THE CASE OF ICT UTILISATION IN ETHIOPIAN SECONDARY SCHOOL: IS IT BLENDED LEARNING OR BLURRED LEARNING?

The Ethiopian government has implemented the programme of plasma TV instruction (PTI) to its secondary schools and aimed to achieve standardised quality education by providing equal access to education and overcoming the lack of qualified teachers. The PTI has initially started with six subjects since 2004 but now it expands the number of subjects to 11 in total. On the basis of government policy, teachers and students are supposed to teach and learn through PTI in order to enhance potential of ICT through blended learning. In the same vein, under the General Education Quality Improvement Project (GEQIP), the government has selected 300 secondary schools across the nation and been establishing two computer labs with 80 computers. Aforementioned ICT infrastructure and materials have been provided so as to support blended learning as well collaborated with PTI. However, in reality, the objective of government has not been achieved over the last 13 years. Rather the implementation of ICT creates blurriness in teaching and learning processes because policy without full consideration of reality leads to confusion about teaching. To examine actual teaching and learning processes with ICT utilisation, this research has randomly selected six digitised schools in Addis Ababa and conducted in-depth interviews with five teachers from each school. In school contexts, it also randomly observes 12 classrooms to find actual ICT utilisation in the lesson. Moreover, federal government bodies are also interviewed which initiate and improve policies associated with ICT implementation in the classroom. As a result, it is able to listen and understand what is happening inside of classroom and teachers' perception towards ICT. In conclusion, the research finds that there are several reasons why Ethiopian blended learning becomes rather blurred learning. First of all, teachers have not received adequate and enough training. This does not only indicate ICT utilisation but also maintenance. Secondly, a medium of instruction, English hinders teachers from ICT implementation. This would make them less confident about themselves in front of students. Thirdly, ICT material itself is simply not functioning well so that teachers are not able to catalyse full potential of blended learning. Fourthly, poor salary and time shortage do not allow teachers to prepare their teachings with ICT integration. Therefore, the research can contribute to clarify issues of the current blended learning of Ethiopia and shed light on aforementioned defects, which need to be considered for its improvement.