Integrating Education and Culture: Towards A Community Immersion Framework for Enhancing Educational Utility in Mogoditshane Village, Botswana

This paper proffers a comprehensive framework that illustrates the integration of education and culture. Many African formal learning institutions have propagated generations of learners that have tripped off their cultural footing in pursuit of Western standards. However, sustainable education is that which is aimed at acculturating an individual. It must aim to preserve, transmit, and develop the societal culture, beginning at the early childhood development (ECD) phase. The study employed a qualitative study embedded in a case study design done based on Mogoditshane Village, Botswana. Data was drawn from the teachers who were willing to share their cultural experiences with various community settings in which they were deployed to teach. In-service teachers and school heads deployed in Mogoditshane were interviewed to explore the methods that they use to integrate the local culture in the teaching and learning process; including the challenges that they face in trying to cultivate a sense of cultural belongingness in the learners. Parent Teacher Association representatives (PTA) were drawn from selected early childhood settings. PTA members have a deep understanding of local community cultural values and traditions. They also represent various stakeholders including teachers, parents, community members and administrators thus making it easy to capture wide range of perspectives. Accordingly, in-depth interviews were conducted with purposively chosen respondents up to the data saturation level. A thematic content analysis approach was used to obtain opinion patterns and subsequent lines of inference. The findings revealed a broad range of cultural traits ranging from language, music, dance, games and traditional diets all of which are highly valued in the Mogoditshane Village. The study helped to pave way for the formulation of a teaching and learning framework that seeks to further submerse the teachers and learners into the prevailing system of norms and standards that Botswana has often cherished to develop over the course of several generations. The study recommends extended efforts by all educators and policy-makers to use the education of children as a medium of cultural perpetuation into the current and future generations.