Exploring South African Education Policymakers Views On Edtech Adoption

• In Event: For the FATES of Africa: Socially-just ecosystems and life cycles in online learning for Sub-Saharan Africa.

Proposal

Many sub-Saharan African countries identify implementing educational technology as a remedy to inequity and a means of achieving the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 4. In South Africa, the government’s 2004 White Paper on e-Education asserts that information and communication technologies (ICTs) provide access to learning and “redress inequalities, improve the quality of learning and teaching, and deliver lifelong learning”. But there has been slow progress in deploying computers and network connectivity in schools, and what advances there have been concentrated in historically and economically advantaged areas. This presentation explores the reasons for this hesitant, skewed implementation through the analysis of an online consultation with 12 South African education policymakers adopting Adam’s Dimensions of Human Injustice framework. Participants identify the legacy of the previous apartheid regime, lack of investment, short-sighted planning, and bureaucratic intransigence on the continuing failure of the South African education system to sustainability adopt educational technologies. They suggest curriculum reform, improved technical and teacher capacity, better project design, and enhanced public-private partnerships as possible solutions.

Author

• Tim O'Riordan, Southampton Education School, University of Southampton