A team of 5 UNELTA members including Jabin Kule (CBI Chairperson), Hillary Bamukunda (UNELTA President), Christopher Liberty (Monitoring and Evaluation Officer), Denise Yvonne Nakitto, and Parvin Mulokwa, accompanied by the English Language Fellow, Prof. Bismarck Agbemble, participated and gave outstanding presentations at the 4th ALZELC Conference 2024 which convened in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 18th to 19th May 2024.

The conference’s theme was, “Empowering African Teachers’ Associations and Enhancing ELT through 21st Century Skills.”   

UNELTA’s participation in this conference was facilitated by the US Embassy in Kampala, the RELO East Africa, and the British Council, enabling us to share insights and experiences with other participants across the African Lake zone countries and the world.

Jabin and Denise co-presented a topic titled, “Alone in a crowd: what could learner-centered education really mean?”. The session explored the strategies and relevance of adopting experiential learning by discussing sociocultural and socially-oriented learning theories according to David Kolb, John Dewey, Jean Piaget, and Leo Vygotsky. The presenters are grateful to Amoni Kitooke (UNELTA’s Strategy Advisor) for his contribution to the idea and format of this presentation.

In addition, Denise led a panel discussion, “Empowering Educators: Fostering Connectivity, Emotional Intelligence, and Self-responsibility“. This panel insightfully discussed some different ways of handling emotions in classrooms to ensure the self-responsibility of both teachers and learners to build their future.

Christopher Liberty presented on the topic, “Echoes of Change: Reflective Learning in English Language Education for Climate Action.” His focus was majorly on advocating for curricula that foster environmental consciousness alongside linguistic proficiency.

Parvin Mulokwa’s presentation titled, “Empowering Educators: Navigating professional development opportunities.” She stressed the need for continuous teacher professional development opportunities within or outside Uganda.

Hillary and Prof. Agbemble presented UNELTA’s ongoing drive towards the adoption and implementation of Project-Based Learning (PBL) and Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC). The topic was “Transforming Education: Integrating Project-Based Learning and Competency-Based Curriculum in African Lake Zone Countries.”

All these presentations were mutually yielding to us the presenters and, we hope, the participants.

We are very grateful to the US embassy in Kampala, RELO Eastern Africa for sponsoring us to participate in the ALZELC conference, and for their continued support to English Language Teacher Associations across Africa and beyond.