Summary

Background / Terms of Reference

Key questions:

• What are the most effective and relevant uses of ICTs, including interactive radio instruction, for the professional development of teachers in countries struggling to achieve Education For All, and what are the related enabling/disabling environments for their use?
• Can the same types of pedagogical innovations thought to be enabled by the introduction of ICTs be introduced and maintained at lower costs without using ICTs?

Background

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are widely believed to be important potential levers to introduce and sustain education reform efforts.  Despite evidence of increasingly widespread use of ICTs in education initiatives around the world, however, there is little guidance available for policy makers and donor staff specifically targeted at countries contemplating the use of ICTs to help countries meet the education-related Millennium Development Goals.

Despite over ten years of investment in ICTs to benefit teaching and learning in many developing countries, little is known about their substantive impact on teaching and learning processes and outcomes.  Indeed,

• The impact of ICT use on learning outcomes is unclear, and open to much debate.
• There is an absence of widely accepted standard methodologies and indicators to assess impact of ICTs in education.
• There is a disconnect between the rationales most often put forward to advance the use of ICTs in education (to introduce new teaching and learning practices and to foster 21st century thinking and learning skills) and their actual implementation (predominantly for use in computer literacy and dissemination of learning materials).
• There is very little useful data on the cost of ICT in education initiatives, especially those attempting to assess Total Cost of Ownership, nor guidance on how to conduct cost assessments.
• There are emerging best practices and lessons learned in a number of areas, but with a few exceptions, they have not been widely disseminated nor packaged into formats easily accessible to policy makers in developing countries, and have not been explicitly examined in the context of the education-related MDGs.

How – and how well – teachers are prepared for teaching is a critical indicator of education quality.  Preparing teachers for the challenges of a changing world means equipping them with subject-specific expertise, effective and innovative teaching practices, an understanding of technology and the ability to work collaboratively with other teachers, members of the community and parents.  Synthesized lessons learned and best practice from successful and sustainable teacher training and ongoing teacher professional development initiatives utilizing ICTs to meet these and related challenges in developing countries are not well documented.  In particular, there is a lack of useful  guidelines for policymakers presented in an easily accessible format directly relevant to acute policy issues and relevant to existing policymaking processes.  This is especially true for specific, actionable policy advice and guidelines that relate to issues of pressing concern in countries eligible to participate in the Fast Track Initiative (FTI), many of which have teacher corps that are ill-trained, posted to geographically remote areas, and in many cases decimated by HIV-AIDs, and for all of which the introduction of ICTs raises potentially troubling issues related to cost effectiveness, access to education and educational equity.  Much of the evidence to date advocating for the use of ICTs in support of teacher professional development in developing countries struggling to meet the Millennium Development Goals is anecdotal, presented in terms of the potential of ICTs based on experiences in non-comparable circumstances, or not based on rigorous examination of actual costs, benefits and the resulting trade-offs.

Despite widespread interest in providing schools with computer labs and connecting them to the Internet, it may be that other types of ICTs may be more relevant to the particular circumstances faced by countries struggling to meet MDG targets.  For example, it is widely believed that interactive radio may be a particularly cost-effective way of providing regular outreach and support to teachers in these countries, especially as it relates to upgrading (a) teacher subject knowledge and (b) teacher pedagogical practices, and especially for remote communities and local language education.  Despite the rich experience over the past two decades on using IRI for educational purposes as part of pilot projects, there are few case studies of and guidelines for successfully mainstreamed, scaling up and sustaining such initiatives by the education system after pilot projects have been completed.  

Scope of Work

To advance understanding of these issues, and to provide guidance and recommendations for policymakers and donor staff working in the education sector in developing countries (and especially those countries eligible to participate in the Fast Track Initiative), the Information for Development Program (infoDev) is inviting expressions of interest for the development of Using Technology to Train Teachers: A Handbook to Guide and Assess the Appropriate Use of ICTs to Aid in the Professional Development of Teachers to Benefit Education For All. In general, this Handbook will explore answers to questions such as:

1. What are the most effective and relevant uses of  ICTs for the professional development of teachers in countries struggling to meet EFA and education-related MDGs, especially universal primary completion, and what are the enabling/disabling environments for their use?
2. Can the same types of pedagogical practices and transformations thought to be enabled by the introduction of ICTs be introduced and maintained in environments where ICTs are not used? 
3. Which types of ICTs and models of ICT use can provide the most effective and relevant support for professional development, including enabling peer networks, and how? 
4. What are the best practices for mainstreaming pilot projects involving a variety of ICTs,  to aid in the professional development of teachers, including interactive radio instruction (IRI), and how are such projects managed and maintained over time? 
5. What are the costs of various implementation models of using ICTs for the professional development of teachers?