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Title
Use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) in teacher education in Sub-Saharan Africa: case studies of selected African universities |
Full text
http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/2140/1/magambo2710790.pdf |
Date
2007 |
Author(s)
Magambo, Justine |
Abstract
The use of ICT in education in Africa should be discussed with regard to the global goal of providing çEducation for Allç and its impact on the demand of teachers on the continent. According to the Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2007, Africa needs a 68% increase in teachers so as to realise the second Millennium Development Goal çEducation for Allç. Because of the present infrastructure and the prevailing problems that Africa faces, it is unlikely that this demand for teachers can be met to enable çEducation for Allç by 2015. Today it is acknowledged that Africa needs new and improved methods in teacher training which will not only ensure that the demand for teachers is met but also provide teachers with quality training. Accordingly, the use of ICTs in teacher education and their potential in supplementing teacher training, especially where the traditional education systems are unable to meet the demand, is increasingly being considered. In this dissertation, efforts have been taken to explore: how ICTs are being used in African universities; what initiatives both local and international are being taken to enable implementation of ICTs in teacher education; how students training for the teaching profession in the Sub-Saharan countries are being prepared in the use of these new technologies; and how students and their trainers view the introduction and influence of these media in their learning and teaching. The literature review of this study shows that although ICTs, especially the computer, are no longer a phenomenon in African universities, they are however, still tools that can be afforded by a few, because of both financial constraints and lack of training. Furthermore, these results show that the use of ICT in teacher education is still at a low level and there are many barriers to its implementation on a large scale. Results from the case studies indicate that although a comparably big percentage (46.8%) of student teachers use ICT applications in preparing their assignments, a high percentage (ranging from 70 - 85%) have never received ICT training in their studies in any of the most common applications such as word processing. Interviews with teacher trainers revealed that there is a general concession that the use of ICT has an added value in teacher training, especially as: ICT facilitates gathering, organising, and finding information; it encourages and enables students to do independent research work and to do course work on their own; ICT widens teachersç knowledge horizon; and as most ICT applications are interactive they make learning and teaching very interesting, holding students attention and supplementing learning resources such as textbooks. Teacher trainers, however, also agreed that the successful implementation and use of ICT would require that attitudes towards ICT among stake holders become more positive and that improving the technical infrastructure would make integrating ICT in teacher training much easier. Combined responses of students and teacher trainers show that training in and use of ICT in teacher education in the universities which took part in the survey still is at a relatively low level. Although only half of the students indicate they received training in this at their home institutions and actually make use of it, text processing using WORD is the most widely trained and used ICT application. There is indication that more than half of the students have access to ICT applications in their computer laboratories, while almost 80 % of the students also visit Internet cafes to use ICT applications. Nevertheless, findings indicated evidence of gender equality in use and access of ICT in these institutions with female to male participation of 83:103. This is also reflected in the interviews with lecturers (3:4). Although the ratio of female to male participation is not exactly 50:50, the proportion of female participation is higher than in other statistics on gender inclusion in Africa. |
Subject(s)
Education |
Relation
http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/2140/ |
Type of publication
Thesis; NonPeerReviewed |
Format
application/pdf |
Identifier
Magambo, Justine (2007) Use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) in teacher education in Sub-Saharan Africa: case studies of selected African universities. PhD thesis, Universität zu Köln. |
Repository
Köln - University of Cologne
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Added to C-A: 2011-09-04;19:02:44 |
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