Abstract:

The term folklore generally means the culture and traditional stories of a group; and particularly in African cultures, it comprises proverbs, riddles, legends, folktales, tongue-twisters, folk-songs, ballads, and folk-dances. Several researchers have reported on the educational value and the beneficial effects of folklore, particularly its significant role in the socialisation of youths. The various folklore components either add or re-enforce knowledge of the physical environment and skills for living within it; how to live and work with others; roles in networks of kin-ships and understanding of rights and obligations; laws, morals, principles, and beliefs. The proverbs in many African languages are understood as capsules full of wisdom, norms, and beliefs. However, there is still paucity of research in the exploration of this indigenous folklore approach to education as a pedagogical strategy in formal educational settings. For this approach to be explored in formal educational settings, much evidence is required that it leads to behaviour change among youths. Therefore, this paper presents findings of a study that explored the pre-service teachers’ personal experiences of cultural education through isiZulu folk tales or folk narratives. Sixty-two pre-service teachers participated in the study and qualitative data generation methods—narratives and written interviews— were used to elicit data from the participants. Their stories and responses to questions were analysed using the socio-cultural theory as an analytical framework as well as thematic analysis of data. The findings reveal that the indigenous folklore approach to education have the power to change behaviour of youths. Folk tales or folk narratives have characters and usually good and bad juxtaposed. The behaviour of characters may be interwoven in the story to answer why questions, have lessons on discipline, manners, scaffold concepts such as assertiveness, decision-making, compassion, respect, relationships, humaneness, and love. The paper therefore argues that the indigenous folklore approach to education for behaviour change has the potential to be used successfully in the formal Life Skills-based curriculum that aims to curb the spread of HIV among young people.

Keywords:

African folklore approach, folk narratives, indigenous cultural education, formal education, behaviour change.