Sub-Saharan Africa, more than any other part of the world, is experiencing a crisis in finding sufficiently qualified teachers to meet the needs of expanding school systems. The professional development support provided to serving teachers is also inadequate in most countries. The most recent data on learner outcomes has revealed a worrying…

Open educational resources (OERs) are becoming increasingly common as a tool in education, particularly in medical and biomedical education. However, three key barriers have been identified to their use: 1) lack of awareness of OERs, 2) lack of motivation to use OERs, and 3) lack of training in the use of OERs. Here, we explore these three…

This paper describes the authors' experience of remixing two existing OER courses to provide an OER course for a particular purpose and context. The developing country target environment is stated as well as the original resources' provenance. The motivation for remixing these OER is explored, and the design of the adapted resource is described…

"Open educational resources" (OER) are educational resources that are available to anyone free of cost and under an open licence to allow others to retain, reuse, revise, remix and redistribute them with few or no restrictions. In 2012, the World OER Congress saw the adoption of the Paris OER Declaration, which calls on governments…

The study derives from a multi-year project implemented by OER Africa. The project sought to understand how OER might be used as a catalyst for pedagogical transformation in African universities. Within a nondeterminist and interpretivist theoretical framework and an over-arching project methodology of participatory action research, the study made…

This paper shares analytical insights on the position, challenges and potential for promoting Open Educational Resources (OER) in African Open Distance and eLearning (ODeL) institutions. The researchers sought to use a participatory research approach as described by Krishnaswamy (2004), in convening a sequence of two workshops at the Open…

This study aimed to investigate and classify faculty members' instructional priorities for adopting OER. In-depth interview data were collected from 10 faculty members from different regions and analyzed with NVivo 10. The original supposition was that the well-established instructional priorities, effectiveness, efficiency, and appeal would…

Open educational resources (OER) continue to support the needs of educators and learners globally. However, it is clear that to maximise their potential more focus is needed on reuse and repurposing. Accordingly, adapting OER for local contexts remains one of the greatest challenges of the open education movement, with little written about how to…

The TESSA (teacher education in sub Saharan Africa) programme aims to improve teacher education at scale by developing open educational resources (OER) that allow sustainable and locally managed pedagogical change in higher education institutions and schools. The article offers a sociocultural theoretical rationale for the pedagogy of mutuality…

Intended for use with grades six through nine, "Global Geography" is a series of ten 15-minute video programs that help students think their way through important issues and increase their understanding of world geography. The programs fit easily into normal classroom schedules and support the content of most existing course sequences.…

This handbook features an exhaustive collection of African studies curriculum materials considered most appropriate for teachers. The material is coded for elementary school, middle school, senior high school/adult, and general interest. Material is presented in the following chapters: "General Information" which contains facts sheets on…

This is a teacher's guide for a twelfth grade course on value conflicts and policy decision. The course is part of an articulated curriculum for grades K-12. This teacher guide contains goals for the course as they are related to values, skills, and concepts and generalizations. The focus of the course is on problems facing the United States at…

This is the fourth of seven resource units for a twelfth grade course on value conflicts and policy decisions. The topic for this unit is Africa south of the Sahara. The objectives are listed as to generalizations, skills, and values. The double-page format relates objectives to pertinent content, teaching procedures, and instructional materials.…

This social studies curriculum guide is designed to challenge academically talented middle school students, encourage them to acquire and use critical thinking skills, and recognize the importance of global awareness. Areas of study include Latin America and Canada for grade six, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia for grade seven, and U.S.…

Written by 25 African educators from 15 African nations that make up the African Social Studies Programme (ASSP), a Pan-African organization headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, this document is designed to supplement the sparse material on Africa available in the K-12 curriculum and textbooks in the United States, and these 11 lessons encourage U.S.…