Evaluating ICT for Education in Africa - Royal Holloway, University of ...

weekend then they will be there and they won‟t expect anymoney. They will go because it is directly related to theirwork. They will be afraid of being fired and so they will gobecause of the pressure and the consequences.‟The varied degree of teacher willingness to engage with the participatorymethods also debunked the assumption that stakeholder participationprovides access to a single alternative perspective. The research participantsheld a variety of diverse perspectives and by no means represented ahomogenous „other‟ (Said 1978). This was demonstrated through amethodological disagreement between various Ethiopian members of themonitoring and evaluation team. As noted in my research diary (17/04/08):„We tend to essentialise and think that local perspectives willbe somehow homogeneous. Whilst a local perspective maywell identify things that an outsider is unlikely to, this does notmean there is one single insider perspective. By consultinglocal people you are not tapping into some pure perspective onhow research should be undertaken. What we have done isinvolve a whole load of local people and find that they alldisagree on what is appropriate just as much as we do!‟In order to be employed effectively, participatory methods in monitoring andevaluation therefore require an acute awareness of socio-cultural andpolitical context, and the multiplicity of interwoven traditions, norms andexpectations that shape participant responses (Cousins and Earl 1995).Participatory methods should be viewed realistically, as a vital dimensionwithin effective monitoring and evaluation but not as a panacea in and ofthemselves (Tacchi and Lennie 2007).Whilst I have highlighted the dangers of wholly imbibing the participatoryrhetoric, it is clear that the overall research process was more participatory innature than is currently commonly witnessed (for contrasts see Farrell et al.2007, Maclay et al. 2005, Kozma et al. 2004). As such my research doesadvocate for increased critical participation throughout monitoring and197