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This study intends to present a bespoke teacher professional development MOOC designed by Teacher Education for Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) team that allows MOOCs to become a viable means offering cost-effective, quality professional teacher development. TESSA is a network of teachers and teacher educators, working to improve classroom teaching in Africa. TESSA MOOC is an innovative approach to capacity building for teacher educators and teachers across Africa. The study presents outputs of...

In the past two decades computers have become a standard educational tool in the industrialized countries. Recently, equipping each student with a personal device (one-to-one computing, OLPC) has been enthusiastically advocated for developing countries, too. However, despite a number of pioneering research studies, broader analyses of pedagogical, technical, and organizational aspects of one-to-one computing in developing countries are largely missing. In this participatory action research...

This chapter focuses on how researchers and practitioners negotiate the focus of their joint work within design-based implementation research (DBIR). Studying and facilitating successful negotiation of the problems that become the focus of work and the search for solutions is important for developing DBIR, because of its commitment to focusing on persistent problems of practice from multiple stakeholders’ perspectives. Case studies of two different research–practice partnerships provide a...

Many successful piloted programs fail when scaled up to a national level. In Kenya, which has a long history of particularly ineffective implementation after successful pilot programs, the Tusome national literacy program—which receives funding from the United States Agency for International Development—is a national-level scale-up of previous literacy and numeracy programs. We applied a scaling framework (Crouch and DeStefano in Doing reform differently: combining rigor and practicality in...

This exploratory paper seeks to shed light on the methodological challenges of education systems research. There is growing consensus that interventions to improve learning outcomes must be designed and studied as part of a broader system of education, and that learning outcomes are affected by a complex web of dynamics involving different inputs, actors, processes and socio-political contexts. How should researchers in comparative and international education respond to this call for...

Despite increased use of professional learning communities in the teacher education field, they do not necessarily guarantee change in teachers’ daily practice. This study is a multiple case study of three school leaders in Vietnam to connect their teachers’ learning and practice by utilising visual records. In the cases studied, we see a progression of models of joint reflection based on visual information, from only occasional reflection to daily critical reflection, the latter of which...

Sometimes we question whether students are incapable or capable and/or willing or unwilling in regards to their academics. This study determined where students lie in regards to these concepts and showed one example of motivating students to do their best via course design, in this particular case by the use of a writing process model.

'Honorable Mention' 2016 PROSE Award - Education PracticeEducation is fundamental to every aspect of development and there is widespread support across the world for policies that affirm that all children, regardless of their circumstances, have a right to quality schooling. Yet despite concerted efforts from national governments, multilateral organisations and NGOs over many decades we are still far from achieving education for all. In addition, while education can enhance human...

This exploratory paper seeks to shed light on the methodological challenges of education systems research. There is growing consensus that interventions to improve learning outcomes must be designed and studied as part of a broader system of education, and that learning outcomes are affected by a complex web of dynamics involving different inputs, actors, processes and socio-political contexts. How should researchers in comparative and international education respond to this call for...

Discussion lists have gained a significant popularity in professional development research over the past few decades for the opportunity they provide for asynchronous interaction. This article presents findings from a small-scale case study that aimed at exploring the nature of teachers’ asynchronous exchanges in a discussion list. The data comprised the archived log of the messages in a Yahoo Group discussion list by five in-service English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers who...

This article sets out a perspective from the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) on the challenges of achieving research uptake. Two country case studies are presented from India and Uganda, which explore research projects under the Economic and Social Research Council ESRC-DFID-funded Raising Learning Outcomes programme. These case studies focus on relationships between the key stakeholders that enable policy debate relevant to the funded research. They are not...

This article discusses the results of exploratory study of integration of ICT in teaching and learning of Kiswahili language in Kenyan secondary schools taking the case of Kakamega county in western part of Kenya. A survey design technique was adopted. Forty five teachers were selected to act as sample size for the study. Questionnaires and interview protocols were used to collect the data. The data collected was analyzed through descriptive statistical techniques. The results are summarized...

The Rapid Assessment of Cognitive and Emotional Regulation (RACER) is a tablet-based assessment tool for children that measures executive function (EF) skills. Instructions that are brief and visually presented; game-like tasks are designed to easily engage children regardless of literacy level and variable test administration settings. RACER measures inhibitory control and working memory. This study presents the theoretical rationale and empirical evidence for tablet-based assessments of...

Blended learning can provide academic resilience in times of natural disaster, civil emergency, and crisis. While blended pedagogies are widely used in tertiary settings, very little has been written about the role of blended learning in times of crisis, or the pedagogical challenges of rapid course redesign to mitigate disruptive circumstances. This case study describes the immediate post-earthquake challenges of redesigning courses using different blends of face-to-face and online...

Background: Health science education faces numerous challenges: assimilation of knowledge, management of increasing numbers of learners or changes in educational models and methodologies. With the emergence of e-learning, the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and Internet to improve teaching and learning in health science training institutions has become a crucial issue for low and middle income countries, including sub-Saharan Africa. In this perspective, the Faculty...

The paper discusses the role of systematic evidence in helping make better decisions to reach global development targets. Coming at the end of the first decade of serious funding and support for systematic evidence generation in development economics and development studies, the paper presents opportunities and challenges for the continued development of systematic review methodologies. It concludes by introducing the papers collected in the issue, which make and demonstrate the case for theory-based approaches to evidence synthesis.

(2019). Using Dual Systems theory to conceptualise challenges to routine when transforming pedagogy with digital technologies. Teachers and Teaching: Vol. 25, No. 8, pp. 937-954.

This paper examines the returns to education with respect to three labour market outcomes namely wages, employment and occupation using the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) 68th round (2011–12) data. Wage equation (without selection bias) results point to the fact that returns to education increase at an increasing rate as the level of education increases and the impact of education is found relatively higher in the case of urban than rural areas. In case of employment, the study finds...