Role of Information Communication Technology in Literacy Education in Kenya

The use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in literacy education is critical to ensuring that Kenya is able to create individuals with raised self-esteem, equipped with skills that will enable them to derive socio-economic benefits of greater workforce productivity as well as those associated with lifelong learning. Consequently, incorporating ICT in literacy education may help to develop the kind of citizenry required in the information society; improve learning outcomes in education; and enhance the quality of life in general. However, despite the enthusiasm exhibited in exploiting ICTs potential in education use in Kenya, the acquisition of learning outcomes in literacy are still low. Key impediments include access, funding, inadequate ICT facilities, high cost of development of interactive e-learning content, high Internet costs in the region, as well as unaffordable infrastructural maintenance costs occasioned by the dynamic natures of ICTs. In addition, the inadequate capacity of teachers has been an obstacle to making ICT a medium of instruction or a tool to support management processes. As well, the absence of ICT Curriculum at Early Childhood Development (ECD) and primary levels does not help cultivate a computing culture early in life. Thus, in order for meaningful impact on literacy education to be realized, the ICT investment programmes in education in the country should be refocused and redirected to the ECD and primary levels of education as the starting point, and henceforth be concentrated on some five variables identified widely as likely to create the desired results, namely: enhancement of teaching and learning; raising access to literacy education; training of teachers; localizing content; and creating a literacy-conducive environment. This paper explores how ICT can contribute to making literacy education more effective and the challenges that require to be overcome in order to achieve this

Using Information Communications Technologies to Implement Universal Design for Learning

The purpose of this paper is to assist Ministries of Education, their donors and partners, Disabled Persons Organizations (DPOs), and the practitioner community funded by and working with USAID to select, pilot, and (as appropriate) scale up ICT4E solutions to facilitate the implementation of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), with a particular emphasis on supporting students with disabilities to acquire literacy and numeracy skills. The paper focuses primarily on how technology can support foundational skills acquisition for students with disabilities, while also explaining when, why, and how technologies that assist students with disabilities can, in some applications, have positive impacts on all students’ basic skills development. In 2018, USAID released the Toolkit for Universal Design for Learning to Help All Children Read, section 3.1 of which provides basic information on the role of technologies to support UDL principles and classroom learning. This paper expands upon that work and offers more extensive advice on using ICT4E1 to advance equitable access to high quality learning. Like the UDL toolkit, the audience for this guide is mainly Ministries of Education and development agencies working in the area of education, but this resource can also be helpful for DPOs and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) wishing to pilot or spearhead ICT initiatives. Content for this paper was informed by expert interviews and reviews of field reports during 2018. These included programs associated with United Nations, Zero Project, World Innovation Summit, UNESCO Mobile Learning Awards, and USAID’s All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development. Relevant case studies of select education programs integrating technology to improve learning outcomes for students with disabilities were summarized for this document

Investigating ICTs for Education in Marginalized Communities

The Agenda for Sustainable Development is a universal agenda to eliminate poverty through sustainable development by 2030. When it was adopted in 2015, the international community recognized that education was essential for the success of all seventeen of its goals. Ambitions for education are captured in Sustainable Development Goal 4, which aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” The United Nations has explicitly stated the importance of using ICTs in achieving educational opportunities. Since then, very few studies have tackled the issue. The findings so far, do not provide detailed guidance on the impact of ICTs in this domain. The purpose of this study is to contribute to this gap by integrating research in the fields of Information Systems, Development studies, and Psychology to understand the factors for facilitating educational objectives through ICTs within marginalized communities

Information and Communications Technologies and Secondary Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Policies, Practices, Trends and Recommendations

The following report discusses the use of Information Communications Technologies (ICTs) to improve access to, quality of, and delivery of secondary education within sub-Saharan Africa. It discusses the policy environment for ICTs in sub-Saharan Africa, their successes, challenges, andlessons learned, and it concludes with a broad and detailed set of recommendations for policymakers, donors, the private sector, designers, and implementers of ICTs in education programs. The report seeks to generally answer the question of how sub-Saharan African (SSA) governments can best use technology to improve access to secondary education, improve learning, strengthen management of schools and the education system, and foster innovation

Millions Learning: Scaling Up Quality Education In Developing Countries

An estimated "100-year gap" persists between education levels in developed and developing countries, and if business proceeds as usual in the education sector, this gap is not projected to close. Today, 250 million children around the globe--many of them having spent at least four years of school in a developing country--lack the most basic literacy and numeracy skills. Additionally, countries around the world are struggling to help young people develop 21st-century skills, such as critical thinking and collaborative problem solving, which are increasingly demanded by the labor market. "Millions Learning" tells the story of where and how quality education has scaled in the developing world. The story emerges from wide-ranging research on scaling and learning, including 14 in-depth case studies, from Brazil and Honduras, to Uganda and Zambia, to Jordan and India.What we found is that from the slums of New Delhi to the rainforest in Brazil, transformational change in children's learning is happening at large scale in many places around the world. We found that successful scaling of quality learning often occurs when new approaches and ideas are allowed to develop and grow on the margins and then spread to reach many more children and youth. What constitutes the margins varies on a case-by-case basis. For some, it means a flexible central government giving freedom to its officials within a district to try a new approach. For others, it involves a community movement that develops new ways of reaching marginalized children whose educational options are limited.Scaling from the margins occurs in two main ways: idea adoption, namely the spread of new approaches across an education ecosystem, and delivery innovation, the development of new ways to deliver education to marginalized children and youth. With the former, effective new approaches to improving components of the teaching and learning process--from curriculum, to materials, to teacher development--have spread across education ecosystems and been adopted by different actors. With the latter, new education delivery approaches for the most marginalized communities--such as distance learning models or alternative education programs--have developed and grown within and across countries. We identified 14 core ingredients, in different combinations depending on the context, contribute to scaling quality learning. Each of these ingredients is central for scaling effective approaches that improve learning. Their importance is frequently reinforced from evidence in the broader scaling literature. They include essential elements for designing, delivering, financing, and enabling scaling of quality education

'Redesigning the Education Workforce' Background Paper for Transforming the Education Workforce: Learning Teams for a Learning Generation

The Education Workforce Initiative (EWI) was established in response to a recommendation from the Education Commission’s Learning Generation report to explore new ways of diversifying and strengthening the education workforce. The Transforming the Education Workforce report is one of EWI’s key contributions to catalyzing this thinking. It draws on recent evidence and provides thought leadership on how to rethink the education workforce. For the full report and other supporting documents, please visit EducationWorkforce.org. The Transforming the Education Workforce report was originally commissioned as a set of sequential background papers and thus each paper influenced and references the others. The background papers are written by different authors and cover the rationale for rethinking the education workforce, the design of the education workforce, how it can be strengthened, and political economy and financial considerations. This background paper focuses on new approaches to designing the education workforce and proposes design options for the workforce needed now and in the futur

Girls’ Education Programmes in the ASEAN region

This non-standard research exercise identified and mapped girls’ education programmes and interventions across Asia and the Pacific. The study primarily focused on interventions that benefit girls, including those that support the transition to secondary school and school completion. The following areas of technical and thematic focus were of particular interest: Accelerated learning, Girls’ education post-Covid-19, Non-formal education, Supplementary education, Female empowerment (i.e. girls’ clubs, life skills programmes, economic empowerment), Climate change, Education Technology (EdTech), and Inclusion of the most marginalised. This mapping study follows a K4D report outlining key barriers to girls’ education in the ASEAN and Pacific region (Price, 2020). It included active programmes and those that finished between 2015 and 2020, with a particular focus on programmes in Cambodia, Laos, Viet Nam, Myanmar, Indonesia, the Philippines, East Timor (Timor-Leste) and Papua New Guinea. Three days of researcher time was allocated to this study, so the exercise was therefore limited in identifying and mapping a large number of applicable programmes. The study relied on publicly available information, so may not have captured all relevant current and previous programming.FCDO (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

COVID-19 Education Response Mapping Study in Asia: Executive Summary

This document provides a summary of research exploring the systems, policies, and school-level practices that have supported learning continuity in Asia during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on a review of policy documents on COVID-19 responses in Asia and a deep dive analysis of system and school-level responses in the Philippines and the Kyrgyz Republic, the findings from this study provide policymakers and education stakeholders with evidence of promising practices that could be leveraged to support learning recovery and education system resilience. In addition, a policy review was conducted on the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR), which focused on the practices of policymakers that have the potential to support teaching and learning. The study\u27s intent is not to compare and contrast countries\u27 responses but to highlight innovations in the system and school practices and make recommendations based on insights from system leaders and educators

Learning, Marginalization, and Improving the Quality of Education in Low-income Countries

Improving learning evidence and outcomes for those most in need in developing countries is at the heart of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal on Education (SDG4). This timely volume brings together contributions on current empirical research and analysis of emerging trends that focus on improving the quality of education through better policy and practice, particularly for those who need improved 'learning at the bottom of the pyramid' (LBOP). This volume brings together academic research experts, government officials and field-based practitioners. National and global experts present multiple broad thematic papers – ranging from the effects of migration and improving teaching to the potential of educational technologies, and better metrics for understanding and financing education. In addition, local experts, practitioners and policymakers describe their own work on LBOP issues being undertaken in Kenya, India, Mexico and Ivory Coast. The contributors argue persuasively that learning equity is a moral imperative, but also one that will have educational, economic and social impacts. They further outline how achieving SDG4 will take renewed and persistent effort by stakeholders to use better measurement tools to promote learning achievement among poor and marginalized children. This volume builds on the second international conference on Learning at the Bottom of the Pyramid (LBOP2).* It will be an indispensable resource for policymakers, researchers and government thinktanks, and local experts, as well as any readers interested in the implementation of learning equity across the globe

Using ODL and ICT to develop the skills of the unreached: a contribution to the ADEA triennial of the Working Group on Distance Education and Open Learning

Innovation in technology is occurring at rapid pace thus shrinking the distances and making information and knowledge more than ever accessible to everyone irrespective of where the person resides. This paper consists of four main articles. The first one deals with technological trends. The second one focuses on the deployment and use of open and distance education mode in rural areas by documenting initiatives that embrace information and communication technologies (ICTs). Due to challenges faced in rural areas only a few success stories/cases currently exist and some of these are cited in this article. The challenges faced in the deployment of ICT enhanced ODL have been highlighted as well as the potential of developing and delivering effective and relevant ODL programmes in rural areas in order to ensure that issues of educational equity and social exclusion rural communities are adequately addressed. ICTs in ODL are perhaps the greatest tool to date for self-education and value addition to any community’s development efforts, yet poor rural communities particularly in Africa do not have the necessary awareness, skills or facilities to enable themselves to develop using ICTs. Inadequate ICT infrastructures in rural areas remain a major source for the digital divide in Africa and for under-performance of distance learners. The third one analyses the support provided to ODL learners who often encounter difficulties in completing their studies through the distance education mode due to loneliness, uncertainties and de-motivation. ICT has not been able to sufficiently support distance learners in overcoming those obstacles efficiently. An investigation regarding those learning supports has been conducted in ten distance learning institutions, along with an intensive literature review with the aim of understanding the high percentage of dropout rates of distant learners. The learners’ interactions have been scrutinized through content analysis of their synchronous exchanges, during a completely online course. After taking into account the limited technical and human resources in Africa, a technological virtual environment along with a pedagogical framework has been proposed with the aim of giving adequate educational support to them. The fourth article has explored The Open University (UK) and its efforts to use new technologies to deliver online courses to difficult-to- reach learners in prison environments. The case study analysed here is an international course (called, B201- Business Organisations and their environments) which also touches an African cohort of learners. The implications for designing and delivering online ODL to the complex unreachable environments of prisons anywhere, and particularly in Africa, have been discussed