Self-Awareness and Respect in East Africa: A Contextualised Approach to Defining the Constructs

Abstract

The Assessment of Life Skills and Values in East Africa Study (ALiVE) focussed on four competencies with respect as the only selected value. This chapter explores the concepts of self-awareness and respect, delving into the process undertaken by ALiVE in the development of assessment tools to measure these constructs in East Africa. Self-awareness and respect are presented together due to some associations between them. Cultural influence on values such as respect is evident in worldwide perspectives, as well as in its local conceptualisation in East Africa. The chapter describes global and local perspectives on these constructs, and identifies the unique aspects of local conceptualisations in the East African region. The chapter discusses how self-awareness and respect are understood by adolescents, parents, and the communities in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, and the implications of this on the development of the assessment tools. In addition, the assessment frameworks for both constructs are presented. These are expanded through description of the hypothesized proficiency levels and illustrated by sample tasks.