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

within ECBP, pressure from the government for rapid implementation, andunderlying scepticism from OLPC regarding the value of training andcurriculum integration. In addition, the speed with which teachers were ableto grasp how to make appropriate use of the technology was much slowerthan had been anticipated by ECBP who were dictating the training schedule.In addition, the initial training to achieve personal competence with the basicfunctions of the device was far removed from the ECBP vision of confidentlaptop-based teaching with a classroom full of students. There were two maincomplexities encountered in Ethiopia regarding the widespread desire fromteachers for more training. The first of these related to the training itself, andthe second to incentives for participation.First, Everts reflected on the cultural complexities of facilitating aninteractive training environment following an initial session with teachersregarding use of the XO laptops. A significant factor shaping the trainingsession was what he perceived as the teachers‟ desire to please the trainer andprovide a „correct‟ answer to the questions posed (08/02/08):„They felt that they had to give the right answer and so you gotvery limited responses. There was a very clear feeling fromteachers that there was a right answer and that they wouldlose face if they didn‟t give the right answer.‟As a result, rather than participating in a knowledge sharing exercise, theteachers were reticent and unwilling to contribute unless certain that theyknew the „correct‟ answer. This was exacerbated by the prevalent culturewhich assumes that once the teacher has said something and it has beenrepeated back by the student then the learning process is complete, asdiscussed in section 5.4.5. As Everts explained (08/02/08), challenging thisexpectation caused tension within the training environment:„Sometimes the fact that we did more than provide fleetingexplanations felt like we were being condescending. The oldmen would say “yes I‟ve got it” when really they didn‟t have it.We would want to demonstrate – but they said “no, we‟ve gotit” – when we knew they didn‟t.‟274