Rethinking mobile learning for development: Using the Capability Approach and a mixed-methods systematic review to conceptualise the application of mobile technologies as an educational tool in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Mobile technologies are now ubiquitous in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs). Education in LMICs is among the latest disciplines set out to explore how mobile technologies’ particular affordances can be used to support programme interventions and practice. However, neither the effectiveness of mobile learning programmes, nor the causal mechanisms and contexts through which teaching and learning with mobile technologies is assumed to support education and development in LMICs, have been systematically reviewed and conceptualised. Notwithstanding, learning and teaching with mobiles is regularly attributed as having the potential to change and improve education in LMICs. This thesis assesses the effectiveness and underlying theory of change of mobile learning programmes in LMICs through a mixed-methods systematic review, including meta-analysis and thematic synthesis. Building on the findings of the systematic review, it presents the Capability Approach as a theoretical lens through which to conceptualise the effects of mobile technologies on education and development in LMICs. Reviewing the evidence-base and theory of change of the application of mobile technologies as an educational tool in LMICs, I find little evidence to support claims to mobile learning’s potential to support development outcomes. These systematic review findings are then expanded in a qualitative case study of a mobile learning project in rural South Africa exploring teachers’ use of mobile technologies from the perspective of the Capability Approach. The case study finds that teachers’ use of mobile technologies can best be understood as an expansion in four dimensions of capabilities: informational, educational, societal, and economic capabilities, which taken together can enhance teachers’ well-being and human development. I use the combined case study and systematic review findings to reposition mobile learning’s role in international development. I argue that conceptualising mobile learning for development through the Capability Approach supports a focus on an endogenous transformation of education in LMICs anchored in the primary objective of enhancing the capabilities and agency of actors in the education system. In the absence of evidence supporting mobile learning’s impact on development outcomes, a focus on the role of mobile technologies to expand teachers’ and learners’ valued functionings and capabilities is presented as an alternative conception of the links between mobile technologies, their use for educational purposes in LMICs, and development outcomes

Scoping review assessing the evidence used to support the adoption of mobile health (mHealth) technologies for the education and training of community health workers (CHWs) in low-income and middle-income countries

Abstract: Objectives Undertake a systematic scoping review to determine how a research evidence base, in the form of existing systematic reviews in the field of mobile health (mHealth), constitutes education and training for community health workers (CHWs) who use mobile technologies in everyday work. The review was informed by the following research questions: does educational theory inform the design of the education and training component of mHealth interventions? How is education and training with mobile technology by CHWs in lowincome and middle-income countries categorised by existing systematic reviews? What is the basis for this categorisation? Setting The review explored the literature from 2000 to 2017 to investigate how mHealth interventions have been positioned within the available evidence base in relation to their use of formal theories of learning. Results The scoping review found 24 primary studies that were categorised by 16 systematic reviews as supporting CHWs’ education and training using mobile technologies. However, when formal theories of learning from educational research were used to recategorise these 24 primary studies, only four could be coded as such. This identifies a problem with how CHWs’ education and training using mobile technologies is understood and categorised within the existing evidence base. This is because there is no agreed on, theoretically informed understanding of what counts as learning. Conclusion The claims made by mHealth researchers and practitioners regarding the learning benefits of mobile technology are not based on research results that are underpinned by formal theories of learning. mHealth suffers from a reductionist view of learning that underestimates the complexities of the relationship between pedagogy and technology. This has resulted in miscategorisations of what constitutes CHWs’ education and training within the existing evidence base. This can be overcome by informed collaboration between the health and education communities

Can mobile health training meet the challenge of ‘measuring better’?

Abstract: Mobile learning has seen a large uptake in use in low- and middleincome countries. This is driven by rhetorics of easy scaling, reaching the hard-to-reach and the potential for generating analytics from the applications used by learners. Healthcare training has seen a proliferation of apps aimed at improving accountability through tracking and measuring workplace learning. A view of the mobile phone as an agent of change is thus linked with a technocentric approach to measurement. Metrics, initially created as proxies for what gets done by health workers, are now shaping the practices they were intended to describe. In this paper, we show how, despite some valiant efforts, ‘measuring better’ remains difficult to achieve due to entrenched views of what measurement consists of. We analyse a mobile health (mHealth) classification framework, drawing out some implications of how it has been used in training health workers. These lead us to recommend moving away from a view of mobile learning linked tightly to accountability and numbers. We suggest a focus on an alternative future, where ‘measuring better’ is promoted as part of sociocultural views of learning and linked with a social justice conceptualisation of development

How stakeholder engagement has led us to reconsider definitions of rigour in systematic reviews

Abstract: As a methodology designed to inform policy and practice decisions, it is particularly important to ensure that systematic reviews are shaped by those who will use them. There is a broad range of approaches for engagement of the potential users of reviews that aim to elicit their priorities and needs and incorporate these into the review design. This incorporation of their priorities and needs can create a tension between their calls for locally-specific, often rapidly-produced evidence syntheses for policy needs and the production of unbiased, generalisable, globally-relevant systematic reviews. This tension raises the question of what is a ‘gold standard’ review. This commentary aims to address head on this often undiscussed key challenge with regard to stakeholder involvement in systematic reviews: that responding to stakeholders can mean reconsidering what makes a review rigorous. The commentary proposes a new model to address these tensions that combines the production of public-good reviews, with stakeholder-driven syntheses. In this, it presents the approach taken by our team in [Anonymised] to achieve two different but complementary outputs: (i) ‘public goods’, namely comprehensive and generalisable systematic reviews of the evidence available for and accessible to a global audience, and (ii) locally-focussed, stakeholder-driven, pragmatically-produced syntheses for decision-making at a policy level. The designed approach incorporates balancing the formal requirements of full, published systematic reviews with engagement of national and international decision-makers. It also accommodates space to move from stakeholder engagement to co-production, where stakeholders are engaged to such an extent that they become partners in the production of the review. These approaches are integrated into the traditional steps for producing a systematic review with implications as to what constitutes a gold standard approach to synthesising evidence

To improve the global evidence ecosystem we need to listen to the Global South.

Drawing on their recent study of South Africa’s evidence ecosystem, Ruth Stewart, Harsha Dayal, Laurenz Langer and Carina van Rooyen, show how the global north has much to learn from evidence ecosystems in the global south. Outlining five lessons that can be learnt from the South African evidence ecosystem, they argue that if notions of a global evidence ecosystem are to be taken seriously, they would do well to start with the experience of the Global South

Digital Education Policies in Europe and Beyond: Key Design Principles for More Effective Policies

This report offers policy-makers in digital education evidence on how, at the national or regional level, policies can be designed and implemented to foster digital-age learning. The presented findings are the result of a mixed methodological design comprising four parts: desk-research on digital education policy, the identification of national and regional policies worldwide, six in-depth case studies, and an expert workshop. The discussion of the cases identified and studied in depth leads to the formulation of eight core-guiding principles, which can serve as a reference point for policy-makers for the design and implementation of digital education policies: 1. Follow a holistic approach targeting systemic change; 2. Establish both a long-term vision and short-term achievable goals; 3. Deploy technology as a means not an end; 4. Embrace experimentation, risk-taking and failure; 5. Consider the importance and the limits of impact assessment; 6. Involve all stakeholders in a structured dialogue; 7. Let schools and teachers have a say; 8. Build up teaching competence.JRC.B.4-Human Capital and Employmen

Building capacity for evidence-informed decision making: an example from South Africa

Abstract: To maximise the potential impact and acceptability of EIDM capacity building, there is a need for programmes to coordinate their remits within existing systems, playing both ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ roles. Through a review of the South African evidence-policy landscape and analysis of a stakeholder event that brought together EIDM role players, this paper illustrates how one capacity-building programme navigated its position within the national evidence-policy interface. It identifies strategies for improving the acceptability and potential effectiveness of donor-funded EIDM capacity-building activities: understanding the evidence-policy interface, incorporating programmes into the decision-making infrastructure (being an ‘insider’), whilst retaining an element of neutrality (being an ‘outsider’)

Evidence review on coastal and terrestrial water-sector interventions in developing countries: protocol for a systematic review

Interventions - projects, programmes, or policies - that aim to enhance adaptive capacity and mitigation co-benefits in the coastal and terrestrial water sectors are critical to achieving climate targets. The goal of this systematic review is to identify, assess and synthesize evidence on the effectiveness of eight intervention types: nature-based options, built infrastructure, technological options, informational/educational schemes, institutional interventions, financial/market mechanisms, social/behavioural and coastal interventions conducted in non-Annex I countries. The main outcome areas are adaptive capacity alongside mitigation co-benefits. A series of meta-analyses will be conducted for similar interventions and outcomes where effect sizes will be calculated. The results for selected intervention types will be reported, whether significant or not.”

Identifying priority questions regarding rapid systematic reviews’ methods: protocol for an eDelphi study

Introduction: Rapid systematic reviews (RRs) have the potential to provide timely information to decision-makers, thus directly impacting healthcare. However, consensus regarding the most efficient approaches to performing RRs and the presence of several unaddressed methodological issues pose challenges. With such a large potential research agenda for RRs, it is unclear what should be prioritised.// Objective: To elicit a consensus from RR experts and interested parties on what are the most important methodological questions (from the generation of the question to the writing of the report) for the field to address in order to guide the effective and efficient development of RRs.// Methods and analysis: An eDelphi study will be conducted. Researchers with experience in evidence synthesis and other interested parties (eg, knowledge users, patients, community members, policymaker, industry, journal editors and healthcare providers) will be invited to participate. The following steps will be taken: (1) a core group of experts in evidence synthesis will generate the first list of items based on the available literature; (2) using LimeSurvey, participants will be invited to rate and rank the importance of suggested RR methodological questions. Questions with open format responses will allow for modifications to the wording of items or the addition of new items; (3) three survey rounds will be performed asking participants to re-rate items, with items deemed of low importance being removed at each round; (4) a list of items will be generated with items believed to be of high importance by ≥75% of participants being included and (5) this list will be discussed at an online consensus meeting that will generate a summary document containing the final priority list. Data analysis will be performed using raw numbers, means and frequencies.// Ethics and dissemination: This study was approved by the Concordia University Human Research Ethics Committee (#30015229). Both traditional, for example, scientific conference presentations and publication in scientific journals, and non-traditional, for example, lay summaries and infographics, knowledge translation products will be created

Behavioural science interventions within the development and environmental fields in developing countries: An evidence gap map

This evidence gap map (EGM) presents a landscape of studies on the effectiveness of behavioural science interventions in non-Annex I settings, a group of mainly developing countries within the context of the Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The EGM summarizes causal evidence from development and environmental interventions. Understanding what is effective in changing behaviour in these countries is important for both adaptation and mitigation purposes. Although the evidence base is thin, the EGM reveals that the most commonly evaluated interventions are reminders, feedback, micro-incentives, salience of communication, commitment devices, salience of experience design (how individuals interact with their physical or digital environment), goal setting, rules of thumb, social norms and social benchmarking. The impact evaluations are relatively skewed towards sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia and the Pacific. A limited number of impact evaluations have been conducted in Europe and Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. A majority of the studies included in the EGM emanate from the water, sanitation and hygiene sector, the financial sector, the energy and extractives sector and the agricultural secto