This blog is the first in a series exploring Raising Readers, an EdTech Hub and Worldreader research project set in Kenya seeking to better understand what drives parental engagement in learning and generate new evidence on what works in terms of learner equity, quality, and cost-efficiency. This blog sets out the human-centered design approach undertaken by Kenyan school officials, parents,…
Are you a government official, NGO or researcher looking to understand what education data is available locally? Our new guidance note shares practical lessons learnt from mapping the availability of education data in Kenya, Malawi, and Sierra Leone. Last year, we posted about the Unlocking Data initiative and its goal to support access, use, and sharing of education data to…
This study sought to understand more about how teachers and school leaders in low and middle-income countries assessed student progress when students were learning remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study was undertaken in six countries – Bangladesh, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, and South Africa. The data collection involved focus group discussions with two held in each country. It was…
Educational technologies (EdTech) have been used in a multitude of ways to enable children to gain greater access to impactful and continuous education. At the same time, differences in EdTech use and access, across and within countries, also show that the use of EdTech can contribute to exacerbating long-standing structural inequalities. Consideration of equity is crucial in ensuring that the…
Reflective practice is not just reserved for teachers… it’s the duty of all stakeholders in the field.” Do you know how many academic articles are published each year? A recent study by To and Yu (2020) found that over 3.2 million academic articles were published in 2020 alone. And this only considered publications of researchers from the US, UK, China,…
Historically, the Sierra Leonean government has struggled to attract teachers to work in the most hard-to-reach areas of the country. Today, the country’s education system has one of the highest pupil-to-qualified-teacher ratios in West Africa. The challenge of attracting teachers is most acute for schools in rural locations. Here, the pupil-to-qualified-teacher ratio currently sits at 76:1. This ratio compares to…
At EdTech Hub, we’ve been reflecting on how coloniality is embedded in the work we do: from the colonial roots of the international development sector, to colonial practices embedded in research methods, to “core-to-periphery” design and deployment of EdTech interventions. We’ve just begun this journey, but in trying to embody one of our EdTech Hub values of ‘fearless and humble…
Two years into the Covid-19 pandemic that has globally disrupted school systems and shined a bright light on the possibilities and pitfalls of education technology, EdTech Hub and partners gathered educators, government stakeholders, development and technology partners, policymakers, researchers, and more in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to discuss two fundamental questions: what have we learned and what will we do…
In March 2022, EdTech Hub’s executive director Verna Lalbeharie joined partners from the Aga Khan Foundation’s (AKF) Schools2030 programme for a school visit in Tanzania’s Temeke district. The visit coincided with the Utafiti Elimu Tanzania conference, of which AKF and EdTech Hub were co-sponsors, as well as data-collection for one the studies in the EdTech Hub research portfolio. Toangoma primary…
In March 2022, I joined the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and spent a significant amount of time in a hall dedicated to exploring how things will be different 4 years from now (4YFN). The hall was full of startups showcasing the latest products for urban mobility, healthcare, education, and more. 4YFN invited me to moderate a fireside chat on…
