Decolonizing AI and EdTech for community-based education programs in low- and middle-income countries

• In Event: ICT and Education (I)

Proposal

In recent years, advancements in EdTech and AI have revolutionized the global education landscape. While these innovations offer promising opportunities to improve learning outcomes, they also raise critical concerns regarding cultural relevance, equity, and accessibility, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This proposal aims to explore the decolonization of EdTech and AI for community-based education programs in LMICs.

Decolonizing EdTech involves “dismantling the relations of power and conceptions of knowledge that are reproduced through EdTech in: its fundamental assumptions; its content; its pedagogical underpinnings; its design; and its implementation’ (EdTech Hub). While the potential benefits of integrating EdTech and AI into community-based education programs in LMICs cannot be ignored, without critical examination and intentional efforts, these tools may inadvertently perpetuate colonial legacies, exacerbate inequalities, and further marginalize local cultures and knowledge systems. In other words, “the digital divide should not be about global inclusion in a web already built or managed by its builders according to their pre-determined perspectives, but about a critical reconstruction of how we understand the Web; to question conceptualisations of openness and, perhaps, to build it differently” (Ogden, Halford, Carr, Earl, 2015).

By acknowledging and addressing the biases embedded in these technologies, this proposal takes learnings from Team4Tech’s work around fostering inclusive, culturally-sensitive, and contextually relevant educational practices.

Team4Tech employs a hyper-localized approach to bridging the digital equity gap in education for learners in under-resourced contexts. A regional model and co-design process drives our multi-year partnerships with community-based organizations in LMICs, which allows us to better understand, critique, and accelerate solutions that promote inclusive and equitable learning experiences.

The proposal will highlight two areas of Team4Tech’s recent work on decolonizing EdTech and AI:
1) Teacher training and professional development are critical components of many of the community-based organizations that partner with Team4Tech. Part of this proposal will investigate how educators have been supported to effectively integrate decolonized EdTech into their pedagogical practices, and the challenges encountered. Through examples from four of Team4Tech’s NGO partners in Kenya, the discussion will be about the decolonizing skills and knowledge that teachers require to leverage technology while promoting local cultures and identities in the learning process.

2) AI, and in particular, programs like ChatGPT, have gained enormous popularity over the past year. There is, however, a growing movement to decolonize AI and activists who are seeking dialogue about this, as exemplified by AI Decolonial Manyfesto, a statement drafted by Stanford scholar Sabelo Mhlambi and co-signed by other scholars to encourage historically marginalized groups to “decide and build their own dignified socio-technical futures.” In a three-part training series, Team4Tech trained over 300 NGO staff working in community-based programs in LMICs about ChatGPT and shared 27 curated GPT-4 tools. Through this series, Team4Tech sought to learn what participants noted as the strengths and barriers of these tools, how these tools could better support their efforts to localize and personalize education, and what additional resources they would need to take forward in their contexts. In Uganda, Team4Tech trained over 80 women on AI chatbots and supported them as they built their own locally relevant chatbots to support their small businesses. Learnings from these trainings and projects will be shared with participants.

This proposal seeks to contribute to the ongoing discourse on decolonizing EdTech and AI in community-based education programs in LMICs. By critically examining current practices and co-designing with local community-based organizations, Team4Tech aims to leverage technology that ultimately empowers learners and accelerates transformative, contextually relevant, and sustainable educational practices in LMICs.

Authors

• Daria Ng, Team4Tech

• Mehreen Butt, Team4Tech