integrated into current educational policy. Ethnographic-style research was conducted with families in a Muslim community, where teenage girls were teaching Urdu literacy to siblings, and in a Gurung community where intergenerational learning had become central to the development of Tibetan Buddhist texts. In these two communities, literacy was viewed as collaborative as well as individual, helping to shape shared identities, languages and values, and challenging instrumental notions of functional literacy that underlie much national and international policy.

KEYWORDS:

• Religious literacy
• indigenous
• gender
• Nepal
• intergenerational learning

Acknowledgments

This research was funded as part of the UEA Global Research Translation Award project ‘Meeting the SDGs: creating innovative infrastructures and policy solutions to support sustainable development in Global South communities.’ We would like to thank all our participants in the two communities for their generosity in sharing their time and ideas, as well as Dr. Prem Phyak (Chinese University of Hong Kong) and Dr. Ahmmardouh Mjaya (University of Malawi) who provided insightful comments on earlier drafts of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Ethical protocols approved by both collaborating Nepal and UK universities were followed.

2. See Masquelier (2015): 186 on ‘how faith literally resides in the Muslim body’ through movements during salat prayer.

3. Traditional woollen carpet.

4. After-death rituals.

5. Releasing the bird: after-death ritual.

6. Veda literally means ‘knowledge’. In Hinduism, there are four Vedas which impart knowledge about divinity, rituals, rites, philosophy, spirituality. Veda, which is considered the oldest religious text was orally transmitted until the Vedic period (c. 1500 – c. 500 BCE) when it was transcribed in written form.

7. See Aikman and Robinson-Pant (2019) for a general discussion of the term ‘indigenous’.

Additional information

Funding

The research was funded by a UKRI Global Research Translation Award [EP/T015411/1].