Effective Classroom Management and the Use of TPACK: Implication for Pedagogical Practices

This study was essentially exploratory, investigated the acquaintance and strategies of instructional materials usage by the teachers. It examines classroom management, preparation and handling of instructional materials. Classroom management in this context is the skill in organization and presentation of lessons in such a way that all learners are actively involved in learning. In the study two instruments were administered to science teachers; the first instrument was to ascertain the acquaintance of instructional materials by the teachers. The second instrument was classroom observation. The results revealed that acquaintance on the use of instructional materials by the teachers was very high but they hardly use them. Moreover, correlation coefficient of .721 which is positive and significant @ .05 showed that instructional materials contributed to effective classroom management. The study has implication for practicing teachers and the stakeholders. Key words: classroom management, instructional media, content, knowledge, pedagogy

Relative levels of eLearning readiness, applications and trainee requirements in Botswana’s Private Sector

Abstract The rapid growth and modernization of economies in developing countries like Botswana creates new and unmet demands for certain kinds of educated and skilled labour. The expansion of secondary and tertiary school systems has also created a problem of unemployed school leavers. The growth of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), globalization and the digital divide likewise, have together put new pressures on developing countries to accelerate their development to meet these demands. This paper reports the results of a survey that sought to assess levels of eLearning readiness, applications and trainee requirements in Botswana’s private sector. Such baseline data can inform policymakers and researchers and promote the transformation required of private sector companies to become learning organizations. The findings suggested that eLearning readiness (eReadiness) levels were moderate to low, and that archaic technology (i. e., overhead projection) was used by more than half of the private sector organizations for training (with far less than half using digital eLearning applications). While the overall findings suggested low levels of eLearning readiness, applications and trainee requirements in Botswana’s private sector, seventy percent of trainers reported that their organizations encouraged them to acquire basic computer skills to facilitate eLearning. The current eLearning situation in Botswana, and the literature reviewed, demonstrates that the integration of ICTs in both developing and developed countries was a gradual process. Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) have expedited the change process in developed countries. However, several limitations are associated with such partnerships and this renders lessons for developing countries to emulate. Résumé La croissance et la modernisation rapides des économies des pays en voie de développement comme le Botswana créent des demandes nouvelles et non satisfaites pour certains types de main-d’œuvre instruite et qualifiée. L’expansion des systèmes d’enseignement secondaires et tertiaires a également créé un problème de chômage chez les jeunes sortant de l’école. La croissance des technologies de l’information et de la communication (TIC) ainsi que l’accroissement de la mondialisation et du fossé numérique ont ensemble engendré de nouvelles pressions sur les pays en voie de développement afin de répondre à ces demandes. Le présent article provient d’un sondage qui visait à évaluer les niveaux de maturité pour l’apprentissage en ligne, les applications informatiques et les besoins de formation en ligne des stagiaires dans le secteur privé au Botswana. De telles données de base peuvent informer les décideurs et les chercheurs et promouvoir la transformation nécessaire des entreprises du secteur privé afin qu’elles deviennent des entreprises du savoir. Les résultats suggèrent que les niveaux de maturité pour l’apprentissage en ligne (maturité électronique) sont modérés à faibles et que des technologies archaïques (par exemple, des rétroprojecteurs) étaient utilisées par plus de la moitié des organismes du secteur privé pour la formation (et beaucoup moins de la moitié utilisaient des applications numériques pour l’apprentissage en ligne). Bien que l’ensemble des résultats suggère de faibles niveaux de maturité pour l’apprentissage en ligne, les applications informatiques et les besoins de formation en ligne des stagiaires dans le secteur privé du Botswana, soixante-dix pour cent des formateurs ont indiqué que leurs organismes les ont encouragés à acquérir des compétences informatiques de base pour faciliter l’apprentissage en ligne. La situation actuelle de l’apprentissage en ligne au Botswana et l’examen de la documentation montrent que l’intégration des TIC à la fois dans les pays développés et en voie de développement est un processus graduel. Les partenariats entre le secteur public et le secteur privé (PPP) ont accéléré le processus de changement dans les pays développés. Plusieurs restrictions sont cependant associées à ces partenariats et cela permet aux pays en voie de développement d’en tirer des leçons à imiter

AN INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE INSPIRED TEACHER PILOT MENTORING SCHEME IN BOTSWANA: A PROPOSAL

Teaching practice, which comprises a teaching internship and/or fieldwork undertaken by prospective teachers for an annual period of seven weeks, is an essential component of all the teacher education programmes offered at the University of Botswana's Faculty of Education. The general aim of teaching practice is to introduce prospective teachers to real teaching situations and routines under the guidance of suitably qualified professionals. In view of changes such as semesterization, escalating enrolments and rising costs of teaching practice, which threaten to compromise quality, the paper argues that there is need to establish a school-based mentoring scheme that will provide the needed teaching supervision expertise at school level. The scheme will be informed by lessons from African customary education. Such a scheme will not be altogether new, as in the Botswana of yesterday, indigenous knowledge systems and institutions such as bogwera and bojale, the tribe, the kgotla and family formed the basis of creating and sustaining knowledge. Graduates from these institutions included traditional doctors, priests, teachers, nurses, legislators, economists and many other people of outstanding responsibility in their communities

Academic domains as political battlegrounds : A global enquiry by 99 academics in the fields of education and technology

Academic cognition and intelligence are ‘socially distributed’; instead of dwelling inside the single mind of an individual academic or a few academics, they are spread throughout the different minds of all academics. In this article, some mechanisms have been developed that systematically bring together these fragmented pieces of cognition and intelligence. These mechanisms jointly form a new authoring method called ‘crowd-authoring’, enabling an international crowd of academics to co-author a manuscript in an organized way. The article discusses this method, addressing the following question: What are the main mechanisms needed for a large collection of academics to collaborate on the authorship of an article? This question is addressed through a developmental endeavour wherein 101 academics of educational technology from around the world worked together in three rounds by email to compose a short article. Based on this endeavour, four mechanisms have been developed: a) a mechanism for finding a crowd of scholars; b) a mechanism for managing this crowd; c) a mechanism for analyzing the input of this crowd; and d) a scenario for software that helps automate the process of crowd-authoring. The recommendation is that crowd-authoring ought to win the attention of academic communities and funding agencies, because, given the well-connected nature of the contemporary age, the widely and commonly distributed status of academic intelligence and the increasing value of collective and democratic participation, large-scale multi-authored publications are the way forward for academic fields and wider academia in the 21st century.peerReviewe

Academic domains as political battlegrounds:A global enquiry by 99 academics in the fields of education and technology

This article theorizes the functional relationship between the human components (i.e., scholars) and non-human components (i.e., structural configurations) of academic domains. It is organized around the following question: in what ways have scholars formed and been formed by the structural configurations of their academic domain? The article uses as a case study the academic domain of education and technology to examine this question. Its authorship approach is innovative, with a worldwide collection of academics (99 authors) collaborating to address the proposed question based on their reflections on daily social and academic practices. This collaboration followed a three-round process of contributions via email. Analysis of these scholars’ reflective accounts was carried out, and a theoretical proposition was established from this analysis. The proposition is of a mutual (yet not necessarily balanced) power (and therefore political) relationship between the human and non-human constituents of an academic realm, with the two shaping one another. One implication of this proposition is that these non-human elements exist as political ‘actors’, just like their human counterparts, having ‘agency’ – which they exercise over humans. This turns academic domains into political (functional or dysfunctional) ‘battlefields’ wherein both humans and non-humans engage in political activities and actions that form the identity of the academic domain. For more information about the authorship approach, please see Al Lily AEA (2015) A crowd-authoring project on the scholarship of educational technology. Information Development. doi: 10.1177/0266666915622044.</p

Academic Domains As Political Battlegrounds: A Global Enquiry By 99 Academics in The Fields of Education and Technology

This article theorizes the functional relationship between the human components (i.e., scholars) and non-human components (i.e., structural configurations) of academic domains. It is organized around the following question: in what ways have scholars formed and been formed by the structural configurations of their academic domain? The article uses as a case study the academic domain of education and technology to examine this question. Its authorship approach is innovative, with a worldwide collection of academics (99 authors) collaborating to address the proposed question based on their reflections on daily social and academic practices. This collaboration followed a three-round process of contributions via email. Analysis of these scholars' reflective accounts was carried out, and a theoretical proposition was established from this analysis. The proposition is of a mutual (yet not necessarily balanced) power (and therefore political) relationship between the human and non-human constituents of an academic realm, with the two shaping one another. One implication of this proposition is that these non-human elements exist as political actors', just like their human counterparts, having agency' - which they exercise over humans. This turns academic domains into political (functional or dysfunctional) battlefields' wherein both humans and non-humans engage in political activities and actions that form the identity of the academic domain. For more information about the authorship approach, please see Al Lily AEA (2015) A crowd-authoring project on the scholarship of educational technology. Information Development. doi: 10.1177/0266666915622044.Wo