Teachers' ICT Skills for Pedagogical Integration in a Developing Country: Discripancy between Policy and Practice
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Ismail Luwangula
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Teachers' ICT Skills for Pedagogical Integration in a Developing Country: Discripancy between Policy and Practice
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Anchor Academic Publishing
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9783954895625
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1
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CHF 40.10
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Pädagogik
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English
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115
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kein Kopierschutz/DRM
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PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
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PDF
Developing countries try their best to articulate good policies but, many times such policies are not well implemented for various reasons. This book presents a typical example of discrepancy between policy and policy implementation in East Africa's third largest economy that is based on empirical evidence. Moreover, the book clearly highlights the intensions of the country's policy on ICT in education, examines the attempts to implement the policy, and evaluates the impact of such an implementation.
Luwangula Ismail obtained his first degree in education from Makerere University in Uganda in 2005. He taught for exactly five years in several schools around the country. As he was dissatisfied with the practices of education managers around the country,
Text sample: Chapter 2.1, Initiatives for Equipping Teachers with ICT for Pedagogical Integration in Uganda: According to Wamakote (2010), the Ugandan government's most significant ICT investment in the educational sector is the Education Management Information System (EMIS) which aims at providing quality education statistics in a timely, cost-effective and sustainable manner (p.19). However, he notes that the MoES has also supported other ICT initiatives in partnership with other agencies (p.19). According to an annex in the draft policy for ICT in education on the status of ICT in education in Uganda, several of these initiatives aim, among other things at equipping teachers with relevant ICTs for integration in the teaching-learning process (Uganda MoES, 2005). They included: (i)The Connectivity for Educator Development (Connect-ED) project initiated in May 2000. The Connect-ED project is supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in close cooperation with Uganda's MoES and within the framework of the U.S. Education for Development and Democracy Initiative (EDDI) (p.29). Connect-ED is using technology to enable and enhance learning and teaching for primary school educators through the creation of multifaceted approaches to integrating media and computers in the Primary Teacher Colleges (PTC's) classrooms (p.29). Connect-ED is accomplishing this by setting up education technology centres thereby increasing access, availability, and provision of relevant and quality learning materials and support for teacher professional development (p.29). (ii)IICD-MoES. There are four projects going on between the Institute for Information and Communication Development (IICD) in conjunction with the MoES (p.29). These projects are, among others: (a) ICT Based Educational Content. (b) ICT Training. (iii)British Council has a program in some private secondary schools that aims at introducing ICT to be used in teaching and learning (p.29). (iv)The National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC) worked with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) to come up with the CurriculumNet project to develop, test and implement a mechanism for curriculum integration and delivery for primary and secondary schools in Uganda via communication networks using computer related tools. In relation to the mandate of NCDC and its functions, the CurriculumNet project was conceived to influence both the practice and policy of Education (p.30). CurriculumNet was intended to enable students, educators and educational administrators to develop appropriate competencies to effectively use ICTs in the teaching and learning process (p.30). (v)Creating learning networks for Africa is also a project in progress. It is meant to assist teachers in secondary schools to appreciate ICT in their works and is supported by UNESCO (p.30). (vi)The e-Schools initiative under the auspices of New Partnership for Africa in Development (NEPAD) seeks to ensure that the majority of the people on the continent have the skills required to function in the information society and knowledge-based economy. Among other objectives it aims to provide teachers with ICT skills to enable them use ICTs as tools to enhance teaching and learning (p.31). (vii)SchoolNet Uganda supports educators and learners by providing pedagogical and technical expertise and advice, infrastructure and human resources, coordination, training and capacity-building and developing local and international partnerships (Farrell, 2007, p.11). Therefore from the above literature it is evident that there are initiatives that have been undertaken to equip teachers with ICT skills. However, Harrison (2010) notes that while there have been many schemes over the last decade to introduce ICT into schools in Africa, many have failed to live up to their aspirations because they have been top-down and supply led with insufficient attention being paid to the involvement and training of teachers. Could this also be true for Uganda in particular? He however notes that among the most successful ICT projects in Africa was Connect-ED in Uganda (p.80). Unfortunately he does not provide evidence in support of the supposed success. In contrast, Wamakote (2010) contends that information on the actual impact of ICT initiatives in the country is scanty. A research commissioned by SchoolNet Africa (2004) highlighted the fact that although there was evidence of a number of teacher training initiatives in Africa at both pre-service and in-service levels, these were mainly small scale, regional and fragmented with little sharing of experience among nations. So if this is true for Uganda, do such projects reach all teachers? According to Schroeder (2001), the reality of public sector program implementation today is that any implementation that is attempted in the name of'enhancing the public good' will necessarily involve stakeholders from the community, the private sector, and other quasi-public entities (p.1). Thus, while the afore mentioned initiatives are perhaps not direct reactions to ensure the implementation of Uganda's policy for ICT in education (indeed some of these started long before the inauguration of the policy e.g. Connect-ED) and while they may not purely be government initiatives, it is important to appreciate that they can be instrumental in achieving the aims of the policy in regard to teacher education. It is also encouraging to note that there is seemingly a lot being done to equip teachers with knowledge and skills for the pedagogical integration of ICT. However, as already noted, there is hardly any well documented evidence to reveal whether the implementation of such projects has had any impact on the teachers' ICT knowledge and skills.
Teachers‘ ICT Skills for Pedagogical Integration in a Developing Country
1
ABSTRACT
2
Table of Contents
5
Acknowledgement
8
Acronyms
8
Chapter 1: Research Overview, the Problem and Research Methodology
13
1.0 Introduction
13
1.1 Background of the Study
13
1.2 Problem Statement
16
1.3 Research Questions
17
1.4 Justification
18
1.5 Scope of the Study
18
1.6 Purpose of the Study
18
1.7 Specific Objectives
19
1.8 Methodology
19
1.9 Definition of Terms
26
Chapter 2: Review of Related Literature
27
2.0 Introduction
27
2.1 Initiatives for Equipping Teachers with ICT for Pedagogical Integration in Uganda
28
2.2 ICT Policy Debate in Teacher Education
32
2.3 Knowledge needed by Teachers for successful Integration of ICTs in Education
37
2.4 The Interplay between Politics, Policy and ICT Policy Implementation in Uganda
39
Chapter 3: The Policy for ICT in Education and the Education Sector Strategic Plan 2007-2015
41
3.0 Introduction
41
3.1 The Education Sector ICT policy
42
3.2 The Education Sector Strategic Plan (ESSP) 2007-2015
50
3.3 Conclusion
52
Chapter 4: Presentation and Interpretation of Results from the Questionaire Survey
53
4.0 Introduction
53
4.1 Demographic Information
54
4.2 The Status of Teachers ICT Knowledge and Skills
56
4.3 Training teachers in ICT: Initiative, Strategy and Practices
65
Chapter 5: Discussion of results, Conclusions and Recommendations
72
5.1 Discussion of Results
72
5.2 Conclusions
86
5.3 Recommendations
88
6.0 Limitations of the Research
93
References
95
Appendices
102
Appendix A: Questionnaire to teachers
102
Appendix B: Chi-square test for status of ICT training and level taught
106
Appendix C: Chi-square test for status of ICT training and gender
107
Appendix D: Chi-square test for status of ICT training and gender at different levels taught
108
Appendix E: Chi-square test for status of ICT training and year of completion
110
Appendix F: Targets and time Scales for implementing the ICT policy in Education
111
Appendix H: Map of Uganda showing the location of Jinja
112
Appendix I: List of Schools in Jinja Municipality
113
