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

monitoring and evaluation of ICT for education programmes, whilstsimultaneously detaching myself in order to reflect on and evaluate thedynamics of the processes that were taking place. This provided opportunitiesfor reflection on orthodox practice and subsequent methodologicalinnovation. The aim was also to increase the credibility of the findings bothregarding academic rigour and the applied purposes of the partnerorganisations. This was gained through designing and conducting the casestudies in a manner subject to „real world‟ complexities and constraints oftime, budget, data, personnel and politics (Bamberger 2006, Gray 2004). Indoing this, the approaches used were demonstrated to be not simplyinnovative but also practical and realistic, offering value to the partnerorganisations. Operating in this way required that I maintain two parallelroles throughout the fieldwork process, leading to a heavy work load andrequiring constant internal switching between roles. This was exacerbated bymy contracting Giardia lamblia and Schistosomiasis whilst conducting thecase study research, resulting in a two month medical interruption from thisthesis in June and July 2008 whilst I recuperated.3.2 ContextHaving outlined the rationale for the case study research I now situate itwithin the context of monitoring and evaluation methodologies for ICT foreducation and consider additional methodological tools valuable in doingthis. The approach adopted in the case studies was chosen having previouslyinvestigated more conventional methodological approaches to monitoringand evaluating ICT for education initiatives in Africa (Farrell et al. 2007,Maclay et al. 2005, Kozma et al. 2004). Although drawing on these, I wasultimately unsatisfied with the prescriptive and often top-downimplementation structure. I therefore developed linkages from related fieldsin searching for possible innovative methodological alternatives.Considerable literature exists regarding methodological guidelines forconducting monitoring and evaluation in related fields such as the evaluationof technology and education programmes (Johnston and Barker 2002), the74