Internet not available! Using offline networked learning to enhance teachers’ school-based continuing professional development in Zambia

Woodward, Clare; Gaved, Mark; Hanson, Rachel; Gallastegi, Lore and Stutchbury, Kris (2022). Internet not available! Using offline networked learning to enhance teachers’ school-based continuing professional development in Zambia. In: Tenth Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning, 14-16 Sep 2022, Calgary, Canada.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.56059/pcf10.6083

URL: https://pcf10.org/

Abstract

Access to effective Continuing Professional Development can be difficult for teachers in sub-Saharan Africa, impacting their capacity to learn from best practice and improve their teaching approaches. Internet and cellphone services are seen as potential solutions, offering digital resources and online training. However, these are hindered by limited or expensive network coverage, leaving poorer-resourced and more remote schools behind.
Zambian Education School-based Training (ZEST) has trialled an innovative approach for teachers: an offline networked learning approach. Deploying low-cost, battery-powered small computers as networked hubs has enabled collaborative, digitally enhanced professional development training where internet access is too expensive or unreliable. Central to ZEST is the idea of teachers learning together in Teacher Group Meetings. Raspberry Pi computers, accessed via teachers’ own smartphones, have allowed educators to work together in proximity, sharing open digital resources. Through interviews and observations and drawing from Blumenfeld et al.’s diagnostic framework (2000), we report on teachers’ and school leaders’ impressions of the benefits and challenges of this novel approach. We reflect on its adoption, appropriation, enactment, and maintenance by school systems. We offer findings that may be more broadly applied to support school-based professional development in similarly restricted environments.

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About

• Item ORO ID
• 85244
• Item Type
• Conference or Workshop Item
• Project Funding Details

• Funded Project Name	Project ID	Funding Body
  ZEST (Zambian Education School-based Training)	Not Set	Scottish Government

• Keywords
• collaborative learning; digital divide; networked learning; school-based teacher professional development; open educational resources; offline; Raspberry Pi; mobile learning; smartphones
• Academic Unit or School
• Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS) > Education, Childhood, Youth and Sport > Education
  Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS) > Education, Childhood, Youth and Sport
  Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS)
  Institute of Educational Technology (IET)
• Copyright Holders
• © 2022 Open University
• Related URLs
• • https://oasis.col.org/items/f79d579b-482...
• Depositing User
• Mark Gaved