CHAPTER: Capacity-building for ICT integration in education

Description

INTRODUCTION
Over the last decade or so, governments in the Asia Pacific region have been promoting the use of the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) in education. The nature of this ICT take-up goes beyond using information and communication systems to improve education administration, to large-scale adoption of digital technologies that is impacting on curricular and pedagogical structures. A confluence of economic, social, and political challenges accounts for this development. For one, there is pressure for governments to provide education to all members of the population — even in the face of scarce financial, physical, and human resources — as a precondition for economic and social development. At the same time, globalization and the shift to a ‘knowledge-based economy’ require that educational institutions develop in individuals the ability to transform information into knowledge and to apply that knowledge in dynamic, cross-cultural contexts. ICTs are a means for meeting these twin challenges. ICTs can improve access to and promote equity in education by providing educational opportunities to a greater number of people of all ages, including the traditionally unserved or underserved (e.g. those in rural and remote areas, women and girls, and persons with disabilities). Second, ICTs can enhance the quality of teaching and learning by providing access to a great variety of educational resources and by enabling participatory pedagogies. Third, ICTs can improve the management of education through more efficient administrative processes, including human resource management, monitoring and evaluation, and resource sharing.

However, ICTs are not a panacea or cure-all for gaps in education provision. The right conditions need to be in place before the educational benefits of ICT can be fully harnessed, and a systematic approach is required when integrating ICTs into the education system. This fact is often overlooked and, in their eagerness to jump on to the technology bandwagon, many education systems end up with technologies that are either not suitable for their needs or cannot be used optimally due to the lack of trained personnel. Vendor persistence oftentimes overshadows calm and logical consideration of any new technology to be adopted. For example, in Malaysia, it has been pointed out that ‘[o]ver-dependence on vendors and lack of monitoring are causing the (Malaysian) Government millions of ringgit for the rollout of various ICT initiatives’ (The Star 2008). In the Philippines, the fixation with technology is demonstrated by the fact that the bulk of funding for ICT in schools projects goes to hardware and very little goes to teacher training (Arinto 2006).

This technocentric perspective on ICT in education is both a cause and an effect of the lack of capacity in ICT in education planning and implementation. In the first place, there is lack of capacity to systematically plan for ICT adoption. This in turn gives rise to failure to adequately provide for building the capacity of schools and education personnel to use ICT to improve teaching and learning. Thus, there is often poor implementation of ICT projects in schools.

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