Tag Archives: Development

#edcmooc – Early thoughts

My experience in studying elearning has been interesting but non-productive to date. Having failed to introduce ICT and elearning successfully while volunteering at a school in Tanzania, my ambition has been to find out how to succeed. However, most of my study so far has focused on Higher Education rather than schools or required a level of teaching experience which I don’t have.

My observation in Tanzania however, was that teachers were keen to get onto Facebook and pupils were keen to play games – so there was an interest in digital culture, just not in formal elearning. Part of the problem is the didactic nature of African school education – which doesn’t recognise interaction, enquiry and fun as part of the learning experience.

So, I have hopes that approaching elearning from the broader perspective of digital culture may be a route I can develop. I can’t hope to change the culture of African education overnight but maybe I can try to lead digital explorers into more intellectual enquiry hence, at least vicariously, towards learning. In Africa, capability is often recognised as a de facto qualification for lower level jobs, hence those able to demonstrate digital literacy may be able to climb the ladder of employment, even though not as advantaged as those who have the approved examination certificates.

Activity 4.5.2

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My interest is in development education, such as in sub-Saharan Africa, where penetration of ICT to support education is low. The challenges here are:

Low IT skills for teachers
Poor/expensive internet access
ICT taught as a subject rather than used as a curriculum tool

These problems require a managed, local ICT solution because the skills and/or access are not sufficient just to access open tools on the internet.

For a remote primary school in a development environment, I would invest in:

An internal solution with the external internet used for extra information, not as the prime source. This internal solution would comprise a server equipped with a Learning Management System to organise access to learning materials. These learning materials would include:

Navigation and skills learning packages to help teachers become competent in operating computing equipment and navigating the LMS.
Pedagogic guides to illustrate how educational software can be used to support teaching and learning. These would be linked to specific areas of the local curriculum.
Educational software to support local curricula. Because of language issues this software may need to be developed or amended specially e.g. by a local tertiary education establishment. The software would include dictionaries and encyclopaedia to allow search and enquiry.
Educational games to allow skills to be developed in an informal way

2. It is unlikely to be economically feasible to provide tablets or laptops to all teachers and
pupils (constraints of electricity and internet access means such personal machines would
not be used effectively). I would equip one or more “teaching rooms” which subject teachers
could book to include ICT in their teaching. The equipment would comprise:

Projector/Interactive whiteboard, connected to the server/LMS
Individual access equipment. Depending on the local environment (power, security etc) these could be desktops, laptops or tablets.

This equipment would not be useful without support – both start-up and ongoing. Part of the investment would be in initial training both of support staff and teachers and in ongoing support (maybe regionally) to provide maintenance and guidance.

Reflection on Davies

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Conflict as ‘ethnocide’ a denial of education. Links between masculinity and conflict. Conflict maintained by education reproducing the status quo. Gender parity playing a role in state stability.

For education to have transformatory value it has to clean up its act and stop reinforcing causes of conflict e.g ethnic and gender stereotypes, acceptance of unequal opportunity.

Useful for validation or challenge of some assumptions re the intentions vs outcomes of development education.

Reflection on Samoff

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Development education as a reflection of donor politics and a mechanism for social control. Winner politics (e.g. USA in post cold war world) – no need to listen. Local education authorities reduced to marketers of opportunities in such terms as to attract conditional funding. Connected world does not democratise information since most of it is sourced within the prejudices of the North. Little evidence of attempts to develop critical faculty or citizenship or other nationally valuable skills. Tendency to reinforce established formal structures which perpetuate elites.

Generally destructive of established assumptions and challenging rather than offering an alternate point of view.

Reflection on Novelli and Cardozo

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An extended discussion on the interaction of conflict and education and the contribution of education to causes of conflict. A useful discussion of 3 theories of the causes of conflict in the developing world – clash of civilizations (Huntingdon), structural inequalities and insecurity (Duffield) and rational choice/greed based motivations (Collier). Examples of education contributing to or causing violence as well as suffering from it Differentiation between an internal ‘education politics’ agenda and a more external ‘politics of education’ point of view.

Useful but very theoretical and contextual in the broadest sense.

Reflection on Stromquist

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This is a better argued paper than some, connecting literacy education for women with their aspirations and actions to achieve a more equal and effective part in society. The inadequacy of literacy education for its own sake and the need to embed literacy education in a form of political project or other form of practical relevance is argued from a number of viewpoints.

The language is reasonably dispassionate hence provides a more objective source of reference material than some of the more stridently feminist treatise.

Reflections on Subrahmanian

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This paper is a gender equality review loosely disguised as a development paper. Most of what is said applies equally to the developed as the less developed world – which is accepted via examples from France and UK.

Most of the issues identified are societal in nature, rather than a choice to limit female opportunity. There is a strong theme of positive discrimination – men are encouraged to make efforts to equalise the unequal burden of reproductive activities. No mention here of unequal burden on men in matters requiring physical strength.

A useful comment at the end on ‘blokish’ stereotypes and their tendency to cause boys to underperform.

Useful categorisation and defiinitions of gender parity, gender equality and gender equity but a bit too dogma ridden to seem very useful in making practical progress.

Reflection on Bonal

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Bonal is a more recent and more practical paper than those previous in Case File 2. He sets out to challenge the assumption that education will combat poverty by demonstrating the limitations of poor people in acquiring ‘useful’ education – of a level and quality sufficient to give them earning power above poverty levels.

The elasticity of required level and quality – rising as the average level rises – is shown as a major hindrance. It also shows the way the already powerful sustain their power by changing the rules to maintain their advantage – a way to sustain the poverty trap despite increasing education. Factors other than education – political social and economic – also need to be in place to achieve social mobility.

Targeting strategies generally had only a local and temporary effect.

The overall conclusion is that policies have been simplistic, non-interactive and therefore ineffective. The concept of educability sounds horribly eugenic but realistically ‘places the emphasis on ‘precisely those factors associated with poverty that prevent the poor from taking advantage of educational opportunities.’

Quite a useful paper in understanding why policy has failed though not coming up with much in terms of alternative strategy approaches.

Reflections on Castells and Kellner

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Both these paper are dated – Castells from 1999, Kellner from 2002. They both take a broad philosophical sweep over the changing world as a result of IT and network technologies.

Castells focuses on networks – power being in the network, isolation if out of the network. He identifies the opportunity for slower adopters to leapfrog the early stages and go straight to fully networked access. He identifies the transformation of relationship between capital and labour when labour is remote and invisible in an information society. He identifies cost lowering as the thin end of the wedge for poorer countries in a globalised world. However, he lapses into idealism “The disassociation between economic growth and social development in the information age is not only morally wrong, but also impossible to sustain.” “It will take a dramatic investment in overhauling the educational system everywhere, through co-operation between national and local governments, international institutions and lending agencies, international and local business, and families.” I wonder if he really expected that to happen?

Kellner is even more idealistic. He focuses on the need to gain new literacies rather than on the acquisition of IT and networks. However his conclusions are simplstic and impractical. ” The disconnect and divides can be overcome, however, by more actively and collaboratively bringing students into interactive classrooms or learning situations in which they are able to transmit their skills and knowledges to fellow students and teachers alike.” ” In much of the world, the struggle for daily existence is paramount and meeting unmet human and social needs is a high priority. Yet everywhere education can provide the competencies and skills to improve one’s life, to create a better society, and a more civilized and developed world.” “The time is ripe to take up the challenge and to move to reconstruct education and society so that groups and individuals excluded from the benefits of the economy, culture, and society may more fully participate and receive opportunities not possible in earlier social constellations “. Again one wonder if he is really serious regarding this as a possibility>

Both papers are comprehensive and analytically sound. However their conclusions either reflect the misplaced optimism of the dawn of networked society or are just academically tidy ways to end their papers!

Reflection on Leach

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I enjoyed Leach and found the evidence of value-added from ICT in rural education convincing in subjective terms. However, the paper raises many issues and resolves few.

The primary problem is the eternal question ‘what is education’. Leach’s research is mainly qualitative and while value is described in subjective terms, there is little objective evidence (except anecdotal reports of better exam marks). The evidence seems to reinforce other studies which show that online learning provides more engagement and deeper understanding but little better performance in summative assessment (particularly of the ‘fill in the answer’ type typical in Africa). Many would argue that this deeper understanding reflects improved pedagogy but it doesn’t pay the bills or convince politicians the way exam results do.
Some of the answers seem oblique to the challenge. The challenge that food and penicillin were more important than ICT was answered by evidence that reading and writing were improved. Well not for the kids who had starved to death or died of infection first!
The cost benefit challenge is similarly answered illogically. Value was described as the production of posters and notices which could just as easily have been written by hand. The use of the printer as a photocopier does not provide much evidence of the power of ICT in education!

There was however, a lot of good information. Certainly the evidence that people, however unsophisticated, could use and get value from technology was useful to rout the Luddite arguments. The evidence that goods would be protected from theft and damage if they were sufficiently valued was also interesting.

The most convincing argument seemed to be the last – that technology was shrinking the world, so making these remote people less remote and enabling them to access education otherwise unavailable to them.

Overall, the paper is convincing that ICT in education, if done well – with the right equipment, the right content, the right pedagogy and some access to support – can produce improved educational results. However, with all those qualifications I am not sure the arguments would convince the doubters. There is so much alternative evidence of technology-led initiatives which have failed to have much impact that these beacons of isolated good practice may be seen as only that, not evidence of general opportunity.