Global Learning Portal Guest

The Global e-School and Communities Initiative, better known as GeSCI, is a non-profit organization founded by the UN ICT Task Force. It works with many ministries of education in developing countries to help incorporate ICT into education. GeSCI recently commissioned a research project, essentially a literature review, examining the scope of research around ICT in education. The study, titled Research Report for GeSCI Meta-Review of ICT in Education, resulted in two research papers which identify key themes in the field and provide an overview of recent literature addressing these themes. In addition to providing the literature review, the study also examined areas in which there are research gaps.

I recently attended a webinar during which the authors of the 2 papers discussed the scope of their work and its findings. They addressed such themes as:

• Educational ICT leadership and management
• ICT infrastructure, connectivity and accessibility
• Integration of ICTs into teaching and learning
• Educational content and ICT
• ICT and educational transformation
• ICT and learning relevance to 21st Century phenomena

For each theme, the authors provide an overview, identify the challenges and constraints impacting progress, address evolving approaches in the field, pinpoint ‘hot’ topics, review research gaps, and list the numerous articles they reviewed to form these conclusions. Based on this extensive overview, the authors note some key conclusions in the literature, including the importance of curriculum and ICT working together hand in hand to improve educational outcomes, and the need for strategic leadership to implement and support educational ICT use and teacher professional development.

Phase 1 is a very broad overview and Phase 2 narrows in on articles that are solely from peer-reviewed journals. Both papers serve as an excellent guide or bibliography for anyone interested in reading more about ICT and Education.