TVET Research in SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA — New Report

Posted on by Ghislaine Tegha blog
Reading Time: 2 minutes

We are pleased to announce that a new report detailing the state of research on Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in Sub-Saharan Africa is now available in our evidence library. The report was commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in collaboration with GOVET (the German Office for International Cooperation in Vocational Education and Training) and is an expanded and revised version of an earlier report, published in 2019 in German.

The report provides an in-depth overview of the research on TVET in Sub-Saharan Africa, with a view to identifying gaps in the research and provide the impetus for further research and the formation of international research networks in TVET in the region. The report is aimed at researchers and practitioners from technical and vocational education and training and related disciplines who are performing research in or about Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), as well as interested members of the general public.

The 200-page report contains 16 chapters. The report is available as a single PDF; however, each chapter is also available separately (including a chapter bibliography) for ease of access and reuse. The report begins with an executive summary, follows by these chapters:

  • Chapter 1 contains the introduction.
  • Chapter 2 presents the research design (methodological approach) of the report, including the research questions. 
  • Chapter 3 offers an overview of the quality and relevance of the publications found on TVET. 
  • Chapter 4 deals with the conception and practice of TVET. 
  • Chapter 5 examines the various stakeholders in TVET research and their networks, e.g. the institutions that are involved in TVET and TVET research (e.g. faculties at universities as well as non-university and non-state colleges). 
  • Chapter 6 deals with topics, perspectives and current debates of TVET research in SSA. 
  • Chapter 7 carries out a systematic review of the studies on TVET in SSA, i.e., it examines reliable statements made about TVET in relevant research publications. 
  • Chapter 8 examines models for the design, development, and delivery of TVET
  • Chapter 9 looks at gender issues in TVET in SSA, as well as inclusion challenges and strategies.
  • Chapter 10 looks at key state actors in TVET (state authorities and key policies) for four countries: Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria. These countries reflect a diverse variety of TVET system structures.
  • Chapter 11 examines the importance of non-governmental actors in TVET from a range of countries where information was available, including Ethiopia, Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, and Tanzania.
  • Chapter 12 looks at national standards, guidelines and quality frameworks in TVET in SSA. The authors examine the role that politics, trade unions and other interest groups play in TVET.
  • Chapter 13 focuses on the challenges that arise when implementing guidelines and political decisions.
  • Chapter 14 focuses on how institutional framework conditions can be influenced to increase research capacity and performance. It also explores what the research interests and motivations of TVET researchers are in SSA, alongside the current and emerging TVET topics in the region.
  • Chapter 15 examines networks for research into TVET. The chapter explores the networks and networking opportunities that are present across and beyond SSA and considers how those could be strengthened. 
  • Chapter 16 contains a summary and — based on this — some considerations of possible future developments regarding TVET and TVET research.

A number of appendices present additional information, such as an annotated bibliography, the full bibliography for the report, the methodology for the interviews and structured community review, and the results of the structured community review, as well as a list of additional materials for the report.

Access the report here:https://docs.opendeved.net/lib/ZEDIHF57

Access the chapters here: https://docs.opendeved.net/lib/?featured=7B4X227X.KLHQM77T&sort=date_desc 

Access the German version of the report here: https://lit.bibb.de/vufind/Record/DS-184013 

Launching SharePlusCode: An app for finding your geolocation in remote rural locations

Posted on by Thomas Blower, Björn Haßler and Taskeen Adam blog
Reading Time: 8 minutes

Some years ago, Open Development and Education supported Tanzania Development  Trust (TDT) in their mapping campaign to combat female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice affecting more than 50% of girls and yong women in some regions of rural Tanzania.  The mapping campaign was launched due to the difficulty of locating girls at risk of FGM as well as the location of safehouses. There are villages of over 10,000 people that don’t appear on maps. OpenDevEd’s work to address this issue sparked the development of a new open-source application: SharePlusCode.

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Five lessons learnt from Bangladesh’s experience responding to COVID-19

Posted on by Tom Kaye, Iqbal Hossain and Md. Afzal Hossain Sarwar blog
Reading Time: 5 minutes

Written by OpenDevEd’s Tom Kaye, Md. Afzal Hossain Sarwar of a2i, and Iqbal Hossain from UNICEF. This blog was first published on 15th July 2020 as part of the coronavirus (COVID-19) and EdTech series on The EdTech Hub website under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.

In recent months, the EdTech Hub has produced a range of documents to support and guide countries as they develop and implement plans to help students keep learning during school closures. Some of the work we have produced includes:

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Is there learning continuity during the COVID-19 pandemic? Six Lessons

Posted on by Chris McBurnie and Björn Haßler blog, COVID-19
Reading Time: 5 minutes

An effective education response to the COVID-19 pandemic needs to be built on solid evidence and data. For example, what do you know about your population? How many families own radios and televisions? Do children use — and actually learn from — online learning platforms? How much time — if any — do learners spend studying at home?

While the edtech landscape has drastically changed in the past decade, research on edtech has not kept pace (https://edtechhub.org). At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was initially very little data on efforts to ensure learning continuity during school closures. However, a number of research groups have recently conducted surveys and collected data on the education response to COVID-19. Here, we take a look at some of the emerging evidence and summarise this data in six initial lessons.

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Department for International Development merger with Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Let us learn from our past

Posted on by Zoé Allier-Gagneur blog, DFID
Reading Time: 3 minutes

On June 16th, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his decision to the House of Commons to merge the British Department for International Development (DFID) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). This decision is not a complete surprise, given that Mr Johnson openly sought to persuade Theresa May to give him the aid department in 2016 after he became foreign secretary. 

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Reflecting on epistemic injustices in open and online education

Posted on by Taskeen Adam #BlackLivesMatter, blog, COVID-19
Reading Time: 6 minutes

In memory of Hector Pieterson and the hundreds of student protesters that were brutally murdered by police on the 16 June 1976 in the Soweto Uprising in South Africa. The Soweto Uprising refers to the protests by black South African high school students during apartheid against the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction.

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Why the COVID Crisis Is Not EdTech’s Moment in Africa

Posted on by administrator blog, COVID-19
Reading Time: 6 minutes

Author: Lee CrawFurd, Centre for Global Development

This blog was originally posted on the Center for Global Development blog on the 18th May 2020. Open Development & Education is part of The EdTech Hub and the data used here was from the EdTech Hub’s database of interventions. This database, which was initially limited to sub-Saharan Africa, now has a global scope. While the data is still partial (e.g. doesn’t include broader lists of edtech startups from South Africa or Ikeja, Abuja, and Lagos in Nigeria) the insights made in this article are extremely valuable. Even if the estimates were off by a factor of 2 or 3, points about the optimal use of digital learning still hold true. As the blog suggests, there is a need to increase the database’s representation of interventions in other regions. Please add your EdTech intervention to help us grow it!

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Who has what? Assessing who has access to what devices in the education response to the COVID-19 pandemic

Posted on by Björn Haßler, Abdullah Khalayleh, Chris McBurnie, Taskeen Adam and Zoé Allier-Gagneur blog, COVID-19
Reading Time: 6 minutes

As with education in general, our ability to respond to COVID-19  in education depends significantly on access to resources by students and teachers. Even in this moment of crisis, governments should inform their decisions regarding education and educational resources on the available data whenever possible. However, we realise that accessing relevant data is not necessarily straightforward and this should not block other elements of system response-recovery-reform. 

Continue reading “Who has what? Assessing who has access to what devices in the education response to the COVID-19 pandemic” →