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In a scene not unlike classrooms around the world, the faces of 40 children glow from the light of their tablets as their teacher leads them through the morning's lesson. Except this happened yesterday inside a converted shipping container in a low-income area of Kenya, in a country where the price [...]

We present results from early learning programs in six African countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda. In partnership with ministries of education, RTI International has worked within government systems to support the design and deployment of locally contextualized materials, training, and assessment tools, with the goal of improving outcomes for early learners in primary schools, and in Kenya and Tanzania preprimary as well. Here we report on the experience and...

This research describes the predicted outcomes of a Kenyan Cloud School (KCS), which is a MOOC that contains all courses taught at the secondary school level in Kenya. This MOOC will consist of online, ongoing subjects in both English and Kiswahili. The KCS subjects offer self-testing and peer assessment to maximize scalability, and digital badges to show progress and completion to recognize and validate non-formal learning. The KCS uses the Moodle LMS with responsive web design to increase...

Learners with low vision can be trained to increase their visual functioning through a planned programme of visual experiences. Such a low vision training programme was introduced in Kenya in 1994. However, despite its implementation over the last 15 years, challenges still persist among teachers who work with such learners. The purpose of this study was to document challenges that learners with low vision have on teachers’ performance when teaching learners with low vision in special...

More than 4 billion people are not connected to the Internet. This is either because there is no infrastructure or because Internet access is not affordable. This digital divide is extreme in Africa. At Microsoft, we have been investigating various technologies to bridge this divide. In this paper we describe our research around the TV White Spaces, and how we have leveraged it, and worked with our partners to connect communities in Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa.

The study was carried out to determine the influence of the Principals' leadership style and its effect on the tutors' ICT integration in teaching in Nyanza Region Kenya. One research question and research hypothesis guided the study. The population comprised of 30 Principals and 160 Tutors. A questionnaire and an interview schedule were used to collect data from the Principals and Tutors. Cronbach alpha reliability computation was done to determine the overall reliability of the instrument....

Achieving some absolute standard of learning for all children is a key element of global equity in education. Using the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) data from India and Pakistan, and Uwezo data from Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda that test all children of given ages, whether in school or not, on simple measures of learning in math, reading (local language), and English, we quantify the role of achieving equality between the richest 20% and the poorest 40% in terms of grade...

The Global Partnership for Education (GPE) supports close to 70 developing countries to ensure that every child receives a quality education. The featured stories in this report show the progress that developing country partners are making in getting more children, especially girls, in school and learning. The results are not only evidence of their commitment to improve education, but also of the sustained and targeted support provided by GPE. Feature stories are included from the following...

Teacher education has an important role in ensuring quality of learning especially for the poorest children. The article draws on a study of teacher preparation for the early primary grades in six African countries – Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda – in reading and mathematics. Initial teacher education had the strongest impact on newly qualified teachers but also induced misplaced confidence leading to standardised teacher-led approaches that failed to engage learners....

The world is facing a worsening youth employment crisis. In response, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is back on the development agenda after years of neglect. This systematic review examined the evidence from studies evaluating the impacts of TVET interventions for young people in low- and middleincome countries (LMICs). The 26 included studies evaluated 20 different interventions, predominantly from Latin America. Meta-analyses of the effectiveness of TVET on five...

Teachers in rural parts of Kenya lack opportunities for professional development (PD). In addition, the teachers have no access to eLearning opportunities like their colleagues in urban parts. Among the factors that do not favor Kenyan rural teachers’ access to PD through eLearning include: lack of access to relevant technologies and lack of electricity. This paper shares research findings on provision of teachers’ PD through a blended learning approach, utilizing appropriate technologies in...

This study identifies pathways to educational success among refugees. Data are from an original online survey of Somali diaspora and in-depth qualitative interviews with Somali refugee students educated in the Dadaab refugee camps of Kenya. This research builds on Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model to consider both the locally and globally situated nature of resources across refugees’ ecosystems. Analysis examines the nature and content of student-identified supports and their perceived...

In this paper, we study the engagement and performance of students in a classroom using a system the Cognitive Learning Companion (CLC). CLC is designed to keep track of the relationship between the student, content interaction and learning progression. It also provides evidence-based engagement-oriented actionable insights to teachers by assessing information from a sensor-rich instrumented learning environment in order to infer a learner's cognitive and affective states. Data captured from...

The research explores the impact of interactive, multimedia literacy software (ABRA) on the reading skills of early elementary students in Kenya. Twelve grade two English teachers and their students from six schools were randomly divided in half: an experimental group (N = 180) where ABRA was part of their English Language instruction and a control group (N = 174) where regular instruction was used. After the pre-test student data were collected, a three-day initial training and planning...

The objective of this paper is to examine the perceptions of community elders and parents on their roles regarding support to their children’s education. Data come from the qualitative component of a baseline survey conducted in Korogocho and Viwandani, two urban informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya. Data were collected in April-May 2016 through in-depth interviews, key informant interviews and focus group discussions. Results demonstrated that community elders internalized their role as...

The potential role of female teachers in achieving the Education for all (EFA) and the Sustainable Development Goals, specifically on  ensuring  inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting life-long learning opportunities for all (Goal 4), achieving gender equality and empowering  all women and girls(Goal 5 ) is well documented. Available evidence, however, suggests that attraction and retention of female teachers in secondary schools located in rural areas remains a significant...

GraphoGame (GG) is originally a technology-based intervention method for supporting children with reading difficulties. It is now known that children who face problems in reading acquisition have difficulties in learning to differentiate and manipulate speech sounds and consequently, in connecting these sounds to corresponding letters. GG was developed to provide intensive training in matching speech sounds and larger units of speech to their written counterparts. GG has been shown to...

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been touted as being potentially powerful tools that can be used to facilitate the implied educational change and reform. Implementation of ICT in higher education learning environments is a complex task. Teachers and students, but also management, administration and ICT support are affected by and affect the implementation. To facilitate the change processes better the first step is to actually understand what problems and challenges...