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In business and in international development circles, much is made about the potential for 'learning from best practice'. Considerations of the use of educational technologies offer no exception to this impulse. That said, 'best practice' in the education sector is often a rather elusive concept (at best! some informed observers would say it ...
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Students at Tumaini University in Tanzania won a prestigious OLPC project where Ukombozi primary school in Tanzania was given 100 XO laptops for the children at the school. After teachers and students had undertaken basic training in using the laptops the workshop “Working for my Dreams” was organized at the school. The XO laptop, specially designed for young learners in developing countries showed a number of short comings including the poor functionality of the mouse, difficulties in...
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The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) mandates that every classroom be staffed with a “highly qualified teacher.” Research supports that teachers’ content knowledge affects student achievement. However, the special education population continues to be taught by teachers who do not have the content area background they teach. In addition, accountability reports indicate that the special education population did not meet the adequate yearly progress in reading and mathematics as required under...
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The aim of this paper is to highlight some of the challenges of information and communication technology (ICT) integration in a South African classroom setting. The main focus is on the concept of a digital divide, and how cultural complexity with special emphasis on language can affect the divide in schools that already have material access to ICT. The study is based on fieldwork in seventh-grade classes in four primary schools in Cape Town, South Africa. The learners answered a...
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Distance-education delivery through interactive television (ITV) is an effective means of providing instruction to learners. There are many advantages, such as the ability to provide immediate feedback and personal participation. To be effective, however, ITV requires structured planning and development, making the use of instructional design principles imperative. The following recommendations are made for training teachers about ITV: (1) provide an overview of the technology and how it...
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Despite improvements in educational indicators, such as enrolment, significant challenges remain with regard to the delivery of quality education in developing countries, particularly in rural and remote regions. In the attempt to find viable solutions to these challenges, much hope has been placed in new information and communication technologies (ICTs), mobile phones being one example. This article reviews the evidence of the role of mobile phone-facilitated mLearning in contributing to...
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The introduction of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) presents new challenges for teachers and often meets with their belief that ICT, as well as other changes present a factor, which can cause several changes in school. Although there have been many education reforms regarding teachers’ training policy in recent years and the number of training programs has been increased, they have not been able to satisfy teachers’ needs to a substantial degree. In this research the results...
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In recent years there has been a growing recognition of the importance of learner autonomy and the role of individual learners in directing their own learning process, both inside and outside the classroom (Alford & Pachler, 2007; Benson, 2000; Breen, 2001; Conacher & Kelly-Holmes, 2007). However, in practice it is not always clear how to support learners in this role, and how to ensure they are ready to assume it. This paper explores some of the teaching aspects related to the development...
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Copious educational technology projects have been implemented in several low-income communities by multilateral institutions, individuals, and governmental agencies. Statistics show that the majority of these initiatives fail to accomplish their objectives, thereby wasting colossal amounts of money, talent, and resources. Scholars aver that poor planning and implementation are the major deterrents to a successful technology project (Flagg, 1990; Osin, 1998; Warschauer, 2006). Responding to...
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This paper is the latest in a short series on the origins, processes and effects of performativity in the public sector. Performativity, it is argued, is a new mode of state regulation which makes it possible to govern in an ‘advanced liberal’ way. It requires individual practitioners to organize themselves as a response to targets, indicators and evaluations. To set aside personal beliefs and commitments and live an existence of calculation. The new performative worker is a promiscuous...
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In this paper we discuss to what extent the international and national equality goals regarding gender balance and inclusive education have been reached in the education sector development in Tanzania. According to recent reports, the development trend has been generally positive, and the country is close to achieving its primary education targets. More detailed reviews suggest, however, that current monitoring and evaluation mechanisms are too narrow to catch the critical factors regarding...
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Kilimani Sesame, a media intervention that employs print, radio, and television, was developed to entertain and educate preschool children in Tanzania. This study examined the effects of a six-week intervention delivering Kilimani Sesame material to 223 children in the rural district of Kisarawe and the city of Dar es Salaam. Results offer evidence that literacy and numeracy, social and emotional development, and health and hygiene significantly improved from baseline to post-intervention;...
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Economists emphasize the link between market returns to education and investments in schooling. Though many studies estimate these returns with earnings data, it is the perceived returns that affect schooling decisions, and these perceptions may be inaccurate. Using survey data for eighth-grade boys in the Dominican Republic, we find that the perceived returns to secondary school are extremely low, despite high measured returns. Students at randomly selected schools given information on the...
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This article presents a historical account of the role and function in linguistic theorising of the concepts ‘‘native speaker” and ‘‘mother tongue”, and serves to introduce a number of articles (Language Sciences vol. 32 no. 6) raising questions about various aspects of the idealised monolingualism that underlies much modern linguistics.