Theorising the design-reality gap in ICTD: matters of care in mobile learning for Kenyan community health workers

This thesis examines the sociomaterial relations of “design practice” in order to advance new perspectives on success and failure in Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICTD). I conduct an ethnographic case study of an academic research intervention and update the widely-cited theory of design-reality gaps (Heeks, 2002). Using methods from classic actor-network theory and post-structural material-semiotic tools, the analysis: 1) disentangles the entwined sociomaterial practices around design, production, and use of technology; and 2) integrates these insights into more elaborate conceptualisations of gaps, sustainability, scalability, and project failure. In doing so, my study answers the research question: What are the sociomaterial relations of “design practice” in a globally-distributed, multi-stakeholder, and technologicallymediated ICTD project for poverty alleviation? My research narrative describes how an array of humans and non-humans participated as designers in a transnational, interdisciplinary Participatory Action Research project to train Kenyan health workers using mobile phones. At least six different patterns of sociomaterial relations operated through a given set of people and things, enacting the material-discursive apparatuses (Barad, 1998) of educational research, healthcare, the market, the state, and the local community. I assert that in this Participatory Action Research project for mobile learning, the design-reality gap was not so much a matter of geographic or socio-cultural divides, but was instead constituted as fluid space (Mol, 2002) separating the educational researchers’ designerly practices from the multiplicity of ways in which health workers, mobile phones, and other actors lived in relation to one another. I conclude that these ontological politics enacted design as an empirical matter of care – an affective and morally-charged sociomaterial practice with an ethico-political commitment to the marginalised (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2011). I therefore present a conceptual model of success and failure in participatory ICTD projects that explicitly incorporates the affective and material dimensions of care, and conceptualises social justice – not solely in terms of universal claims or global standards – but as embodied, sociomaterial enactments

‘Not in our Name’: Vexing Care in the Neoliberal University

In this paper, we draw on our collaborative work running a salon for thinking about care in STS research, which quickly became more about fostering an ethico-politics for thinking with care as a mode of academic intervention. Not dissimilar to the origins of the salon in nineteenth-century France, the salon provided a provocative and disruptive space for early career researchers (ECRs) to think together. As attention and critique increasingly point towards the unequal distribution of harms arising from marketization and the vulnerability of ECRs in the ‘neoliberal university,’ we have witnessed a surge in activities that promise a supportive space, such as pre-conference conferences, seminar series, discussion forums and self-care workshops. In this paper, we ask not only what these modes of care might make possible, but also what exclusionary practices and patterns they mask or render more palatable (Ahmed, 2004; Duclos & Criado, 2020; Martin et al., 2015; Murphy, 2015). Reflecting on our experiences of organizing and participating in the salon, with the stated purpose to explore ‘ecologies of care’ as an embodied socio-material practice (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017), we move from care ‘out there’ in STS research to care ‘in here’. We follow threads spun by and out from the group to rethink our own academic care practices and how to do the academy otherwise

Global-local Divides and Ontological Politics: Feminist Health Workers in Kenya

This theoretical paper argues that Feminist Science and Technology Studies (FSTS) can help advance the emancipatory project in critical Ed Tech research. To support this claim, we deploy Tsing’s concept of ‘scale-making projects’ (2005. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press) to connect ‘global’ narratives to ‘local’ users in a mobile learning project for Kenyan health workers. Drawing from this exemplar case, we discuss more broadly how FSTS provides useful theory and methods for tracing the trans-national power relations of digital technologies ‘on the ground’. The paper concludes by advocating for new forms of emancipatory Ed Tech research – ones framed not only within oppositional pairings such as ‘global’ versus ‘local’, but which elucidate how binaries themselves are constituted through far-flung trans-national arrays of sociomaterial practice

mCHW : a mobile learning intervention for community health workers

The mCHW project (http://www.mchw.org) – a mobile learning intervention for community health workers (CHWs) – represents an ongoing research collaboration between the Institute of Education, University of London (IoE), the University of Oxford and Amref Health Africa to advance the training and supervision of community health volunteers in Kenya, seeking improved access to primary health care for the marginalised communities of Makueni County and the Kibera informal settlement. Project researchers have worked closely with community members who provide basic medical services, called Community Health Workers (CHWs), and their supervisors, to collaboratively design, develop implement and evaluate a mobile learning intervention that better connects CHWs and supervisors. The project has employed a qualitative case study approach to understand the way in which the mobile application has influenced community healthcare practices in two research sites in Kenya: Kibera and Makueni. This dataset consists of the transcripts of 82 interviews with 24 CHWs, 9 of their supervisors and 11 other public health professionals and explores CHWs’ roles and practices over the course of the design, introduction and employment of the mobile learning intervention. The interviews set out to generate an explanation of the day-to-day practices of CHWs in their own words, and investigate how CHWs understand their roles, and the ways in which they incorporated the mobile learning intervention into their practices. The interviews have been conducted by an mCHW post doctoral researcher or an Amref researcher in the folllowing periods, and the dates of each interview are included for each transcript: 1. April-May 2013 (prior to the introduction of the mobile application) 2. December 2013- March 2014 3. August 2014 4. March 2014 5. June 2015 For a more detailed introduction to the dataset and a justification for the way it has been screened prior to deposition, please see Depositing mCHW Research Data.pdf. Enquirers seeking further information about the data are advised to contact the Department of Education directly

The database of the PREDICTS (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems) project

The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used this evidence base to develop global and regional statistical models of how local biodiversity responds to these measures. We describe and make freely available this 2016 release of the database, containing more than 3.2 million records sampled at over 26,000 locations and representing over 47,000 species. We outline how the database can help in answering a range of questions in ecology and conservation biology. To our knowledge, this is the largest and most geographically and taxonomically representative database of spatial comparisons of biodiversity that has been collated to date; it will be useful to researchers and international efforts wishing to model and understand the global status of biodiversity