Expanding Teacher Support through Mobile Mentoring in Kakuma Refugee Camp: Benefits and Challenges

Governmental and non-governmental institutions alike have rallied around technology as a potential solution for addressing the dearth of quality educational opportunities and adequately trained teachers in many regions around the world (Burns, 2011; Carlson, 2013; Dahya, 2016). This is no less true in humanitarian and refugee contexts where technology is being used in myriad ways to connect teachers and learners with educational content and resources. A recent landscape review (Dahya, 2016) about the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in these contexts stated that technology has the potential to support education for marginalized populations in crisis contexts, and that teacher training and student learning are the primary areas of focus for utilizing technology for education. In many settings, technology is used for the provision of lesson plans and curricula to deliver subject knowledge directly to students, to train or certify teachers, and to connect individuals and build community (Dryden-Peterson, Dahya, and Douhaibi, 2017; Power, 2012; Winthrop and Smith, 2012). Modes of delivery include computers, laptops, tablets, portable media players, e-readers, personal digital assistants, and mobile phones (Burns, 2011; Carlson, 2013; Winthrop and Smith, 2012; Dahya, 2016).